Hurling can be a fairly tough sport to bet on due to how competitive it can be. The games are often free flowing and are high scoring, not too dissimilar to that of Rugby or American Football. But, there are many professional bettors that actually target Hurling as a great sport to bet on, due to many discrepancies in the market, often lead by bookmakers who don’t have a massive amount of knowledge on the sport, especially when comparing it to the likes of soccer.
As with all sports, you need to be as prepared as possible before you start betting on Hurling. If you’re outside of Ireland, then there will be a good chance that you know little to nothing about Hurling, due to the fact that there aren’t that many countries that play the sport or even cover it.
One thing that we will state straight away is that you are going to need to be willing to put the time in to get the most out of betting on the sport. You will need to conduct a fair amount of research and this includes people who are dedicated to Hurling. What this article should show you is the ability to make more informed betting decisions, and, for those of you who are already Hurling fans, then we would think that there should be something for you to at least consider before placing your next bet.
Form
This may seem like the most obvious place to start when betting, but you’d be surprised to see how many punters overlook simply looking at recent form of both teams before placing bets. It becomes a little trickier with GAA Hurling than most sports due to the fact that they play so many knockout games, but for the League games it definitely will apply.
What we would suggest is that you start by taking into account the past 3-5 games for each team and basically just seeing if they have won or lost. The next motion would then be to dig a little deeper and see how they performed in that game. There are dozens of sites that will include match reports for these games, so even if you don’t watch it live, it shouldn’t take too long. Try to stay away from associated sites to those teams though, as they can be a little biased at times.
You need to determine three key points for game:
- The result and the score line or margin of victory
- Team line up compared with the line up for your bet
- Potential markets that could suit the upcoming game based on previous performances
POTENTIAL MARKETS
This section follows on from point 3, above. It’s very easy to get caught up in trying to find a good bet in the match result market. For many punters, it might be all that they look at, but if this is the case, then you are seriously missing out on loads of potential value from each game.
The easiest way to come up with new bets and seek out that value is to try and predict the full time score. We realise that this is much tougher with Hurling than it is for, say soccer, due to the number of points that are involved. But, using your research you still should be able to form a good understanding for the position that teams might finish after each match.
Example:
Once the score is established you can then move on to try and find the best bets for that match. For example, let’s say you are looking at an upcoming match between Cork and Dublin. You know from your research that Cork look to be the strongest team out of the two and in reality should win the game quite comfortably. But, as you look at the odds for that match you see that they are priced at odds of 1.20 to win, offering very little value for most punters.
But, you determine that whilst Cork should win, you think it might be a little closer than most suggest. So, you may want to target the winning margin where bets such as a Cork to win by 1-3 or Cork to win by 4-6 points are both priced at 4.00. It’s a much better return on your money and also fits in with your initial research.
VALUE BETTING
Value betting is the most important part of any betting strategy. It can also be the most dangerous as to find value you need to essentially form and opinion on the outcome of that game. It’s not always going to be spot on, but it’s an essential part to that bet type.
A value bet has to essentially be a time when you disagree to what the bookmaker has already priced up. It’s when you think that a team has a better chance of winning that bet than the odds that the bookmaker are offering.
Example:
For example, let’s stick with the Cork v Dublin game and look a little closer at Cork to win priced at 1.20. This price is essentially saying that Cork will only not win this game 1 out of every 5 games that are played. Fair enough, but you decide based on your research that Cork are a much stronger team than Dublin and they will actually only not win this fixture once every 10 times. So, in your opinion the true odds would be 1.10, which in turn means that the 1.20 is obviously higher and offers up value.
To find value, you need to have the two points made previously (above) really well dialled in. You need to make sure that you are able to form opinions based on fact and use the research that you’ve done for each game to leverage any value that you have found.