By Samantha Williams
Sports betting is a whole new adventure of its own, and a natural progression from the bookie shops to an online presence has taken place, as every conceivable form of gambling becomes more widely available online. Sports betting entails some skill, and to be successful it generally means you have to know about the sports you are betting on.
If you fancy a name in the Grand National and take a stab at it, this is all in the name of good fun where luck counts. But real horse race betting is a true and pure adventure. This applies to betting on football, golf, baseball, cricket and even the name or sex of the next new member of the Royal Family will take some research. Conducting research into past and present form, historical outcomes and all kinds of other factors is for many people the learning aspect which makes this betting game so exciting.
“Was I right in my prediction based on the empirical knowledge I gained by learning about the subject I placed money on?”
Betting on horses is completely different to any other kind of betting, you have to consider, horse, breeding, jockey, trainer, track, weather and manager as well as many other factors, but this is truly the sport of Kings. All these factors come into play before you even look at the kind of wager you want to place, and before you know it the race is run and over with, while you are still trying to understand what a trifecta is.
People have been racing horses since time immemorial; in fact it is one of our most ancient sports. It dates back to as far as 4 500 BC when prehistoric Central Asian nomadic tribesmen were very competitive. But it was reserved for royalty! So horse racing is ancient, exotic, wild and betting on it can also be very confusing.
It is a professional sport and the second most attended spectator sport in the US after baseball (which you can also bet on). People of the US wager over $10 billion annually on this sport, so it is a major industry. It is popular all over the world including Canada, UK, Ireland, Saudi Arabia, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and South America.
Humankind has a naturally competitive and challenging spirit and they will place bets on anything that races – even hamsters and frogs. Modern horse racing has only grown in popularity to the extent that it has, as a result of widely legalized gambling, and venues for the provision of this.
Yes the language of betting on this sport is all over the map, but it fortunately does reward a few hours of study. Pasting the betting pages on the wall and throwing a dart at it to take your pick, may work for the lucky few, but this is not a game for fools so learn to know your horses.
