Famous Horse Racing Betting Strategies

Many punters choose to opt for a more strategic approach to betting on horses in order to try and seek out the best value in the market. There are a number of widely recognised betting systems that can, if used properly, can increase your expected value. Here are some of the most well-known, well tested horse racing strategies listed below.

Dutching

Dutching is a popular betting system that basically ensures that when you wager on a certain number of horses you make the same amount of money irrespective of which horse actually wins. It does involve a fair bit of maths; however, it can be extremely useful if you have a set amount you wish to stake and you want to back more than one selection. For the system to be effective you need to first decide how much you’re willing to bet, and then work out how you can split your stake so that you guarantee a profit however the race pans out.

Dutching Formula

Say, for instance, you see two selections with odds prices of 9/1 and 4/1 and you’re prepared to wager £15.

Say for instance you see two horses with odds prices of 9/1 and 4/1 and you’re prepared to wager £15. The temptation would be to split this bet 50-50 so that you wager £7.50 on horse A and £7.50 on horse B. However, with the dutching strategy as shown above, you can work out how exactly how much you need to stake to cover both outcomes and ensure the same profit.

Laying the Favourite

Laying the favourite is when you bet against the favourite to win a race in a betting exchange. It is a strategy that at first instance appears to go against the very basic principles of gambling, but if used properly, can ensure profits over time. Gambling statistics show that only 1/3 of favourites actually end up winning a race. This means that on average, favourites are more likely to lose a race than they are to win. You need to think, in betting exchanges a horse is only perceived as the favourite because it has the most amount of money behind it, not necessarily because it has the best chance of winIBAS

• For this strategy to work you need to firstly only consider laying a favourite that’s trading at 3/1 or below; any more than this and the damage to your bank roll if the selection actually does end up winning will be felt.
• Secondly, you need to really need to have your handicapping techniques down to a tee to really be able to identify the weak favourites in a race. As a starting point, you can refer to points 2-9 in the handicapping section of our horse racing betting guide. There are however a number of other factors that should be considered, such as whether or not the horse is running in a national hunt race for the first time, if it’s carrying any excess weight, or whether or not it’s wearing blinkers/headgear for the first time. Take your time, dissect the favourites’ form guide and apply your handicapping techniques. If you’re pretty certain that there’s another horse in the race that can beat it and the odds are looking short there’s a good chance it makes for a good lay bet.
• Third, you need to know when not to lay the favourite. To stay on the safe side, we generally say that you should stick to the top racing classes, i.e. Group 1 Grade 1 races. Why? Firstly, because bookmakers tend to offer more in-depth form records of the competitors in the higher tier races, which makes it easier to sport a weak favourite. And second because the exchanges on top tier races tend to have more first time, inexperienced punters who are more inclined to bet on the favourite, and thus bring the prices down. If you’d like to learn more about betting exchanges, head over to the exchange betting info section on the main sports betting page.

Value Betting

Value betting is a more general betting strategy that does not apply exclusively to horse racing, but is nonetheless important for maximising profits over time. It is, essentially, when you look to see if a selection has been under priced i.e. has a higher chance of winning than the bookmaker has suggested with its odds price offering, and taking advantage. Say, for instance, you have your eye on a selection that has been given an odds price of 3/1, but according to your own research you think it has a higher chance of winning, maybe 20% (4/1), then you may have identified a slight oversight in the bookmaker’s calculations and spotted a good value bet. Before you get to this stage however, it is first important to bear in mind that spotting a value bet and knowing how to apply it properly requires significant experience and know-how. At the very minimum, you will have to have perfected your handicapping practices (some of which can be found in the “developing your own handicapping method section” of our horse racing betting guide), which will involve a thorough run-down of past statistics and form, and you will have to make sure that your calculations support your initial hunch. Lucky for you, we’ve gone ahead laid out everything you need to correctly calculate a value bet. A complete breakdown of value betting, along with the proper mathematical formula can be found over on the football page – don’t worry, the same principles apply to horse-racing betting.

Keep Your Finances in Order

Horse racing betting tips, strategies and guidelines aside, perhaps the most important method to success when betting on horses is properly managing your finances. Poor budgeting will mean that you stand a greater chance of going bust pretty quickly and losing money that you simply can’t afford to lose. On the flip side, proper management of your finances can go a long way to keeping your head above water and ensuring steady profits over time. See some of our tips listed down below:

Budget

Make sure that you put aside a set amount of money each week or month for betting. This should be extra funds that you would normally use for leisure activities. This will help prevent you eating into your every day funds and spending money that you can’t afford to lose whilst also helping to make sure that you don’t go bust through lack of proper planning – your funds with go a lot further if you take the time to budget properly.

Choose Your Races Carefully

Don’t ever feel as though you are obliged to bet on a race. If you’ve gone through your handicapping process and you aren’t able to separate the challengers from the weak then it may be an idea to pass on race. Trying to manipulate betting systems or applying elaborate strategies that you don’t quite understand just to win a small sum of money is not an advisable approach. If you’re have serious doubts, simply refrain.

Don’t Chase Your Losses

Never place a bet to try and make up for a loss. Betting on horses comes with a risk; sometimes the risk pays off, sometimes it doesn’t. However, you should never try to win back money you’ve lost by placing a number of bets to try and compensate. Sometimes losing a bet can hurt; the proper way to react is to take a step back, think where you went wrong, gain some perspective and go again when the time is right.

Develop Your Own Strategy

All in all, we hope that you’ve now gained a deeper insight into some of the more famous horse racing betting strategies out there, and for the more experienced punters out there, we hope that you feel more confident using them. The important thing to bear in mind is that different strategies work for everyone: there is no perfect strategy. Take your time, build up your experience first, and then once you feel as though you’re ready and you have a more sizeable bankroll, start experimenting with some of the different strategies we’ve mentioned above. After a while you’ll start to get a feel for which strategies work better for you.

How to Prevent Emotions Getting in the Way When Betting

How to Prevent Emotions Getting in the Way When Betting

We have all been there. It’s the 96th minute of a match and the team you backed are winning by a single goal. You’re praying for the referee to blow his whistle to signal full time, whilst simultaneously counting your winnings.

Then, just as you think you’re in the money, the opposition team break. You scream and shout at your TV, phone, or computer as the ball gets crossed into the box and then the hope and certainty of winning disappear as the ball hits the back of the net. The scores are level and there’s a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach.

You go through several stages of emotion. First, you try to convince yourself the team you backed can find a winner in the few seconds that remain. Then, you question why you didn’t cash-out for 65% of the winnings with a minute or two left. After that, you blame the referee for not blowing his whistle earlier or for not giving the penalty that would have made the score 2-0. As the anger boils up inside you, you have a choice to make.

Do you just accept the loss, walk away and wait for another day or do you let the anger take control and bet on the next available match, which just so happens to be in the Greek second division between two teams you had never heard of until about thirty-seconds ago?

Well, the sensible gambler will walk away because they know that letting emotions take control of you is a sure-fire way of going broke.

Never bet when angry and never, ever, chase your losses. Your judgement will be blurred, you’re more likely to place bets you would never place when level-headed, and it is the beginning of an extremely slippery slope.

When will it end? Your first bet lost, then the Greek team you backed because they were favourites are 2-0 down inside ten-minutes. You are now even angrier and chasing more losses. A winner is needed, but betting on a favourite won’t get back the money you lost so you need to back an outsider.

That outsider loses and the vicious circle continues. You end up spending money you cannot afford to lose, you argue with friends and family who try to give you advice, and the anger you felt which made you make irrational decisions in the first place is solely directed at yourself.

The website www.whenthefunstops.co.uk gives great advice about “How to stay in control of your gambling,” and is well worth a look for anyone who feels their gambling is becoming a problem.

When gambling, you need to remain level-headed and rational. Study statistics, form, and keep up-to-date with the latest team news to decide which team has the best chance of winning.

Betting when angry isn’t the only way of letting emotions take over and affect the bets you place.

I, personally, never bet on matches involving the team I support. However, there are several people who back their favourite team to win every match and are left even more disappointed when they lose 4-0 away to the league leaders on a wet and windy Tuesday night.

Not only has the team you follow been beaten, you have also made the bookmakers a little bit richer by risking your hard-earned money because favouritism and hopefulness said you would win. The rational, statistics-led, you would never have backed your team, who are on a poor run of form, to win against a team who are on a long unbeaten run.

You read stories every year about lucky punters winning by picking a horse for the Grand National because they like the name or the colours the jockey’s wearing.

Betting this way doesn’t work in football. Yes, there are shocks and surprises. Teams at the bottom of the table do beat the high-fliers occasionally and there are cup upsets with teams three divisions below their opponents winning.

However, these surprises are few and far between and selecting which ones will happen every week is an almost impossible task.

When betting on football, you need to remain analytical and never let your emotions take over. Risking the odd few quid on an outsider isn’t going to break the bank, but letting your emotions control how you bet will almost certainly leave you penniless.

How to Read a Race Card

How to Read a Race Card

When betting on a horse race for the first time, making sense of the race card may seem like a bit of a daunting task. It is true that there is a lot of information displayed on the card, however it is all important information that’s there to help you make a more informed decision about where to lay your stake. Everything you need know about a race, such as the number of competitors, the past form of the runners, the type of race, the odds prices and the condition of the track is all contained. It is therefore crucial that you familiarise yourself with the layout and the abbreviations so that you never miss an important piece of info.

The image above provides a complete explanation of exactly the kind of online race card you find at the majority of betting sites in the UK. The race card should be the starting point in your decision-making process when you’re thinking about laying down some money on a race. After you’ve had a good look through the card you can start conducting your own independent research and utilising other tools that may assist you with the handicapping process. The best way to bet on horse racing, however, is always to start with a thorough read of the race card so that you familiarise yourself with all the specific details of the race and the competitors.

Another thing to bear in mind is that many betting sites feature additional interactive tools above the card. As well as in-depth form checkers where you can see how well the competitors have performed in their last outings, some bookies include links to external pages where you can read extra info on the horse’s trainers, gain a deeper insight into the layout of the course, reviews stats centres and even view virtual race simulators that reflect the predictions of expert analysers. These extras features are just one of the advantages of placing horse racing bets online so be sure to take full advantage and use all the information at your disposal; learn more about the extra features offered by the top betting sites over on the main page.

Developing Your Own Handicapping Method

“How do I pick a winning horse?”: This is well and truly a million-dollar question to which there is no one definitive answer. There are a numerous horse racing betting tips and guidelines you can follow that can help you make more informed decisions, however, horse racing is, after all, a sport in which anything can happen and where plain old luck can often prove to be the most deciding factor. In the sections below we will be going over only the most essential handicapping methods, which can increase your chances of picking a winner. Our aim is not to give fool proof tips on how to make a fortune, but rather, provide some sound advice on how to discard noncontenders and decide which horse, or horses, really merit a wager. Note: these tips only apply for straight, win only wagers on a single horse.

• Try to avoid low level races as much as possible – especially if you’re a beginner. Horses of a lower-class can often be inconsistent and thus become a strain on your bank roll.
• As a general rule, try to narrow your choices down to a maximum of three horses – this only applies to races where you’re planning to wager on just one horse.
• Check and see at what level the prospective selection has been racing at. A horse may have won many of its previous races, however if it has just been bumped up to a higher class it may be out of its depth. To avoid this, you should always check to see if the horse has managed to show in its last three races at the same approximate distance and surface of the race in question – by approximate distance we mean no longer than a furlong.
• Check and see if the horse has proven the ability, or at least the potential to compete on a track similar the one in question. i.e. is the track right or left handed? Are they changes in the gradient?
• See if the horse has recorded a big win (a win by more than three lengths) in the last 6 months – the more recent the better.
• Check to see if the horse has had any significant gaps in its race history due to injury. Much like other sports, good form and consistency is important for horses. If the horses is just returning from a lengthy spell of absence (more than 6 months) it might be a little rusty.
• Always do some research on the jockey. A talented jockey can be the difference between a selection finishing somewhere near the middle or nearer the front. Check the jockey’s history; if he’s consistently managed to show then he may be able to turn a consistently middle ranking horse into a winner. Moreover, if you manage to find a horse-jockey pairing that has consistently managed to finish in the top three places in the last 12 months there’s a fair chance that they’d be a safe bet.
• Similarly, it pays to do a quick check of the trainer. See if the trainer of the horse you have in mind has managed to win a decent number of races in the past two months – by decent amount we generally mean more than 20%. Also, see if the trainer has had any success at track on which the race is taking place.
• Check to see if the horse has completed a good work out five or six days prior to the race. What is meant by a “good work out” will depend on the length of the race at hand, however somewhere around the half mile mark is a good indicator.
• Always check the odds prices of the competitors. The odds price of a given selection reflects the chances of the horse actually winning (according to the bookmaker’s research and calculations). If you find a selection that matches well with points 2-9, the chances are it will have short odds, but there are times when selections are under priced. Scan the race day program and use our handicapping guide to see if you can sport any contenders that have slip under the radar. Or you can always just play it safe and opt for a selection with a short price.

How to Bet on Football and Win

Betting on football can be an extremely frustrating, and costly, pastime with many people wondering how to bet on football and win.

Whilst there are success stories of punters who won thousands from a 50p stake, most punters know the sinking feeling of a last-minute goal ruining their accumulator or the team at the bottom of the table picking up a surprise victory over the defending champions.

Some people continue to place the same type of bet week after week, with the hope that one day their ship will come in.

However, to win at football, punters must follow a few certain rules.

Research Before Betting

Rule number one of football betting is that the punter must gather as much information as possible before placing a bet.

Study statistics, recent form, head to head information, and team news to give you as much of an advantage as you can have. Knowing all of this will help you take an analytical approach and work out which outcome is most likely.

For example, the second-placed team in the league are playing a team in the relegation zone in midweek. The higher team would be priced as a heavy favourite but there may be factors to take note of before betting.

Although most people would take the league positions as a good indicator of who will win, what if the second-placed team have an all-important match with the leaders at the weekend?

There are chances they will rest players against the lesser team, to keep them fit for the bigger challenge. They may also take the midweek match lighter than usual thinking they already have the victory.

But, taking a match lightly against a relegation threatened side who also need the points can be a dangerous tactic.

Also, what if the so-called bigger team have failed to win in their last three matches against the team in the relegation zone? What if the last five head to head meetings have all been draws? What if the team in the relegation zone have hit a purple patch of form and won their last few games?

These factors can play a huge part in determining the outcome of a match. The favourites may not look such a banker now, with the chance of a draw or even a surprise victory for the underdog being much higher.

This is one of the many reasons why we provide team news to our members.

Remain Analytical

Betting on impulse, betting with your heart, letting your emotions take over, and betting solely based on the betting odds are all sure-fire ways of losing money.

Impulse betting is where a punter places a bet on whichever matches are available, regardless of their knowledge of the teams involved. It’s something which many online punters will do, and their win percentages from this type of betting will probably be extremely low.

Betting with your heart means backing your own team to win, or favourite player to score first, regardless of the opposition or form of the player. Whilst some punters may get lucky and win often if they support a big team, those who support a team struggling against relegation every year will lose more than they win.

Letting your emotions take over is a big no-no when it comes to betting. This is usually described as chasing your losses, when you are angry and frustrated after a bet fails to win. You then place more money on another bet you believe to be a banker, to try and regain the money you lost before. This is a slippery slope and could quickly lead to a bank balance of zero.

Betting based solely on the odds is another thing punters should never do. Whilst short odds favourites obviously have the best chance of being victorious, there may be mitigating factors which could weaken that chance.

Remain analytical and do not bet on a match unless you have gathered as much information as possible.

Profit is Profit no Matter How Small

Some punters look for the big, life-changing, win every week. They place a few pounds on bets which could return thousands, with the chances of these bets coming in being small.

Those few pounds every week may be small to start with, but done every week for several years will mount up to a lot of lost money.

Punters should always be looking to make a profit, even if it’s only a few pounds.

Would you rather place £10 on a single bet which returns a £12 profit, but has a 92% chance of winning, or place two £5 bets on sixteen-team accumulators which return £10,000 each, with a 1% chance of coming in?

Some people will say the second, but sensible punters will know that £12 profit every time soon adds up.

For more information on this you might like our post on focusing on losing less often.

There’s a big chance you have sat in a pub, or café, and overheard a conversation about how close someone came to winning £26,000 on Saturday or how one team let them down for £500. You never hear the punters who were £5 up talking about their win, although they are the more successful punter.

The best advice we can give when gambling is, your first thought should be how best you can avoid losing rather than how much you will win if your bet comes in.

Look for a small profit, which will help to boost your betting bank and may ultimately lead to a big life-changing profit over time.

Keep a Betting Record

Keeping note of your wins and losses can help you see how much money you’re throwing away, and can help you change the way you gamble.

In this record, write down the type of bet you placed, the stake, the potential return, and how much profit or loss you made from it. Also add any notes which will help you moving forward, such as which team(s) let you down.

At the end of a set period, such as every week, fortnight, or month, you should tally up your results to give you an overall profit or loss.

If you are suffering constant losses betting on accumulators with the promise of a big return, maybe change the way you bet for the next period. Consider backing less teams in an accumulator or placing single/doubles/trebles bets which return a small profit.

You can then see if your overall profit has gone up.

If you regularly see a + amount in the profit/loss section, it will be a big eye-opener that the way you were previously betting was wrong and you should stick to your new approach.

Remember, You Will Not Win Every Time

If there was a fool-proof way of winning on football every time, bookies would go out of business and football betting would cease to exist.

However, there is no fool-proof way because football is unpredictable and shocks happen. The favourite doesn’t always win, everybody has off days, and punters will often be out of pocket. There are no 100% guarantees in football betting.

In those times, you must remember to have fun, stay analytical, and follow our advice to give you the best chance of making a profit.

HALF-TIME FULL-TIME BETTING STRATEGY

Halftime/Full time betting is one of the most lucrative ways you can earn money by betting. This type of betting requires you to recognize those games and play a combination of outcomes at both half time and full time. To gain control of this betting could mean big winnings for you, because the research for this is pretty much available online and you can easily profit from it.

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There are several options you can choose when deciding to bet like this. One of the most used bets is of course 1/1, which means the host will win both halves (in this case the halves are not viewed independently from another, so a 1-0 result is a winning one). This can come in great use, when a clear favorite is present in the game. The favorite will most likely break the deadlock at the beginning and then hold on to the lead, or maybe score more goals. The same strategy applies if the favorite is a guest, but this time you write in 2/2.

In a game that will hold out to a draw at end of both halves, X/X is your bet. This might be the hardest bet out there, since it is already hard enough as it is to predict a draw, so predicting two halves is tricky. Besides, the odds on this bet are not high enough for the risk, so beware.

Most lucrative offer in halftime/full time bets is certainly the 1 / 2 bets or 2/1 bets. This means the game will go to a complete turnaround and that the leading team at halftime will eventually lose his lead in favor of the guest team or opposite. This bet usually gives very big odds and sometimes can go upwards of 25/1 in favor. To find these bets is extremely hard, so you must dig deep into statistics to find a chance that some match will offer this bet at the end.

What also carries little risk, but can give you money is the combination of a draw at halftime, but a win at the second half. This can be advised to matches, where there is a favorite, but they are cautious and might not open in the first half. Knockout tournaments are a good example for this betting, as some times just decide to wait until the second half to react.

Half/time full time bets can be lucrative for bettors, but finding the right one can be very hard. The most used bet is definitely the 1/1 or 2/2 combination, because a favorite will very rarely leave it open after the first 90 minutes.

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Beginners Guide to Football Betting

This is a beginners guide to football betting, written by a beginner!

You might not know this about me, but whilst Ian is a football betting expert with a long history of placing football bets, I am not! I know the web and how to make things on it, but I don’t know a lot about football.

I do love this site though, so I wanted to learn more about football betting so that I can better contribute to the conversations on it. I have been researching things for some time and thought I would write them up as a guide to football betting.

You might wonder why I didn’t ask Ian to write this guide, him being the expert, the truth is I thought it would be better coming from someone picking up the ropes. Ian knows so much he might assume you know something you don’t, I don’t know anything so that can’t happen!

Something that you might benefit from is our free tipster email course. It is a free email course that takes 7 days to complete and by the end of it you should be a bit of an expert!

Some Football Betting Terms

I figured I would start off with some football betting terms.

• Stake – This is the amount of money you place on a bet, in other words the amount of money you stand to lose if you don’t win.
• Accumulator – A football accumulator is a series of single bets grouped together, if each of the bets comes off then the odds accumulate together. Normally when you hear of people putting a fiver on something and winning a couple of thousand it is because of accumulators. Because each bet needs to win though they can be risky.
• Handicap – This is a bet that is offered when one team is the clear favourite – Think Brazil vs your local old boys team! The handicap gives a small advantage to the underdog. For example, there may be a one goal head start given to the underdog. I am going to explain Handicapping more later in this article.
• Half Time/Full Time – This type of bet is split into two, when you predict the winner of the first half then of the entire game. So you could predict a draw at half time but for the home team to win by full time.
• Banker – This is basically the closet thing to a certainty as you can get, the tipster is very sure that the bet will land if they consider it a banker. For example we give banker tips to our members.
• Scorecast – This is when you bet on a player to score the first goal along with predicting the correct score.
• Wincast – Very similar to a scorecast but you bet on a player to score and then predict the winner of the game.
• 90 Minute Betting – This is mentioned a lot when people bet on individual players (maybe as goal scorers) normally if the player doesn’t make an appearance the bet is called off, but if the player appears during the normal 90 minutes of the game they are eligible for the bet.
• 24 Hour Rule – Most betting websites have a rule like this where if a match is postponed the bet only becomes void if the match doesn’t get played within a 24 hour period. So for example if a match was just put back 2 hours the bet would still stand.
• Over/Under – Overs and Unders are when you bet on the amount of goals being scored, normally it will be over or under an amount, for example over 2.5 means if there are 3 or more goals. Under 2.5 would be 0, 1, or 2 goals being scored.
• DNB – This stands for Draw No Bet. What this means is if the score is a draw you get your money back for your bet. This can be seen as a safer option but you should understand that the odds are usually lower when this is selected.
• Double Chance – A Double Chance bet is one where you pick a winner and if they win OR it is a draw, you win the bet. If the team you pick loses then you lose the bet. Like DNB the odds are generally lower but it is a safer bet as a result.
• Bankroll – how much money you have to bet with. We’ve written more about what the bankroll is.

Handicaps

Handicaps are something that confused the heck out of me for the longest time, so I want to spend a while looking at them in detail. This is such a common question that I have written up a guide to the Asian and European handicapping.

Accumulators Vs Singles

These are the two most common way to place bets these days so I wanted to cover them in a little detail. We don’t hide that fact that Ian prefers singles but that doesn’t help you if you don’t know the main differences.

When you bet with an accumulator, all your bets need to win in order for you to be able to claim the money. This makes it much harder to win but of course the reward is far greater. As a new football bettor it is very tempting to bet on accumulators because you could see your £10 stake spiral into big bucks pretty quick.

Singles on the other hand are not effected by other bets. So if I place £10 on three different matches as singles and 2 of them come in, then I make money on those two bets. The odds aren’t as good if I was to role up all my bets into an accumulator, but the odds of me walking away with some money are much higher.

The main advice here is to find what it right for you. Just because some people swear by accumulators and others swear by singles doesn’t mean you should listen to the loudest voice. Do some research, maybe put some small stakes on a few different ways and see what felt good and what had a good return on your investment.

Getting your way with the bookies

Something you will encounter when you start football betting is a range of different online and offline bookmakers. All will have their own way of dealing with things and all will want you to work with them differently. This can seem daunting but we’ve written up a guide on what to look out for and how to state your case if you think a bookmaker has wronged you.

Generally accepted good tips

A guide to football betting wouldn’t be complete without sharing some good tips! Here are some generally accepted good tips that I have gleaned from my research and also from interviewing football tipsters!

Don’t bet with your heart, bet with your head

This means don’t bet because you want a team to win, bet because you think they will win!

Likewise don’t bet against teams you don’t like just because you don’t like them, bet against them because you think they are going to lose.

Try not to get greedy

There are two things I have caught myself doing related to being greedy, the first is adding extra teams into an accumulator just because it will bump up my maximum payout. This is almost always a terrible idea!

The second thing I have done is bet more money on a team than I initially was going to. You should have a plan for how much you are going to bet and stick to it.

Have patience

You are not going to win every bet, if you want to become successful at betting on football you need to be patient and pick the right bets for you.

Never bet more than you can afford to lose

Before I place a bet I always think about the money I am going to be placing on it and think, if I were to lose this money right now would I be OK with that. If the answer is no I won’t place the bet.

Seek help if football betting is becoming a problem

If you think gambling might be becoming a problem for you then my advice is to seek help. GambleAware might be worth a visit!

Don’t bet on friendlies

They are too unpredictable, you don’t know how much effort the respective teams are putting in and reserve players may get an outing that you weren’t counting on.

If the friendlies are before the start of a new season (they often are) players will be very aware to not pick up any injuries so might not play as hard as they normally do.

Know Team Motivation

What I mean by this is that two teams can look a certain way on paper, but if one of those teams has already won the league and the other is fighting to stay in the league there is a very good chance that the team good on paper will be on auto pilot whilst the team playing to stay out of relegation is going to be fighting for their life!