Cricket

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With a huge following on the Indian subcontinent, across southeast Asia, Australia and in England, cricket is one of those strange sports that is huge in countries that separate each other by several thousand miles, but is barely heard of in any of the countries in between. This is the sport of choice in India and Pakistan, and it is one of the top three in England, yet all other countries in Europe want nothing to do with it. With the popularity of the recent Cricket World Cup, and of many big stories that have draw the world’s attention to the sport (such as the freak death of Philip Hughes, the Aussie batter who was hit in the neck by a ball and died on the spot) the world is beginning to take notice of this sport.

That includes sports fans in North America as well, because whilst this sport has never really mounted a challenge against the likes of basketball, football and hockey, it has gradually clawed its way into the periphery in the last few years. One of the reasons it is becoming more popular with Canadians and Americans is because this is a fantastic sport to gamble on. On BetFair, for instance, there are a huge number of markets offered for every game and every tournament, and if you know your stuff then you can beat the bookies and win a lot of money.

In this article we will attempt to help those amateur Canadian cricket fans out, discussing the best markets and the ways to get the most put of them. We will be using BetFair as a foundation, citing their markets and their systems, purely because this is the biggest sports book and betting exchange in Canada. If you have yet to sign up then go ahead and join the millions of worldwide gamblers that use this site everyday to find the best odds on the biggest variety of markets.

Outright Bets

As with all sports, the best ways to get the most value are by betting on the winners and placers of a tournament before that tournament begins. To use the recent 2015 Cricket World Cup as an example, prior to the tournament you could get odds of 13/8 for Australia to win it all. This is a fairly short price, but it looked much bigger to those who watched the tournament and saw the Aussies dominate from day one. The bookies realized that Australia were going to win it fairly early on, after which their price dropped, and if you got in at 13/8 it meant you would be offered the chance to cash-out and take a profit, or wait it out, hope they would see it through and then win even more.

The same goes for the West Indies, who you could have got for as much as 50/1 on BetFair before the tournament began, only for that price to drop drastically when they ran deep in the tournament. Of course, you would have needed to cash-out early in order to collect, which brings us to our next point and to something that all BetFair members need to exploit.

The Cash-out

Live Betting, also known as In-Play betting is fairly common these days, but BetFair were one of the first to introduce it and they still have one of the best in-play features.

For the uninitiated, In-Play betting allows you to place bets during the game, but it also allows you to “cash-out”  those bets and any bets that you made before the game. As an example, if we were to have bet on Australia in their Cricket World Cup Final match against New Zealand, we would have seen them bat a huge score and we would have seen their odds plummet as a result. At that point, as far as BetFair is concerned, our bet had all but won, so they would have offered us the chance to “cash-out” and collect our winnings before we actually won. Of course, you don’t win the same as you would if you let the bet play out, but rather you make up the difference. So if the odds are cut by half, you can make a 50% profit.

We have all had moments where a game is going our way and a bet is looking good, only to get a niggling feeling that it is going to go wrong. With In-Play betting and the cash-out option, you can turn that niggling feeling into a profit and you can even use some of the profit to bet against your initial bet. Cool, huh? More than you would believe, as this is how many experts make their millions on the BetFair system, exploring the changing odds and winning big without settling a single bet.

Accumulators

If In-Play betting sounds too complicated, then head for the BetFair sports book (not the exchange) and place some accumulators. Simply go through the list of games played on a given day or weekend, choose your winners in each of them, adding them to your bet slip, and then click the “Multiple” option when you have done. You need all games to go your way if you are to win anything, but depending on the individual odds of those games, and on how many games you have chosen, an accumulator can net you several thousand dollars from a bet of just a few dollars.

Other Bets

There are many more markets. The ones we mentioned above tend to be where the money is at, but they also require that you spend some time researching and that you stay tuned-in to the markets at all times. If you only have one game to bet on, then there are a number of markets that you can choose between. These include Top Batsman, where you select the batter who will score the most points; Method of 1st Dismissal, where you bet on how the first batter will be called out; Sixes, where you bet on how many sixes will be scored; and many more. Cricket games are long and slow, so many fans like to put many bets on across many markets — which is the best way.