Pool Betting: How To Find The Best Prediction Strategy

Pool and gambling have a very long history together. Gambling in pool or billiards is rather easy and is offered by a growing number of online casinos and sportsbooks. People like to create gambling games out of anything and the game of pool is no different. Just like you can bet on sports events or play casino games, pool betting has gained a lot of popularity too. The way pool betting works is different from other sports which is why we decided to come up with a specific pool related guide that can help you to effectively place your bets.

It is still very important to make the right choices when you make your next wager as betting on pool requires real money and thus a real strategy. Our guide on pool betting is meant to make Kiwis find the best prediction strategy so they win too if their favourite player wins. By carefully going through this guide you will have a clear picture of what to pay some extra attention to when you make your next move. Off to the pool table it is!

Table of Contents

Types of Pool and Their Rules

Pool betting is not to be confused with a betting pool which is also a form of gambling, where players pay a fixed price into a pool and then make a selection on an outcome, usually related to sport games and commonly organised for major sports events.

Pool betting refers to betting activities that are performed around the game of pool. Despite the game of pool being a lot less popular than snooker, it has always consistently been the second most popular type of “loose billiards”. The most common type of pool played around the world is Nine-Ball Pool, which is particularly enjoyed by pool fans in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. There are also major tournaments in 8 Pool and Straight Pool. Let’s go through the basic rules of these three main pool disciplines.

Straight Pool

Straight Pool is the oldest type of pool that for a long time was the most played style of play amongst professionals. With time, mainly caused by sluggish gameplay, straight pool lost its leading role to nine-ball pool. As in a game of eight-ball pool, there are 16 balls featured on the table at the beginning of the game. Each ball in the game is worth 1 point and the game continues until a player gets to the tournament’s predefined set number of points. A game of straight pool is played in a series of turns and the maximum series length in the history of the straight ball is 281 points in a row. There are still a lot of big straight pool competitions in the US and other countries like Australia and NZ that are held.

Eight-Ball Pool

Eight-Ball Pool is definitely most widespread throughout the United states, with the main challenge of this type of pool being to score all the balls of the same group (in total there are 7 balls on each side, either 7 striped or 7 solids-), and then to complete the game by eventually pocketing the number 8 black ball. In a game of Eight-Ball pool, stripes or solids are assigned to players according to which ball is pocketed first after the break. If the first ball of the game sunk is a solid, then the player who made that shot will need to try to sink all of the solids before moving on after the eight ball. If on the break the player sinks both a stripe and a solid, they can then choose which side to go for. This choice will be made based on the position of all balls after the break and which side offers easier shots.

Nine-Ball Pool

In a game of Eight-Ball pool at the beginning of the game there are 16 balls on the table at a time (including the cue ball), however in nine-ball pool there are six fewer balls. The balls on the pool table are a straight numerical set that goes from the numbers one to nine. Nine-Ball pool is known to be a lot more dynamic in comparison with eight-ball pool and the objective is to sink the balls in numerical order, from the first to the ninth number that is. The biggest number of professional pool tournaments around the world are held for this type of pool. Nine-ball pool is also very popular in New Zealand and at sportsbooks and new casino sites. A lot of events you can bet on online will be of this type of pool.

Betting on Pool

This brings us to the betting part as that is what most of our readers will pursue when they turn their online attention to the game of pool. Below we have included some, but not all of the most common betting options we recommend our fellow Kiwis to pay extra attention to:

For a Head Start: if there are two pool professionals of different classes competing, the lines for the outcome will most likely not be even or will alternatively be presented in a stripped-down variant. In this scenario you can bet on the odds by, for instance, putting a handicap -2.5 on the favourite player. This way you predict that the player you bet on will beat the opponent by at least 3 games.
Moneyline: the odds of choosing a player; whether one player or the other will win the game. Other than in other sports, draws are inexistent in pool. As a consequence, this means that you’ll need to make a clear choice between the players that compete.
Over Under: bet on how many games will be played in a match with an alternative bet being whether this number will be lower or higher than a certain number of games. To give you an example: at the popular World Nine Championship (depending on the stage) they go on until they win either 9, 11 or 13 games, which is the equivalent of 17, 21 and 25 games at maximum.
Tournament Winner: yet another popular line with the goal being to guess the winner of the pool tournament. Apart from the odds-on the absolute winner, which is fairly difficult to predict due to the many participants, the online casino or sportsbook typically offers odds on players reaching a certain phase of the tournament.

All of the above options are fairly straightforward and should be rather easy to learn. It is also a very accessible way to get used to betting on pool as these betting options, although having a solid strategy is still very important to make the right bets.

Prediction Strategy: How to Bet

Like with other betting activities, being well prepared will increase your chances of making a winning bet and the good thing about sports betting is that preparation makes a huge difference. Sports betting is thus not a pure sang game of chance like online pokies that are known for their randomness. Becoming an expert in this sport is yet another separate objective you should pursue. This consists of a few steps we will touch upon below:

Keep Up With WPA ratings

To get a broad idea of each pool player’s qualities, make sure to stay updated about the WPA rating, comparable with FIFA’s world ranking in football or ATP Rankings in tennis. Although these rankings do not always reflect a final outcome, they can be useful to have at least an idea of estimating one’s chances of winning. To illustrate our point, a pool player from the bottom of the ranking usually has a very small chance of defeating top players that are ranked somewhere in the upper part. It works like this in virtually any sport.

Tournaments Require A Different Approach

Before making your bets on a tournament thoroughly analyse the competion’s format, venue, competitors, history and draw. The latter can be particularly useful to come to a final decision as having all the top players on a certain side of the draw may result in a completely different outcome than with equally balanced sides. The location of the event also has a certain influence on the results as home support can definitely make a difference. This is especially true for Asian competitors as the home support has shown to strengthen players from countries like China and The Philippines in recent years.

Analyse Historical Results

Before making a bet on a certain player it is crucial to evaluate his or her past form and results. This is true for all sports, but especially in pools as we’re talking about an individual sport and not about a team performance where teammates play a role as well. Current form and previous head to head confrontations also affect future results. Side events do too as it’s not always the theoretically best players of the two that have to win.

Final Note

All together, always make sure to follow the latest pool-related news, read the analytics that come with them and follow the most relevant pages or sources about pool on the internet. Other than more mainstream sports, information about pool isn’t in abundance, as is even the case of snooker, but try to find a few reliable sources to gain a significant advantage in either the medium-term or long term. This guide on pool betting is one of our many gambling guides for players that are based in New Zealand and have an interest in the game of pool. If you’re interested in sports betting, online casinos, and everything in between we advise you to check out our other guides too and get the most out of them.

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