Betting Against the Public Explained

Betting against the public revolves around a simple betting strategy that seemingly allows wise bettors to exploit certain angles and record significant wins by betting against what seems to be the general opinion on an outcome.

Driven by the simplest of logic, Fading the Public – as it is also known – will see you place your wager on a team other than the one people are loading bets on. Psychology behind this strategy is based on a commonly accepted truth that public tends to back the bookies’ favourites, as human nature is believed to be rooted with innate proclivity towards winners.

Betting operators do not take human psychology lightly and will form their odds accordingly, shading and down-pricing the favourites in order to achieve profits themselves and avoid losing big money.

Bookies will often go too far and make a side appear just too good to be true, which prudent bettors will learn to recognize and exploit.

Pushed by public loading bets on a certain outcome, bookies will often move the lines to shade the favourites, which as a result offers more value to the brave bettors going against the public opinion.

The biggest myth about betting against the public, however, is that is can yield consistent results and be of great benefit in the long run, which hardly ever is the truth. Fading the public can be rather a detrimental strategy for beginners and amateurs who are just getting into the betting business and are not skilled at recognising the value bet just yet.

The very idea that betting against everybody can make you a betting professional is wrong to start with, so you need to be very careful with fading the favourites.

Bookies will often be forced to cut the prices due to a wrongfully conceived perception of a favourite, which tends to be universally accepted as a team / horse / player given short odds to win.

In this regard, the only way you can bet against the public successfully is to understand that true favourites in an event come in different guises and are not determined solely by their perceived strength comparing to the rival on the occasion.

In short, odds do not define favourites – they are determined through a variety of factors such as current form, head to head statistics, motivation and confidence, alongside the team news or injury reports which can also be of value in helping you determine the favourites in a – let’s say – game of football.

Betting against the favourite can be a rather risky and costly business for all of those who do not follow through with thorough research and analysis that can get them an edge over the public opinion.

Arsenal’s 3-0 defeat at Crystal Palace in April 2017 was a good example of a valuable bet against the public where everybody expected the quality-packed Arsenal side to beat struggling Eagles, who ended up being more motivated than Champions League crushed Gunners running on fumes at Selhurst Park.

Similarly, betting against the public is not always a good choice and those who claimed Arsenal will once again stumble and fall in their next match at Middlesbrough seven days later might have experienced heavy losses if they simply faded the public without analysing it through to utter detail.