What are forks and corridors
When playing in a bookmaker’s office, bettors take on certain financial risks, and no one would like to lose their money. Therefore, just as long as there is a world of gambling betting, there are those who want to develop a universal betting strategy that would be guaranteed to break even.
Two of the most popular strategies of this kind are forks and corridors. The Bet On project talks about the pros and cons of betting with a guaranteed profit.
Forks
The main essence of the fork is to completely neutralize any risks on the part of the player. That is, at any outcome of a sporting event, he must win. Of course, it is impossible to ensure such a result with the help of a single bet. But with the help of two or three – it is quite real. If there are favorable accompanying circumstances.
Surely you have heard about the existence of such a phenomenon as a bookmaker’s margin.
This is the commission of the office, due to which the truthfulness of the famous phrase is ensured – “the bookmaker is always in the black.” If you look at a line with two outcomes, the probability of which is determined to be equal, then you will see coefficients not 2.0, but 1.9 – 1.95. Although from a mathematical point of view, with an equal probability of two events, each of them should have a coefficient of 2.0.
This small difference with the actual state of affairs is the bookmaker’s margin. Calculating the margin in each particular case is not so difficult – we divide 1 by a coefficient, and then sum the resulting number with an alternative option along the line. The easiest way to check this is on the total market or in tennis or volleyball, where there can be no draws.
The margin in the line with three outcomes will have to be checked by dividing one by each of the three coefficients along the line 1-x-2, and then performing the same addition procedure. No matter how you add up, the probability will always be higher than 100%. This is usually 103-105%.
So, the task of the fork-maker is to make sure that with the help of the betting system, the margin is already in his favor. That is, you need to find such betting conditions, the total probability of the outcome of which would be below 100%.
Here it is easiest to explain by an example.
A fork can be formed when a skew is formed in the lines of different bookmaker Parimatch Canada, and if you open the website of the 1st place, you will find 1.9 on TB and TM, and 1.75 and 2.15 in BC Leon. That’s where you need to calculate how profitable it will be to put in order to guarantee yourself a profit in any case.
For convenience, there are special fork calculators on the Internet, where you simply enter the existing coefficients, and they automatically calculate the required bet amount, as well as guaranteed profit.
How to find a fork?
The easiest way is to find it yourself in live. But here you need to have remarkable mathematical abilities, and luck, of course. The easiest way to do this is in a line with two possible outcomes.
Let’s go back to the same example from tennis. It often happens that the nominal outsider wins the first set, and then loses the match, and vice versa – the favorite, having won the first game, then gives the next two. The movement of coefficients on such matches is guaranteed to be just as extensive as possible. Your task is to put one and the second athlete on the victory as profitably as possible.
- At a minimum, the coefficients should be higher than 2.0. Optimally, if they exceed 3.0. The higher the bid quotes, the more you will earn.
- A similar method works for other sports, but it will already be more difficult to calculate the necessary amounts for bets, and a fork calculator can help you here.
You can also use the help of third-party resources on the Internet.
There are special sites, the so-called “fork scanners”, where the situation in the pre-match and live in the lines of a huge number of bookmakers is monitored. And there, data is already laid out in a ready-made form, where, for what and how much you need to bet, and how much you can earn on it.
But there is also one important nuance – forks with a good profit on scanners become available only after a paid subscription.
Its price is far from the lowest, so it is worth using such an alternative instrument in betting only if you plan to play for large sums, otherwise the investments simply will not pay off.
How do bookmakers react to forks?
Another extremely important point that you should definitely know is that bookmakers do not like forks very much. So much so that they can cut bills, and even block them. And we cannot judge them for this. The rules say that the bookmaker reserves the right to punish users for unfair play. Well, securing a certain profit for yourself is exactly what it is.
Therefore, it is up to you to decide whether it is worth taking on such risks and dealing with forks, while also paying for the services of scanners to search for them, or it is better to abandon such a strategy.
Our task is to inform you about the possibilities and responsibilities, and yours is to determine whether all this is suitable for you.
Corridors
Corridors are essentially similar to forks, but they have one fundamentally important difference. A betting system is also being formed here, but if a bettor is guaranteed to receive more in the fork at the end of a sporting event than he has put, then there is no such guarantee in the corridors. This system is focused on reducing the possible losses of the player.
Corridors are usually created in the market of totals or handicaps, where it is easier and best to do it. The coefficients in this case are of no fundamental importance. Often, corridors are made on options with quotes of 1.5 – 1.6.
The task of the bettor is to try to predict the outcome of a sports event as accurately as possible, placing it in a certain corridor. For example, you think that in a basketball match one team will lose to the other with a difference of no more than 5 points. In this case, you can bet on the handicap of the first team (-4.5), as well as on the handicap of the second team (+5.5). Then we will have a perfect hit and both bets will go in, so whatever the odds are, we will increase the size of the pot.
Let’s take an example from real life. Golden State and Houston will meet in the third game of the second round of the NBA playoffs. The basic total of the office was set at 221.5 points. We think that the game will end somewhere on 217-219 points. Then it makes sense to take 2 bids – TB (217) for 1.58 and TM (221) for 1.96.
If the teams do very well in attack, then we will win at the first bet, which will not ensure the safety of even the funds originally invested in this game, but also minimizes losses compared to the situation if we just bet on TM (221).
If the teams draw very little, then the second bet will play, and the first one will lose. In this case, the size of the bank will practically not change. But if we guess the score as accurately as possible, and in the end the teams score something between 217 and 221 points, then both bets will play, and the pot will significantly increase.
Corridors can be formed either with the help of scanners or independently. They are equally effective in both pre-match and live. The main thing in any case remains the ability of the bettor to analyze the probabilities of various outcomes and use the information obtained for their own purposes.