Boxing Betting: Getting Your Hands on Different Information
By Loot, Boxing Handicapper, Lootmeister.com
Watch Weigh-Ins
Sometimes, it's important to see the fighters weigh in. On the Internet, you can usually watch a weigh-in to a fight of even modest billing. Other times, it might not be so crucial to watch the weigh-in. An early line comes out and you jump on it. The fighter you bet on never has trouble making weight, so you figure you don't need to see it. But often times, a fighter consistently struggles to make the weight limit. There have been times where he failed to make weight. There were other times when his performance was severely affected by weight-making issues.
In the latter case, it might behoove you to wait until the weigh-in takes place to gather vital information. Just as an expert horse bettor knows what to look for in the physical appearance of a horse, so should you with boxers. It's easier than horse racing–you know people. You know what to look for. Keep your eye on a drained or hollowed-out looking face. If the fighter you want to bet on looks heroin-chic, you might want to reconsider your position.
Look for caved-in cheeks, bad skin color, or a dried-out and emaciated physique. Observe his demeanor. Is a normally boisterous fighter acting sullen and morose? That could be a bad sign. Is he immediately grabbing for gatorade a nanosecond after he steps off the scale? And remember, the older the fighter, the bigger the role this plays into their form. A 25-year old can rebound from the rigors of weight-making far easier than an aging fighter with a lot of miles on him.
Gathering Information
Again, the Internet is your friend. When betting on boxing, gathering all the information used to be much harder to do. Not everyone had record books and fight films. Now you can go to Boxrec.com and Youtube to achieve the same result. Boxrec posts the line-by-line records of any boxer who ever fought. And when you're betting on a fight with one of the opponents being rather unknown or from a faraway place, you can go to Youtube and be pretty sure there will be at least some footage of his fights.
Use both information-gathering techniques with a discerning eye. When scanning a boxer's resume on boxrec, you're not going to receive commentary that will tell you that a result that appears clear-cut maybe had a twist to it. When you're not sure, probe deeper. Read some accounts of the fight. Don't merely accept all results at face value.
And when watching past results, you really need to put in the time. The tendency might be to just watch a snippet of a fight here and there and develop your read on a fighter that way. But as we all know, things change in a fight. Even if you see a fight where the fighter in question is dominating an overmatched foe. Keep watching. Does he get stronger as the fight goes on or does he fade? Does he lose concentration? Does his opponent weaken from his body attack? Does he become less cautious in the latter rounds? To gather some of the more detailed bits of scouting, you need to pay attention and devote yourself to it.
Don't Ignore Inner Voice
Sometimes, you are trying to tell yourself something. We can sometimes be our own best sources of information. We just have to make sure to listen. When betting on boxing, it is quite common to have a very guttural feeling on who will win. Sure, there's some good elements of instantaneous handicapping that go into it, but you just sometimes get a feeling that supersedes all customary points of handicapping. In that case, the term “go with your gut” really carries some meaning.
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What might happen between the time your inner voice tells you who to bet on and fight-night is that you will try to talk yourself off that initial gut-feeling. You handicap the fight and suddenly your first thoughts seem less solid. While it's OK in some cases to just go ahead and not bet the fight, you might regret betting the opposite of your initial feeling. Consistently ignoring your inner voice tends to not be a winning strategy in the long run.