Favourites vs Long Shots: Crafting Your Betting Plan

It may be tempting to go with the favourite when you decide to lay down a bet, but it’s always important to remember that there’s no such thing as a guaranteed win. Deciding whether you go with a bookmaker’s favourite or their long shot can mean the difference between taking home a small profit, winning big, or losing your money.

It’s all a matter of whether you’ve used your insights to make the best bet possible, and Sportingbet wants to show you how. In this guide we’ll take a closer look at favourites, long shots, and how to identify a value bet.

As the name suggests, the favourite is the team or player that is most likely to win a soccer match, a game, a race, or whatever is being bet on. Betting on favourites is a common strategy — why wouldn’t you? The favourite has been selected by the bookmaker after rigorous analysis. Choosing the favourite is ultimately putting your trust in a bookmaker’s choice as to who will win the competition you’re betting on.  

The downside of betting on the favourite is that the odds are always lower than the long shot. This means that if you’re looking to make a decent profit from your bet, you’ll have to put a lot of money on it which makes the potential loss much higher. Remember, even the favourite loses sometimes.

The long shot is the bet with the least chance of being successful. This results in the odds being much higher which means there’s some serious profit to be made if it happens to be the winning bet. Betting on the long shot should only be done if you’ve done your research and have an in depth insight into how the competition you’re betting on is going to play out. In the end, you’re betting on the fact that you know the outcome of a bet better than the bookmaker who’s setting the odds. 

The upside of betting on the long shot is that you don’t need to bet a massive amount of money in order to make a decent profit. You can offset the risk by betting lower so that if the odds don’t work out in your favour, your loss isn’t too extreme.

Sometimes there’s a difference between the odds that a bookmaker has set and the actual odds of the long shot winning. A bookmaker might fail to take something into consideration such as an injury to a star player on the favourite’s team that will tip the scales of a game. This difference between what the bookmaker has set the odds to and the odds of the team or player actually winning is known as tips spread. The tips spread is a comparison of two values, the bookmaker’s odds and the perception of the bet by the betting public.

Identifying a bet that has higher odds of being successful than the odds that the bookmaker has set is called a value bet. Value bets are the ultimate find for a sports better. It’s the perfect balance of great odds and the likelihood of a win. Advanced betters will track these bets down and use them to make a tidy profit.

When it comes to becoming a successful sports better, it ultimately comes down to how much research has gone into the bet. Taking the time to understand the real odds, regardless of what the bookmaker has set them at, is how good sports bettors become great sports bettors.