Pinnacle

What Are Blackjack Side Bets?Side bets are bonus bets placed on a round of Blackjack on outcomes beyond whether the player or dealer will win. The majority are staked at the start of the round before the cards have been dealt alongside regular bets and many have fixed odds that usually offer greater payouts than the simple 2:1 rewarded for beating the dealer.Play Blackjack at Pinnacle Casino

Play Blackjack

Side bets provide an exciting way to make Blackjack games more interesting whilst offering you a greater number of ways to win. So what are side bets, what side bets are available and are they worth it? Read on to find out.

Blackjack Side Bets Explained

Finding a niche market in betting can often lead to value. This can be anything from specialist knowledge of handball betting to extensive experience in betting on Japanese baseball. Providing you know more than the bookmaker, there is money to be made.  &lt;Bet on soccer at Pinnacle&gt; They also make for interesting and potentially profitable bets, as they can be a little more reliable

Soccer odds

A corner is one of the most inexplicably exciting events in soccer. Only around three per cent of them lead to a goal, but you can guarantee that the attacking team’s fans will roar their approval and encouragement if their team are awarded one. Read on to find out how you can benefit from betting on corners.

Corners betting in soccer: Value in a lesser-known market

Poisson Distribution is a mathematical concept for translating mean averages into a probability for variable outcomes across a distribution. For example, if we know Manchester City average 1.7 goals per game, so by putting the Poisson Distribution formula tells us that this average equates to Manchester City&nbsp;scoring 0 goals 18.3% of the time, 1 goal 31% of the time, 2 goals 26.4% of the time and 3 goals 15% of the time.

Bet on soccer at Pinnacle

Poisson Distribution: Predict the score in soccer betting

What is Expected Value?The amount a player can expect to win or lose if they were to place a bet on the same odds many times over, calculated through a simple equation multiplying your probability of winning with the amount you could win per bet, and subtracting the probability of losing multiplied by the amount lost per bet.A simple example of Expected Value (EV) put into practice -&nbsp;if you were

Bet Now

The Expected Value of a bet shows us how much we can expect to win (on average) per bet, and as such is the most valuable calculation a bettor can make when comparing bookmakers' odds. How can you calculate Expected Value in sports betting in order to predict your winnings? Read on to find out.

How to Calculate Expected Value

Having graduated with a degree in Chemistry, Mark embarked on a career with a major UK brewery. However, his love for sports and numbers was always at the back of his mind. He has been writing about the statistical side of sports, mainly soccer and NFL, for over 20 years and has a particular interest in the randomness and uncertainty inherent in the numbers.

Mark Taylor

The persuasiveness and longevity of widespread perceptions in the world of soccer usually <g class="gr_ gr_45 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_run_anim gr_inline_cards Grammar multiReplace" id="45" data-gr-id="45">comes</g> down to some cognitive bias that tends to cloud our judgement.
<p><a href="https://www.pinnacle.com/en/betting-articles/betting-psychology/why-bettors-should-understand-heuristics">Recency or availability bias</a>, for example, is the case where an occurrence from the recent past (such as a side scoring over three goals) is considered to be far more likely than what it actually is. Or <a href="https://www.pinnacle.com/en/betting-articles/betting-psychology/how-confirmation-bias-affects-your-betting">confirmation bias</a>, where isolated examples are sought to support a pre-conceived notion, such as a red-carded team winning despite having one fewer player.</p>
<p>It <g class="gr_ gr_52 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_run_anim gr_inline_cards Punctuation replaceWithoutSep" id="52" data-gr-id="52">is therefore</g> important when making betting decisions that we make some data-driven checks, rather than relying on our own often flawed intuition. With soccer bettors often assuming that 2-1 is the most likely lead to <g class="gr_ gr_54 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_run_anim gr_inline_cards Grammar multiReplace" id="54" data-gr-id="54">be</g> overturned, do statistics support this idea? Let’s find out.</p>
<h3><strong>Examining comebacks in the Premier League</strong></h3>
<p>From a single recent Premier League season, 132 of the 380 matches at one point reached the stage where one team held a 2-1 lead.</p>
<p>On 74 of those occasions it was the home team who led, whilst 58 times it was the visitor - 89 times the third goal broke a 1-1 deadlock and in 43 matches the third goal was scored by a side that was trailing 2-0.</p>
<blockquote>Out of 132 matches that reached 2-1 in a Premier League sample, 101 of the leaders eventually won the match, 25 drew and 6 lost.</blockquote>
<p>16 minutes was the quickest it took to reach a 2-1, while the fourth minute of injury time was the latest arrival of the same scoreline. The average time when the score became 2-1 was a shade over 60 minutes.</p>
<p>The average abilities of the leading or trailing sides were broadly similar across the 132 matches.</p>
<p>The commonest method used to model the outcome of a game or the remainder of a match is based on&nbsp;the Poisson distribution.</p>
<p>A goal-based assessment is made about the relative abilities of the competing teams and the probabilities of subsequent results can then be made by estimating the likelihood that each team will score or concede&nbsp;a particular number of goals.</p>
<h3>Putting the 2-1 scoreline to the test</h3>
<p>We can model the remaining minutes of all 132 games from the point at which 2-1 was achieved and compare the resultant probabilities to those available in running to see if there is a broad agreement between model and layer.</p>
<p>However, a less labour-intensive approach which would yield similarly informative results would be useful in comparing a Poisson generated estimate, using the average time and relative qualities of the teams when they reached 2-1, in relation to the average outcomes across a season from the perspective of the side who led.</p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">If we use the Poisson model to determine the final outcome of a slightly superior team - in order to allow for the slight preponderance of home teams who lead 2-1 after an hours play -&nbsp; we predict that the leading side wins 75% of the time</span>, draws 20% and their lead is ultimately overturned in the remaining 5% of occasions.</p>
<p>By comparison, out of the 132 matches that reached 2-1 in my Premier League sample, 101 of the leaders eventually won the match, 25 drew and just 6 lost.</p>
<p>These convert to win, draw and loss percentages respectively of 76%, 19% and 5%, very nearly a perfect match to the modelled percentages.</p>
<p>This strongly suggests that tempting though it may be to intuitively see a 2-1 lead as very vulnerable - particularly in view of the still often quoted but now discredited reputation afforded to the 2-0 scoreline - it is very likely that any market inefficiencies associated with this particular scoreline will be rare.</p>
<p>Get unbeatable <a href="https://www.pinnacle.com/en/odds/match/soccer/england/england-premier-league?sport=True">Premier League odds</a> online only at Pinnacle.</p>
<h3>Over/Under video explainer</h3>
<p>Did you know we have a YouTube channel? Check out our&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC54Q5nMtE9LMcC_9HtqUy-g?view_as=subscriber">latest betting videos here</a>.</p>
<iframe width="100%" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/t9swCgN_AYo" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
<p>If you want to watch more educational betting videos, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/pinnaclesports?sub_confirmation=1">subscribe to the Pinnacle YouTube channel!</a></p>

Soccer forums are full of perceived wisdom that is largely unsupported by actual data and often overstates the likelihood of an event occurring. In this article, Mark Taylor puts the 2-1 scoreline to the test by examining all instances of a comeback from a 2-1 lead in a single Premier League season. Read on to find out the result.