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Pre-Season Skill Retention Strategy for Sports Betting
The pre-season lull is a great time to rest, reset, and recuperate after months of intense sports betting activity. However, like football’s finest, you can’t be inactive for too long. Staying sharp between seasons helps you get ahead of the curve. Here’s how I hone my football betting skills before the season starts.
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Pre-Season Skill Retention Strategy
The Theory Behind Pre-Season S
Skill Retention
Before I tell you what to bet on during the close season, it’s important to outline why you need to stay active. The obvious reason is skill retention. You might not forget how to analyse sports betting markets during a break, but you’ll almost certainly lose your edge.
Football is a fast-moving sport. There’s always something happening, which means the game can pass you by if you’re on the sidelines for too long. In addition to staying on the ball when it comes to transfer rumours, injuries, and pre-season form, skill retention puts you ahead of other bettors.
Football and Premier League betting odds change for a variety of reasons, one of which is wagering activity (aka market liquidity). If a lot of people start betting on a particular outcome, the odds shorten. So, if you’re able to spot a potentially profitable bet before this happens, you’ll get better odds than those who are late to the party.
My Skill Retention Strategy for Pre-Season Football Betting
Staying sharp gives you an edge over other bettors because you can get in when there’s plenty of market liquidity and the odds are generous. That’s the theory, now here’s what I do to stay ahead of the game:
Information Gathering and Analysis
The most important thing you can do during the offseason is collect as much data as possible. From transfer rumours to pre-season match reports, you should consume as much news as possible.
In fact, it’s the perfect time to gather information because there aren’t any matches to bet on. This means you’ve got an opportunity to analyse things without the pressure of needing to act before the betting markets change.
In-depth analysis during the offseason not only gives you a foundation to work from when games resume, but it also hones your skills. The more often you analyse information from news outlets, stats databases, and social media, the easier it becomes. Then, once the season starts, you’ll be able to perform in-depth analysis quickly and effectively.
Virtual Sports Betting
Dozens of top-rated UK online casinos have a section of their games lobby dedicated to virtual sports. For example, if you open the “Virtuals” lobby at Best Odds Casino, you’ll find 30 virtual sports games, including Football Streak Brazil and Penalty Shootout.
Virtual sports use the same underlying technology as online slots and table games. That technology is called a random number generator (RNG). RNGs use complex mathematical formulas to generate random values.
These random values determine the outcome of virtual events. The software then creates a virtual game around the pre-determined result. As the player, you get to bet on the outcome and watch the match play out.
These games are useful because they allow you to review statistics in between games. Analysing those statistics gives you a chance to make informed decisions. Now, I should clarify that the RNG takes these statistics into account.
However, they don’t have as much bearing on the result as they might in real life. That said, it’s still a useful exercise because it gets you used to analysing results before you place bets.
Simulated Reality (SRL)
Sports bettors who don’t take advantage of modern technology are already seriously hurting their ability to make +EV decisions. That’s why my go-to tool right now is Simulated Reality (SRL) software.
SRL software is the next generation of virtual sports technology. Results are determined by RNGs backed by an artificial intelligence (AI) engine. The engine analyses 50,000+ real football matches to create hyper-real simulations.
This allows you to make pre-event and in-play bets on hundreds of different outcomes. Essentially, simulated reality software is as close as you can get to real sports betting. That’s why it’s become an invaluable tool in my arsenal and the arsenal of many other sports bettors.
Stay Sharp, Stay in the Game
Only the sharp survive when it comes to sports betting, which is why you shouldn’t let your skills slip. Even if you’re not betting on football, your mind should still be in the game. Do that, and you’ll be ready to hit the ground running when the first whistle of a new season blows.
Daniel Smyth is an experienced gambling content writer who’s been in the game for over 20 years. Initially a poker player and writer for WPT Poker Magazine, he eventually expanded his repertoire to include all forms of gambling. Today, he’s produced thousands of articles on sports betting, casino gaming, and poker for the industry’s biggest outlets, including talkSPORT, Gambling.com, and PokerScout. His favourite sports are boxing and MMA.