Predicting a win: What sports are the most difficult to predict?
Of all the different types of gambling out there, online sports betting is by far the most strategic.
That is because, unlike other types of gambling which work on the basis of pure chance—like, for example, roulette or poker—sports betting requires a deep knowledge about the game in question to be able to make accurate predictions of how you think a particular match will turn out. In fact, it is exactly this strategic side of sports betting that keeps players from the best NJ online casino coming back for more!
For many players out there, however, the level of knowledge required to make successful predictions in sports betting presents a high barrier to entry. This is complicated by the fact that different sports vary so widely in terms of their unpredictability.
When it comes to maximizing your chances of successfully making as bet, what sports give you the highest possibility of success? Are all sports created equal in this regard, or are some more predictable than others? To answer this question, keep reading for some factors to keep in mind.
Does bet type matter?
An important factor we need to keep in mind when trying to figure out the predictability of a sport, is the type of bet you want to place. In terms of the odds you will get offered and the actual chances of success, there is a huge difference between a straight win bet and a specific outcome bet in the sports betting world. As the most popular professional sports usually involve two teams playing against each other with only one declared the winner, if you are placing a straight ‘win’ bet, you always have a 50% chance of guessing correctly. In contrast, a wager on a specific outcome—such as a score or point differential—will be more difficult to predict as there are so many variables to consider.
The predictability of outcomes will also vary between sports. For high scoring games like football or basketball, it will generally be more difficult to make an accurate prediction of the score. This contrasts with low-scoring sports like soccer, which have fewer realistic options to bet on.
What sport is easiest?
With these factors in mind, we begin to get a sense that there is no easy answer to the question of whether a sport is necessarily easier to predict.
Soccer games, for example, generally have a fairly small range of realistic possible outcomes which would, in theory, make them more predictable. This is equally true of MMA fights, which have a relatively low number of possible outcomes.
Generally speaking, high point scoring games such as basketball and football will be difficult to successfully predict, given the sheer number of different possible outcomes.
Another factor to consider is the number of players. Tennis, for example, is an individual sport so it presents a smaller number of variables when compared to football, where a team consists of eleven players. More players on the pitch means more things can go wrong during the course of a game! Similarly, having more players means a team will be less impacted by injuries than in an individual player sport.
