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Is it Okay to Bet on Sports as an Alternative to Online Casino Gaming?

Jackpot Capital online casino has certainly enjoyed a large influx of gamers in the three months and counting since the corona virus caused lockdowns in most countries around the world.  

We are now finding out that since sports were also not being played during the long lockdown, sports bettors were looking for an alternative and many discovered Jackpot Capital, the top jackpot casino online.  In addition to sports bettors discovering the many benefits of gaming at Jackpot Capital casino, many erstwhile land based casino gamers also came to Jackpot Capital.

So, we had a large group of gamers who preferred sports betting or land based casino gaming but were playing our online casino games because they had no alternative.  We are happy to note that many of them have told us that they were very pleasantly “surprised” at how smooth the gaming is here and that they will surely continue to play the casino games at Jackpot Capital!

Sports and Sports Betting will Soon Return

Now sports are coming back slowly and many of the gamers are asking if sports betting is a good way to enjoy gambling especially since all they have played for three months are casino games!

There are a few general and many specific things you need to know about sports betting.

Sports Betting is All about Analysis

Online casino games come in two basic categories: the games of chance and the games of skill.  The two most prominent games of skill are blackjack and video poker.  If you use the best strategy on every hand in both of these great games, your chances of finishing your gaming session in the black are good.

You probably won’t win much but you also won’t lose much as the return to player rate in these games is very close to 100%.

The key point to understand when you play blackjack and video poker is that the best strategy for every hand is already known.  The element of luck does play a role here but if you play the most strategic moves on every hand, the luck will eventually come very close to evening out.

Sports are different.   In sports, you also have to analyze each team and each player but the element of luck and the element of a team or player performing better than normal is very prominent in sports.

Sports betting is truly all about analysis and the analysis of any team or player can never be so thorough that you have perfect insight into how to bet.

There are Too Many Sports for Any Single Sports Bettor to Excel at All of Them

A lot of sports fans follow just their few favorite sports.  As a sports fan, it is fun and easy to follow several sports.  As a sports bettor, it is quite impossible to follow even three sports in depth.

You might be able to follow European football but how many of the dozens of teams can you truly follow well enough to place a bet on the outcome of a single game?   The answer is just two or three.

Since these teams don’t play each other often, you are truly guessing on the outcome of a game between a team you know well and a team you don’t know well.

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Keep Your Focus on Just a Few Teams

The fact is that to excel at sports betting, you need to focus on one or two sports and on one or two leagues in that sport.  For instance, in North America, college basketball is very big as is college football.  Any sports bettor can choose from dozens of leagues in both college basketball and college football but that would spread them far too thin.

True expertise in college sports in North American means focusing on one league and only on games between two teams from the same league.  The same applies to North American baseball, hockey, and professional basketball and football.

Each Game is Unique

There are many games in which an underdog plays far above their basic level and gives an overwhelming favorite a hard game and sometimes the underdog wins.  This never happens in online casino games!  In the games of chance, every spin is entirely up to the random number generator.

In the games of skill, we can always know what the best decision is because computers have studied millions of hands.  In sports, no matter how many games you study, you can never know what the best decision might be on any single play or over the course of a game.

Sports Bettors Tend to Bet on their Favorite Team

The odds in sports betting change almost every few minutes.  It all depends on how many bets have been placed in the previous few minutes.  The odds are not a function of the relative strengths of the teams.  The odds are really based on anticipated and real bets made by individual sports bettors.

This, given that so many sports bettors bet on their favorite team no matter what, their activity will inevitably affect the odds going into the game.  A sports bettor who looks at the odds and bets on the “favorite” might actually be betting on the weaker team but the team with the larger fan base!

Sports Bettors Don’t Know the Sports from the Inside

Even if you played a sport in school or as a professional, once you are out of the game, you can never know the game from the inside.  There are simply too many unknowns that only the players or the teams know.  When Michael Jordan played the famous “flu game” he was really suffering from food poisoning.

Only he and his teammates knew what had happened.

The same thing happens quiet often in team games as a player who is not scratched form a game might play with a slight injury that the fans don’t know about.  The opponents will quickly find out that a slightly injured player is not playing to his or her full capacity but an outside observer might not know.

In any case, it might be too late to make any difference as many bets are placed before the game begins!

The Bottom Line

Sports betting is a fine way to take an interest in a team, a sport, or a single game.  However, the pitfalls are far greater in sports betting than in online casino gaming generally.  Our conclusion is that sports bettors should tread carefully as the “field” of sports betting is full of unseen “land mines”!

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