Live Betting Can Provide Excellent Opportunities

When bad teams like the Buccaneers score points, it can open up opportunities on the live betting odds. (Photo credit: Keith Allison / Foter / CC BY-SA)


Buy low and sell high. It’s the first commandment in the stock market.

It’s also an ideal way to bet on sports.

Live betting on games is becoming more and more popular. All of our recommended sportsbooks offer it, and it’s worth your while to check it out.

By being able to bet on games while they are being played, you’ll often get much more lucrative betting opportunities than before the games began.

The key is to be a contrarian.

Who wants to bet on the basketball or football team that is trailing by 10 points in the first quarter, or the hockey team that is down 2-0 after the first period? Not many, even though these are hardly insurmountable deficits.

That is why you can find excellent value in these situations.

Hedging Opportunities

We recall one time in the NFL a few years ago. The Chargers, a talented and explosive 5-point favourite, were down 10-0 at halftime against the Seahawks, who hadn’t become a Super Bowl caliber team yet. San Diego looked rattled, confused, out of sync. You just knew they were going to get a kick in the ass in the locker room.

We logged into one of our accounts and saw +236 NFL live betting odds on the Chargers to win the game. We quickly pounced on it, betting $75 for a potential takeback of $177.

Our thinking wasn’t necessarily that the Chargers were going to come all the way back and win the game. It was that they would make the game a lot closer at one point.

The second half didn’t exactly start the way we hoped. Seattle returned the opening kickoff for a TD, pulling ahead 17-0. The odds on San Diego swelled as high as +400, which can make it very tempting to invest even more in the underdog but also increases your risk.

But then the Chargers began making the comeback you figured they would. By the fourth quarter, they had tied the game.

That’s when we bought back the other side, taking the Seahawks at even money. By calculating the potential amount we could win on either side, we determined that betting $126 on Seattle at +100 and already having $75 on San Diego at +236 would guarantee us a profit of $51.

As luck would have it, we bought back at a perfect time. Seconds after San Diego had tied the game and we hedged our bet, the Seahawks returned the kickoff for another TD and went on to win.

This strategy, like any betting strategy, won’t always work. We wouldn’t recommend throwing any money on a three-touchdown underdog that trails 28-0 in the second quarter.

But when a superior team is trailing early and you expect them to narrow the gap at some point, live betting can provide some excellent opportunities.