Live Betting (In-Play Betting)

What is live betting?

Live betting (also known as in-play betting), is another one of the modern betting types that have emerged due to the increasing popularity of the internet. Simply, live betting is in a way much different to the normal betting standards. In contrast, live betting offers you the opportunity to place your wages during the course of the game, while the norm was always to place your bets before the game kicks off.

It has been argued that live betting does in fact give betters a significant advantage of the ‘normal’ landscape betting. In this scenario, the bettors are given the opportunity to see the early parts of the game develop before actually placing any bets. Therefore, sports admirers who greatly value their money, would probably prefer to see the start of the game before trying to predict any of the outcomes.

Additionally, live betting functions more or less like traditional betting in terms of wages being placed and predicting a certain outcome. However, in live betting the odds do change as the game progresses. These changes are most often influenced by the time remaining on the clock, the number of goals (points) scored, cards (fouls) given out or any other relative circumstance that has a direct effect on the outcome of the game. Most importantly, when you place your wager, you will get a fixed odd at that certain time, and so all you winnings will be calculated based on that odd (no matter what the most recent odd was displayed).

Live betting also introduces some new aspects to betting selections that were not previously possible in any other type of betting. This includes betting on; next team to score, goal scorers, the exact time of the next goal, who concedes the next corner... 

As mentioned above, bookmakers constantly make changes to odds during the course of the match. For example, you may find out that the odds at the start of the football game are; 4.00: 3.05: 2.50, meaning that the away team is more likely to get a win. However, if the home team scores first, the chances of winning for the away team will significantly reduce. In that moment, the odds will be altered to something like; 2.50: 2.90: 3.05. 

Therefore, it is critical that those betting are aware of the match statistics as they are the ones that alter the outcome as well as betting odds.

Live betting is most often conducted online (although it is very different to conventional online betting), but it can also be done in person sitting in a casino.  

Of course, all this sounds great but live betting has both advantages and disadvantages that have to be closely looked at before engaging yourself into live betting.

Main Advantages of live betting:

Additional types of bets:

Live betting obviously gives you more variety of possible outcomes, which you may try to predict, in the process of watching the game. In some scenarios you can bet on almost anything, such as the time of the next goal. This gives bettors a great feel of excitement as they wait for the certain minute to arrive. Also, placing wages on such predictions will include higher odds, giving all bettors more opportunity to earn a greater profit.

When numbers fail you:

Not all the games will follow a specific set norm. For example, a football team may be a goal down but they are constantly wearing out their opposition waiting for the right opportunity to attack and potentially turn the game on it’s head. In simple words, sometimes in live betting the bettors can substitute mathematics and patterns with a crafty observation. Thus, in live betting a sharp eye of a bettor can succeed where mathematical models, patterns and carefully calculated algorithms fail.

A chance to turn things around:   

It happens to almost everyone to place a bet at the start of the game and (an hour later) leave themselves wondering of what could have been. Live betting allows anyone to amend their mistakes and get back on track. Obviously, if the team we bet on is losing badly, we are not going to gain much profit if we just bet on the other side. Nonetheless, live betting does offer us the opportunity to make certain changes during the game in order to try and make mistakes less painful.

Main Disadvantages of live betting

No sufficient time to analyse and make a plan:

In live betting you need to make quick decisions, which does not give you much time to do the maths and analyse much. Simply, the best thing to do is to forget about conventional analysing of statistics and just make bold and quick decisions, hoping they will not come to bite you.

Constant changes in strategy:

Sometimes in live betting it is the best not to have a strategy. This is because in live betting you mostly only focus on small aspects and ever changing bets. Hence, there is not much place for any specific strategies.

Interesting examples and case scenarios

Live betting in football has many aspects to it. One of the most interesting examples of bets to make is on corner kicks. In this case, it is the best to get the overall feel for the game before placing any bets.

Thus it would be the best to bet on many corner kicks if you see that one team has huge superiority over the other and is just constantly attacking. With constant attacks, the corner count will surely be rising.

Similarly, you may try to predict the number of bookings given out during a football game. For this scenario it is the best to watch out for the referee’s habits - whether they are tolerant of more aggressive play or not. In this way you are more likely to place a better prediction for the total number of cards given out. 

Another interesting scenario occurs during live betting in basketball. For example, in the NBA a +10 point lead is mostly considered as inconsequential as the scores in basketball games change very rapidly. This is the reason why most people advise not to bet on teams that have a small advantage (such as +10) but bet on favourites when they are losing by a small margin.

In this way the bets will be favouring with greater success rate.