You may think sports betting is simple: pick a winner, place a bet, win or lose money. But, in order to have a consistent return on investment, or ROI,  it’s imperative to take the time to research statistics, facts, and figures to give you an edge when placing your bet. Professional handicappers do exactly this. If you are just starting out in sports betting, looking to professional handicappers, like Big Al, will allow you to more quickly acquire the statistics needed to place smart bets and have a higher ROI. 

What is a Handicap?

This term gets thrown around a lot so it’s essential to understand what it means in order to apply it to the world of sport betting. 

A handicap is defined as the process of assigning advantage through scoring compensation, or other advantages given to different contestants, to equalize the chances of winning. 

To make this easier, think of golf; this sport includes a handicap which gives players a numerical value, either + or – , to allow players of different skill levels to play each other more fairly. This way a lesser skilled player can still compete against a master. 

In sports betting the same approach is taken. Consider a game in which one team is very obviously going to win. Let’s use an example from the NFL. The Patriots are playing the Cowboys and two starting players on the Cowboys are out due to injury. The Patriots were already statistically slated to win and now the odds are even more skewed in their favor. 

Choosing a more basic bet on who will win the game will not return a very high ROI unless you choose to bet on the underdogs, which doesn’t seem like a great idea once you’ve taken in the facts and figures. This is where a handicap bet, like a point spread bet, will come into play. 

For example a bet like this would appear as: –10 Patriots and + 10 Cowboys. The odds of this bet are much more equal than those on the bet on the game as a whole, thus increasing your likelihood for a ROI. However choosing which point spread bet, or other handicap bet, to make requires knowledge of the team statistics. This is where handicappers come into play.  

How Does Someone Become a Handicapper?

Handicapping is all about creating a sustainable strategy to use when placing your bets. When first starting out in sports betting you are usually swayed by team and/or player preference. A 

Sports betting handicappers take the time to do a deep dive into all the statistics of the sports they choose to bet on. Some are more general and work with statistics for multiple sports, working through multiple seasons. For example: NFL in the fall and winter, NHL through the winter, baseball in the spring, and tennis through the summer. Specialized handicappers will instead focus the statistics on only one or two sports. This allows them more time to accumulate knowledge and expertise in the sports they follow. 

As an amateur handicapper you are probably more of a generalist. Slowly as you acquire more information and find where you achieve the best ROI you may become more specialized. Basically, you are using your statistical analysis to form your own handicaps on specific games and then using that to compare to the handicap bets found on betting sites in order to place the bet you believe will have the best moneyline (ROI). 

Why Work with Professional Handicappers? 

Working with a professional handicapping service, like Big Al, can give you the much needed edge when placing bets without the long hours required to acquire statistical information on your own. Services like these publish sports picks and are sold by many handicapping services online. 

Make sure to choose a handicapping service you can trust that provides: 

• The bonafides of handicappers they publish, including noteworthy career achievements
• Sound and analytical reasoning
• Years in business as a professional handicapper
• Is honest in both their wins and their losses. No person wins every bet, honesty in betting is paramount. Someone who only publishes their winnings is a big red flag. 

Big Al’s sports picks checks all of these boxes plus some, making them the most trustworthy handicapping service in the game. 

• Big Al himself has been working as a professional handicapper since 1992
• He only works with other highly qualified professional handicappers and all their information is included to help you choose the best handicapper to work with
• Values honesty and is forthright on wins and losses

Allows you to develop your own handicapping skills while working with the best in the business and increasing your ROI handicapper, whether amateur or professional, will spend hours acquiring information necessary before placing a bet on the game. 

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