The National Hockey League is North America’s and the world’s premiere ice hockey league. If you are interested in betting on hockey, it doesn’t get any better than this. Below, we will be covering a few tips to help you make the best of your hockey bets.
Betting Systems
While there is no one size fits all system around. Most professional bettors recommend having a system to go by when making your bets. Some focus on loss mitigation and other on maximizing profits, it’s worth getting to know the betting systems to find the best one for you. Below, we will cover two of the more common betting systems implemented when making NHL bets.
- Martingale – One of the more basic betting systems. The martingale will have a bettor start at a base bet amount. On every loss, double your bet. On every win, return to the base amount. This is a simple system to try to mitigate losses while still making small wins. It is worth noting that martingale requires a large bankroll and users must be aware of gamblers fallacy. The martingale system is also available in the reverse, known as the anti-martingale. This system would have you double on a win and return to base value on a loss.
- Proportional – Proportional strategy will have you bet a certain percentage of your bankroll. As the bankroll changes, the percentage stays the same. The idea behind this system is to make smaller bets when your bankroll is low and bigger bets when your bankroll is high. While this can be frustrating when it comes to smaller profits, it is a fantastic system to build discipline and confidence as a bettor.
When choosing a betting system, it is important to remember that these systems should work along with good research. Without the appropriate research, even the best strategy won’t be able to make you profitable.
Fade The Public
Fading the public will likely not be right for every bettor, but can be a fantastic tool if used correctly. To understand how to fade the public, we must first understand how sportsbooks set up odds.
Sportsbooks will cater the odds to have even bettors on both favourite and underdog side of the bet. In some situations when one team is a lot more popular than the other and a disproportionate amount of bets is expected on the favourite team, the odds need to be adjusted to take that into account. This creates a situation where the actual probability is better than that implied by the odds, making the underdog team a great value bet.
Example: Tampa Bay Lightning 1.25
Winnipeg Jets 5
From this, we can establish that the implied odds give the Winnipeg Jets a 20% chance at winning the game. Our research on the other hand points more to a 30% chance for the Winnipeg Jets. This discrepancy between implied probability and the actual probability is caused by a one-sided betting majority. It does, however, make the Winnipeg Jets fantastic value in this bet.