Studying the Most Popular Football Betting Strategies and How to Use Them

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By Jonathan Lewis | 24th Nov 2022

Punters get into sports betting for different reasons. Though it is recommended all over not to do so, some try to chase down a big payout. While others are happy to plod along picking odds-on home favourites. That’s one of the great things about sports betting,the variety.

Whatever your betting preference is, the football wagers you strike are best done at the best UK online football betting sites. Look for bookmaker reviews, frequently asked questions and reports by actual users about what a particular bookie is like.

But what is the best approach to football betting? Are betting strategies the best way to go?

What Strategies Shouldn’t Be?

First and foremost, betting strategies shouldn’t be seen as the answer to all your betting prayers. There are hugely famous ones out there like Martingale and Fibonacci. The latter is a system where you stake the total outlay of the last two losing bets for the next bet.

But that’s the issue with systems like that, you have to keep placing greater stakes to try and cover losses. If you don’t have deep pockets, then it’s not going to work out. You can’t go into a situation where a potential losing streak is going to leave you in a massive hole.

A lot of the famous strategies, like The Fibonacci, the Paroli and the Martingale, were all formulated for casino games. Something like roulette has almost a 50/50 chance of landing on black or red. So if you are going to convert these types of betting strategies, for instance, for football, it’s advisable to look for markets and picks that consistently land around that mark, like Both Teams To Score.

With that in mind, let’s look at some popular football betting strategies:

Best Football Betting Strategies

Negative Progression vs Positive Progression

There are two formats of progression betting strategies. These are a positive or a negative progression. A positive progression is where you double the unit of stake on the next bet after a win. After a winning bet, you reduce the unit of stake on the next bet.

This is seen as a softer approach because you are only risking more after a win, unlike the negative progression system, where you are chasing losses. A negative progression system doubles the unit of stake on the next bet after a loss. Only after a win, do you decrease the unit of stake.

The Double Chance

The Double Chance market is often underused, but it can be a great option for home underdogs. For example, for Crystal Palace vs Tottenham, then you could go Crystal Palace – Draw Double Chance.

So if Palace won, or the game ended in a draw, the bet is paid out. Because there are two outcomes rolled into one, it’s not going to be as profitable as just boldly picking a match outright. But it’s a nice risk-averse option. A good opportunity to bring this into live betting also exists. You could back the favourite in an away win then wait for in-play and back the Double Chance at a bigger value.

Matched Betting

Get creative with bookmaker welcome bonus offers. Those incentives can help you put together a Matched Bet scenario. What is that? It’s when you place a real money stake on, for example, a home win in a Champions League match.

Then you go and open an account at a different bookmaker. You collect a free bet through their welcome offer and you use that free bet stake on something like a Double Chance to cover the other two outcomes in the match. So whatever the outcome of the match now, you have it all covered.

Value Bets

These are not the easiest to always find, but a bit of time and research can make value bets worthwhile. Any odds that you see listed by a bookmaker are based on the implied probability of that outcome happening.

6/4 odds for example is an implied probability of 40% of that outcome winning. As an example of value bets, you are looking for situations where you see a bookmaker has given a 3/1 (25% implied probability) quote on an outcome.

But you think that outcome has more like a 30% chance of happening based on your stats. So you would have expected to see something like 9/4 instead. The fact that you can back that selection at a much bigger 3/1 makes it a value bet.

In-Play Strategy

There are so many different in-play strategies that can be put into action. Laying The Draw or going Over 1.5 Goals under the right conditions, are popular strategies. Using in-play markets, particularly at betting exchanges gives you so many options. You can look for the right moment to take the most value by opposing pre-match bets.

Why Use a Betting Strategy?

A sports betting strategy is a good thing to implement into your day-to-day betting. It’s a plan to help keep you on track. A betting strategy should be personal. It should be based on your research, markets and odds that you know well. Taking time to read statistics, to understanding odds value and being patient is a far better approach than throwing money at outlandish accumulators.