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

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

The truth is, numerous research has shown that blindly backing long shots is a losing proposition in the long-term. To determine why that's the situation, we have to understand how a bookmaker operates. Since the bookies take most of their action on short-priced favourites, it's often assumed they can be exposed to big liabilities if all of the hot teams win. Even though this is sometimes the situation, and lots of bookmakers suffer months of huge losses, there are a few ways a bookie can protect himself.

You need to take into account 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. For this reason, 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 within the knowledge that parlay players won't hurt their bottom line.

In the event 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 as well as the draw. Understanding the concept of theoretical hold can make this clearer.

When building lines, quality online football gambling agency a sportsbook shall offer odds on each team that provide it a slight edge, ensuring a profit however the game turns out. This is called the Theoretical Hold and is expressed as a percentage. It represents the combined quantity 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 majority 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 does not expect much betting interest in that team.