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As virtually every professional bettor will tell you, backing heavy favourites is a sure fire way to the poorhouse. That is common knowledge, right? Perhaps, but there's one problem with that type of thinking: it's dead wrong.

The received wisdom will be the linesmakers skew their odds on heavy favourites since the public love betting on the very best teams. The bookies no doubt see a flurry of parlays involving clubs like Chelsea, Barcelona and Juventus every weekend. Surely there's value in taking the underdog in these situations, is not there?

In fact, numerous research has shown that blindly backing long shots is a losing proposition within the long-term. To view why which is the case, we have to learn how a bookmaker operates. Considering that the bookies take most of their action on short-priced favourites, it's often assumed they may be exposed to big liabilities if all the hot teams win. While read this is sometimes the situation, and lots of bookmakers suffer months of huge losses, you'll find several ways a bookie can protect himself.

It is important to understand that most heavy favourites are combined in parlays involving at least three teams. A bookmaker only needs one loser to take his customer's money. Therefore, there is little need to lower the odds on a "public" team. Many sportsbooks will even inflate the odds of a hot favourite to attract new customers, safe in the knowledge that parlay players won't hurt their bottom line.

If the favourite's odds are an accurate reflection of it's true probability of winning, the bookmaker must make adjustments elsewhere. That usually means offering worse odds on the underdog and the draw. Knowing the concept of theoretical hold could make this clearer.

When making lines, a sportsbook will offer odds on each team which provide it a slight edge, ensuring a profit regardless how the game turns out. This is called the Theoretical Hold and is expressed as a percentage. It represents the combined amount of customers' bets that the bookmaker expects to keep.

It's called theoretical because in reality a bookmaker rarely has balanced action on all sides. If a bookie takes the bulk of his bets on a heavy favourite, he can offer it at a far more generous price and accept a smaller profit margin. Short-priced favourites generally have small margins, but high volumes. Bigger odds mean bigger margins. There is little incentive for a bookie to offer competitive odds on a big underdog if he will not expect much betting interest in that team.