September 4 2019

The Premier League

How a betting calculator can help you manage expectations from a punt on Palace, writes Steve Blake.

One of the most common reactions to Palace’s magnificent win against Manchester United on their home turf was "I wish I’d put a fiver on that". Of course it is easy to be wise after the event, and if we had a crystal ball, we could become millionaires at the expense of the bookies in no time.

It raises an interesting question, however. There are plenty of people out there who win more than they lose at sports betting, whether it’s on the football, the horses or any other sport.

Doing so requires an in-depth understanding of the sport, and the form of the combatants, of course it does. But it also demands a clear conception of the mathematics that underlie the odds.

If you were staring out of the window and thinking about Palace one day rolling Manchester United over on the day they covered that at school, don’t despair. The internet has a solution to just about everything, and in this particular case, what you need is a betting calculator.

So what’s a betting calculator?

A betting calculator does the hard work for you. Simply plug in the bets, the odds and the stake, and it will immediately tell you what you stand to win. Most online sports books and betting sites will offer some form of betting calculator, so it is very much a case of choosing the one with which you are comfortable.

A good place to start is at a comparison site like bestbettingsites.uk, where you’ll find a free online betting calculator alongside a rundown of some of the most popular sites where you can place your bet. This kind of resource places you at an even stronger advantage, as you can shop around for the best odds rather than accepting those of a specific bookmaker.

Types of bets

There’s more to betting on football than just backing a winner on Saturday afternoon. In fact, those lucky individuals who consistently make money at sports betting seldom place simple straight bets. The more tempting odds come from the more complex accumulators, trixies, yankees and so on, where you are betting on a sequence of results going your way.

Putting a bet like this together is a fun way of showing off your sporting nous. But you need to be more aware than ever of how the odds combine. Let's take a look at an example.

Backing three odds-on favourites in a triple can be a good way to lengthen your odds a little for a better return. So if three of the Big Six seem to have easy fixtures one week, you might want to place a triple on them all to win.

Of course, anyone who did this on 24 August would have come unstuck if one of the teams they were backing was Manchester United. Some choose to cover this off with a Trixie bet – this requires just two of the three results to come in, and you still win.

The danger here, is that you are actually betting on three different results, the triple plus the three possible doubles. When backing odds-on favourites, this often means that your winnings don’t even cover your stake.

It’s in circumstances like these that a betting calculator is an absolutely essential part of your armoury, in that it won’t just help you calculate the odds, it will also allow you to compare and contrast different types of bets in which the maths can easily start to get complicated. Why not check out the Premier League fixtures and give it a try next weekend and see how you get on?