The world's largest market for sports betting is soccer. A growing number of curious sports bettors are wondering how to bet on soccer, particularly in light of major international tournaments like the World Cup. We provide a beginner's guide and a straightforward explanation of soccer betting for those who are unfamiliar with the game. With these resources, you'll be betting on the field in no time.

How to beat the bookies in the over/under market?

Did you know one of the most attractive aspects about football betting is the wide variety of betting markets? Moreover, in soccer, you can bet on a host of options which will give you great returns. Unlike other sports, football offers many more opportunities for keen bettors. This brings us to the question how can one beat bookies in the over or under market.

Scoring in soccer is less frequent and this makes knock-out games very unpredictable. A team’s strength can be judged from its performance in the league. So, when you must place bets, the average goals in a match is what bookies and bettors consider to calculate the odds for under or over markets. For example, matches in the Premier League have on an average 2.4 goals in a game while La Liga has 2.85 goals.

Steps to beat bookies in over or under markets:

To start with, you must calculate the average goal per game. You will see that the range between average goals in leagues can be very wide. So, what you need to do is to find an average of goals for every game for both teams in the match. One can get this information online easily. Interestingly, bookies also use the same trick to find the odds, they consider the number of goals any team has scored during a certain season and divide this by total number of games it has played. Ironically, this is the trick the bookies use, too, to determine the odds for the Under/Over market for any given match. They look at the number of goals a team has scored over a given season (or a specific period) and then divide this number by the total number of games played.

The next step is to find out probabilities of different scorelines happening. Scoring goals is random and statistics therefore follows a Poisson distribution model to predict over or under betting. When you think a game may not have too many goals, you will probably select a suspected scoreline of 0:0. 1:0, or 2:1. This type of scoreline comes under the 0.5, 2.5, or 3.5 goals range. In case you cannot come upon a suspected scoreline, you need not worry. You may start calculations of probability from the bottom and then work your way upwards.

You must then determine which the odds that should be bet on are. Once you have found out statistical probability for a game, you need to decide which odds you will accept. The probability can be converted into decimal odds using the formula, decimal odds=100/probability. This however does not mean that you are guaranteed to win. But you will have an easy betting strategy that has positive expected values; something that will assure you of long-term profits when you sum up the losses and gains eventually. This is why you need to take time out to research first, identify value bets, and then wait for the action to happen. The over/under betting market is quite useful because it relieves you of the stresses of having to predict what the real outcome of matches will be. You simply have to predict range of goals in these matches. If you are correct, you get to win.