Hedging in sports betting is a smart way to lock in a profit. Betting both sides of an outcome doesn't make sense, right? With the juice, you're going to lose some money. So, why do it? It actually can make a lot of sense if you're doing this with a hedge in mind.
Hedging is one of the most important elements to making a profit in sports betting. That makes the fact that the majority of the betting public does not use the tool that much more surprising. Hedging is quite simply an investment position intended to offset potential losses. Sometimes, it's to lock in a profit or improve potential gains. You're betting on both sides of something. That could be to protect yourself from a full loss or maybe to secure a small profit regardless of the outcome.
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The very best professional sports bettors do an excellent job of this, using betting tools like a hedge calculator, an arb calculators and more. If you've been wondering, how this sports betting strategy works, let's take a closer look to understand it.
Hedging Can Reduce Risk
Predicting the outcome in sports isn’t easy regardless of what anybody tells you . The best sports handicappers in the world still only win 55-60% of the time. Even then they have their droughts.
The concept of hedge betting involves placing bets on different outcomes subsequent to an original bet. The goal is to create a situation where there is a guaranteed profit regardless of event's outcome.
Circumstances are always changing in sports. The best bettors are those that are able to identify these changes and make the necessary adjustments. For example, let’s say the Los Angeles Chargers are favored to beat the Oakland Raiders at home by 3.5 points. And let's say you take them to cover the spread. Entering the third quarter, the Chargers are up by 14 points when star quarterback Justin Herbert gets injured. At this point, the in-game line will have been adjusted based on the score and the fact that Rivers is hurt.
Let’s pretend that the line at this point moves to Chargers -9.5 points. In this situation, you could hedge by taking the Raiders +9.5 points with the hope that the final score ends up in the middle.
The fact that you have locked in San Diego at -3.5 and Oakland at +9.5 means that there is no possible way to lose money. If the Chargers win by 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9 points then both wagers hit and you will win both bets. It’s a simple concept that isn’t applied nearly enough by the public but hedge betting does work.
Hedging With Futures
Another interesting approach to hedge betting is taking the winner of a tournament. Let’s use tennis as an example. Anybody that takes Novak Djokovic to win Wimbledon will get him at fairly short odds. In this example, we will use Djokovic at +400 to win Wimbledon. The strategy for hedge betting on a tournament winner is to follow their path to the later rounds and then decide when is best to cover your bases. In this case, we will wait until Djokovic plays a tough match in the semi-final in order to hedge our $100 bet. In the semi-final, we will put $75 on Djokovic’s opponent with a potential payout of $100. If Djokovic wins, then our $100 bet to win $400 on him winning the tournament is still in play. If Djokovic loses, then the $75 hedge bet we have made on his opponent will cover the $100 w lost betting on Djokovic to win the tournament.
Hedging In Anticipation Of Line Movement
A smart bettors tends to have an idea of where a line might go. For example, if the Dallas Cowboys open the week as a small favorite. They're a public team that many recreational bettors like to bet on. You could bet them at something like -1 and then assume the line is going to climb. If you're right, you can take the other side at +2 or +3 and have a small window to win both sides.
Hedging Is An Important Strategy To Employ
Hedge betting is a very popular tool among professional sports betting handicappers but it still isn’t used nearly enough by the betting public. These examples should help to change that with some insight in to why hedge betting can be a very effective tool that you might want to consider trying out sometime soon.
