There is a huge difference between sports betting and other forms of gambling: predictability. While there is no way to be 100% sure how a football match or another event will end, it’s possible to predict the outcome with a pretty good probability. Bookmakers do this every time: they have “oddsmakers” whose job is to predict the outcome of an event and to set the betting odds – hence their name. Professional oddsmakers work for non gamstop bookmakers around the world, and they agree quite often – this is why the odds at various bookies are so similar.
But you, too, can occasionally dabble in the art of predicting the outcome of sporting events by taking a look at the teams’ statistics and choosing the safest bets online bookmakers have to offer.
And if you wonder which those may be, read on.
Outright Winner and its Variants
Team sports can have three possible outcomes: the home team wins, the away team wins, and neither – when it’s a draw. Bookmakers mark these options with “1”, “2”, and “X”. Mathematically, the chance of either of them is 33.3% – in real life, in turn, there’s always a team that’s more likely to win, and one that’s less likely to be successful. 
“1X2” bets are pretty safe, but not the safest of them all. Instead, if you want to choose a bet that’s even more likely to win, you should go with one of the two options below:
Double Chance
“Double chance” bets allow you to bet on not one but two possible outcomes at once. There are three possible double-chance bets:
● 1X – the home team wins or there’s a draw
● X2 – there’s a draw or the away team wins
● 12 – either the home team or the away team wins
“12” is the safest of the three in most cases, especially when the teams are not evenly matched. But “1X” and “X2” are also pretty safe choices – when you keep in mind which of the teams is the favourite.
Draw no Bet
This is another pretty safe bet that doesn’t increase your chances of winning – but it decreases your chances of not losing. You see, the DNB option takes the draw out of the game.
With “Draw no bet” you can bet on two of the three possible outcomes: the victory of either the home team or the away team. But in this case, if the match ends in a draw, you don’t lose your bet – you will simply get your money back.
Bookmakers have countless options available for each event you can bet on, some safer, others almost as risky as games of chance. The safest bet is, in turn, to know what you are doing – and to always bet responsibly.
