All of the top bookmakers offer live in-play betting on a lot of sports, including football, tennis and horse racing. The advantage of in-play betting is to see how the match is folding out to give you an indication of who is going to win.

You can also watch live football, tennis and horse racing on bookmaker’s which is an excellent service (although we’re not keen on any of the commentators we’ve come across). Most of these you can watch without even placing a bet.

An example of the advantage of in-play betting is, whilst some football favourites are really poor odds at the beginning of the game, if you can afford to wait 20-30 minutes before you bet on them (needing them not to take the lead!), the odds will increase to something more reasonable and therefore worth betting on. We’re not a fan on betting on football teams that odds are less than ½, and enjoy watching their odds drop when they get closer and closer to half time at 0-0, and taking advantage of the rise in odds.

Alternatively, you may want to back the odds-on favourites. While it is perceived the shorter the odds the more likely the victory, we strongly recommend you watch and wait in play to make sure they look like they’re going to win. Sure, you may miss out on the occasional bet when the favourites take the lead inside 5 minutes, but we assure you, if you have a good judgement, this will and make you money in the long run. For this is why we love online betting over traditional betting stores or over the phone. It allows you more control over your bet. After all, we’ve all seen a favourite start badly and ultimately disappoint.

Our personal favourite, is when a favourite goes a goal behind and their odds to win become very attractive and can even be arbed with a double chance (win or draw) bet. Of course, it helps if you’re watching the match to make sure you’re confident the team that have fallen behind are capable of winning. There are often a few occurrences of this each weekend, making this system a good way to make good profits. We’ve had winners as high as 10/1, which for a cheeky £10 pays back a sweet £100! And when you build your bank up, you start betting more than £10 a time 😉

In tennis, the odds jump around dramatically, swinging around after breaks and just generally changing after every point. For betting in-play on tennis matches, we don’t recommend betting on Next Game, and it goes without saying not to bet on Next Point! Whilst our pro tennis tipster stakes a lot of money on short odds players to win, he doesn’t recommend betting on short odds in-play. Infact, when he bets in-play on tennis matches he looks for value. For example, you can get odds of over evens (and well over evens some times) when they are a break down early (or late!) on in a set. And favourites 1 set down are often good odds and worthy backers to win the match in 3-set matches. But you need a good tennis knowledge and judgement for that, and those are matches you need to be watching to bet on!