Sports betting has taken America by storm ever since the Supreme Court overturned the PASPA act which banned sports betting. That opened the door for New Jersey to legalize sports betting and now its legal in more than 34 states and Washington DC. Along with this phenomenon has come tremendous change in the way sports bettors bet.
In this article I'm going to look at how sports betting has changed the way sports bettors think and act before placing a bet. We live in a data driven society and sports betting is probably the biggest affected industry because of it. Nowadays sports bettors focus heavily on stats, facts, and betting trends. This is the science of sports betting however there is another side of sports betting that has been forgotten and that is the Art of Sports Betting.
In the old days there was golden rules that bettor followed for example in football you'd think twice before betting giving up points on the road. In basketball sharp bettors knew that its awfully hard for teams to win back to back on the road without a day off. Now the young millennial bettor only looks at the stats and trends regardless of the scenario, Another part of the art of sports betting is to be able to properly judge the stats and trends that the data puts together. A prime example is a new football season has just started and a lot of the data driven stats come from trends that happened last season. This is a different season with different results. This can be misleading for the data driven sports bettor but not for the experienced bettor who looks for new trends and streaks to develop before applying the science. There still is an art to betting its just becoming harder to identify because the science has become so dominant.
Another big movement in sports betting has been the shift from betting on the games or totals to making player prop bets. Again this is driven by data on individuals which gives us more stats, facts, and trends. Yet the art of sports betting tells us that if your betting on a players stats the lines are juiced up high because the average bettor loves to bet over even though more times than not they go under. Something else the art of sports betting has taught us is discipline. Many young bettors don't think twice about laying heavy odds unlike the seasoned bettor who knows those heavy odds are costly in the long run. The increase in volume (handle) on sports betting is enormous which has wayed heavily on sports books who now must deal with heavy competition as they offer rewards and bonuses for new players. Once again this has changed the landscape of sports betting because now you have bettors giving action just to fulfill their gambling needs, This has also diminished the art of sports betting because there just relying on science without accurately sizing up the data which leads to an impulse bet.
For those who are considered sharps didn't get there by science they got there by experience which all came for the Art of Sports Betting
Story Paul Salerno
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