What do professional bettors consider the 10 most vital factors when choosing online bookmaker or betting exchange accounts?
This guide gives you our top 10 things to look out for and check when picking a list of reliable online betting sites with which to invest your hard earned money.
Image: tyrin (Shutterstock)(1) Free Bets and Bonuses
Many bookmakers and exchanges offer free bets either at the opening of a new account or periodically throughout its lifetime. Some also offer ‘matched deposit’ or ‘deposit top up’ bonuses to increase your war chest with that particular firm.
A good example is Coral Sports who not only provide an account opening free bet, but also a range of offers throughout the season, sometimes limited to particular bet types on particular matches.
They are also very cute in depositing cash into your account a couple of days in advance in the guise of a ‘birthday bonus’. It’s a personal touch – they don’t have to do it, but it gives a good impression when a firm can take advantage of a tiny detail and reward customers without them feeling exploited.
(2) Price Comparison
Buying cheap is definitely a good approach to save money in personal life. However, buying under-priced bets only increases profits for the bookies not for the bettor. Therefore, in betting, the opposite applies. Buy at the highest price possible!
The easiest way of checking the consistency of odds offered by the industry is via an odds comparison site, and the only one to offer both ante post odds plus a full archive for a whole range of bet types and sports is Oddsportal.
Getting the highest odds possible is crucial to the performance of any betting system. Historical odds are crucial for checking the future sustainability of any theory.
You will need to register a username and password to access the full range of bookmakers Oddsportal offers but this is a small price to pay to utilise one of the most useful odds sites out there. If you can’t find the bookmaker or exchange you are looking for amongst their list of almost 80 players, it’s a strong indicator that your prospective choice needs further investigation before you can assume anything about its reputation.
(3) Educational Content
There are two main schools of thought here. Do betting sites offer educational and mathematical articles to help their customers or is it all a smoke screen to make you feel more looked after?
Personally speaking, we place high importance on how bookmakers choose to nurture their customers. Some bookies have absolutely nothing to guide or assist the punter, which lets you know straight away where they stand.
Others, such as Pinnacle, contain a bank of useful articles and information to help the discerning bettor educate himself on the importance of odds, mathematics and statistics.
Any bookie willing to add more transparency to the whole process of betting alchemy is worth taking notice of.
(4) Markets Offered
The terms and conditions of any bookmaker should show you straight away where they are licensed and which countries they are licensed to accept business in.
No two betting sites are the same – they all offer a diversified portfolio of available betting opportunities, but some are more specialised than others.
Betfair continues to lead the betting exchange field (despite the many public criticisms about its business model) purely because it offers the most comprehensive backing/laying opportunities on the market together with unrivalled liquidity. The range of bets it caters for is huge and far outstrips its main rivals such as Matchbook, Smarkets, Betdaq, and WBX.
Hi thanks for the post