Sports betting is one area where skillful players can win out. But it is important to understand that the skillful players are not "beating the bookies" so much as beating unskillful sports bettors. This becomes most clear when you look at one of the most common ways to win at sportsbetting: bet against popular teams. Bookies aren't sentimental, but people are. Professional tipsters are plenty but some are better than others.

The ideal world for a bookie would be for X number of people betting Y dollars on a team to win, while X number of people bet Y dollars on the opposing team. The bookies then just take 10% of the money that changes hands, with zero risk. Teams like the San Francisco 49ers, Dallas Cowboys, and Green Bay Packers get a lot of emotional money bet on them by fans. So, games featuring these teams seldom show the "true odds". Instead bookmakers set the odds so that they can attract enough betting to the anti-popular side to counteract the "fan" money. This means that if the 49ers should be a ten point favorite, they will instead be a fourteen point favorite. Opportunities like this exist nearly every day. There are many other sports betting tactics that can also be effective.

The monkey-wrench in all this though is the 10% vig. It's not enough to just win more than you lose. If all your bets are the same size, you have to win about 53% of the time just to break even: make 100 $100 bets, win 53x90=4770, minus 4700 when you lose 47 bets, and you have a mighty $70 after 100 bets. Skill and study can win out, but the vig hurdle is a significant one.