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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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It is widely accepted that sporting teams perform better at home than if they were away or at a neutral ground. This is evident by looking at every football league season since 1888, whereby home teams have scored more goals than away teams over the course of the season.
While stats suggest every team performs better at home than on their travels, it’s impossible to create a universal home-field advantage handicap. This is due to soccer teams being fundamentally unbalanced, with some earning bigger home-field advantages than others. (Here's an in-depth analysis on <a href="https://www.pinnacle.com/en/betting-articles/soccer/premier-league-hfa-betting">How influential HFA is in the Premier League</a>)
Data relevance
Bettors must also have to take into account what data they feel is relevant. For example should Arsenal’s pre-2005 form be considered, even if it is at another stadium? What about Chelsea and Manchester City, who’s Home Field Advantage has increased significantly after their purchases by rich owners?
<h3>How to calculate Home Field Advantage in soccer</h3>
To calculate the Home Field Advantage, take the number of goals scored at home per season (HF) and minus the number of goals conceded at home (HA). Then divide by the number of home games played in a season (19):
<h4 style="text-align: center;">HFA = (HF – HA) / 19</h4>
<h3>Using Home Field Advantage with Asian Handicaps</h3>
This information has particular significance for Asian Handicap betting. If a team has a home handicap less than their Home Field Advantage, it might make a sensible bet – although this is just one of a number of factors to consider in a balanced betting strategy.
<h3>Influences on Home Field Advantage</h3>
Home Crowds
The influence on Home Field Advantage by home crowds is something, which needs to be looked at. Anfield is renowned for creating a volatile atmosphere for visiting teams, but could this have a negative effect on the home team if they underperform?
Prior to the 2013/14 season Liverpool majorly underperformed for a club of their size finishing 7th, 6th, 8thand 7th. Despite the poor league form The Reds had a better HFA than Tottenham in all but one season despite finishing below them in the league.&nbsp; Does this suggest that Liverpool’s home performances are affected by Home Field Advantage more so than others?
Stadium Familiarity
Arsenal moved from Highbury to the Emirates Stadium for the 2006 season, but failed to utilise their Home Field Advantage.
Before the move, the Gunners came to prominence in 1997/98, picking up five Premier League trophies before the end of the 2005 season. During this period, their average Home Field Advantage was 1.51.
Since moving to the Emirates Stadium, Arsenal have won one FA Cup, while their average Home Field Advantage has dropped to 1.23.
The affect of moving stadium is amplified if you examine the pre- and post- move seasons. Between the two years, Arsenal’s Home Field Advantage dropped by 0.42.
However, by looking at Arsenal’s last six seasons their Home Field Advantage has been gradually increasing, which suggests they now feel at “home” at the Emirates stadium.
This implies that when moving from a “home” ground that a team is accustomed to, performances suffer as everyone adjusts to their new surroundings.
Style of soccer
How important is the style of soccer a team adopts? For instance, Liverpool’s HFA increased from 0.89 in 2012/13 to 1.84 in 2013/14 – despite having the same manager and a relatively similar squad.
The main difference however, is that manager Brendan Rodgers adopted a more attacking philosophy, which in turn created more goalscoring opportunities, resulting in almost a goal per game increase in HFA.
The Referee
There are many preconceptions on what influences HFA in soccer – crowd size, travel and weather are a few which have been proposed over the years.
Moskowitz&nbsp;and&nbsp;Wertheim&nbsp;who wrote&nbsp;Scorecasting&nbsp;compiled data to test a variety of these popular theories. What they found was that the most prominent influence was the referee. They found that home teams received small preferential treatment from the referee.
The authors make it clear that the bias is not done consciously, but rather being humans, the referees absorb the raw emotion of a home crowd, and sometimes make a decision subconsciously in favour of the close-by raucous crowd.
In addition Harvard Research Assistant Ryan Boyko researched further proof for the influences on Home Field Advantage.
Boyko studied 5,000 Premier League games from 1992 to 2006 to discern any officiating bias for home teams.
His conclusion was that for every 10,000 home team fans, home team advantage increased by 0.1 goals.
His study also showed that home teams are more likely to receive penalties, particularly from inexperienced referees. Therefore building referee profiles is also important when predicting a match’s outcome.
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Bettors try to gain a benefit by working out their own odds applying techniques such as Home Field Advantage. This article explains how to calculate Home Field Advantage in soccer, giving bettors the opportunity to calculate HFA more accurately than the bookmaker.