Sports’ betting has long been a favorite among various sport fans. They not only bet on their favorite teams, but also make money in the process. But from being a simple case of team loyalty, sport betting has come a long way, where it has become a serious business, and bettors analyze a lot by going into the intricacies of the game before placing their bets. It is about serious money, as is evident from many people who enjoy a lavish lifestyle that is supported solely by betting. NFL games, horse racing, professional hockey, hound racing, baseball etc. are some of the sports that are famous for betting.

Where betting is illegal, a gambler can usually wager on sports. However, sports’ betting is no longer the shady business that it used to be. Today, a huge percentage of sport betting is online, where it is safe, easy, and in most cases, completely legal. The main advantage of betting online is the convenience and the ease with which you can place your bets, and win money. And it doesn’t matter where you are physically located.

If betting is illegal in your state, there is no need to go to those downtown alleys, and shady bars to place your bets. Do it from the safety, and the comfort of your home. Here you are in a completely secure environment, empowered by your calculated information and your privacy.

You can place many types of bets for online sport betting. Some of the most common and popular bets are spread bets, proposition bets, money line bets, over/under bets, parlays, and teasers, etc. The procedure of executing each bet is different and defined by a rule, and the winnings are thus proportionally paid out. Online sport gambling is a skill wherein you are required to make various calculations, and an in-depth analysis to increase your chances of winning. This is less a game of luck, and more a game of skill.

A person is governed by the law of the place that he/she is in. Thus online sports betting being legal or illegal depends on lot of factors. In general, Europe is more open to sports betting, and it is like a way of life there. Sports betting is largely illegal in mot parts of North America, but the rules differ from pace to place.

There are many states in the United States where sport betting is legal. To make sure that you are not doing anything illegal, make sure about the rules of the place you reside in, and rules governing the company you are placing the bet with. But owing to the anonymity of the internet, sport betting is relatively safe from almost anywhere.Find out more about sport betting at NOMOREBETS

If you want to make money sports betting, then you need to first understand that, contrary to popular belief, there are a ton of people who are successfully living off of their sports betting earnings. Now it is true that a majority of sports bettors lose; however, this is often because they lack the most important element that is required to be successful.

There are many different factors that go into becoming a successful sports bettor, but the ultimate way to make money sports betting is to have discipline.

You can have the greatest system/strategy in the world but if you lack the discipline to implement that system properly, then you won’t be able to monetize it to its fullest potential. Being able to make money sports betting is all about maximizing your profits. This is done by creating a successful system and not deviating away from that system.

Whether the system means assigning different values to each game you bet on or means using one consistent betting amount for each game, you need to stick to the system that you choose. The aspect of discipline plays a major role here. It is very easy to start betting on every game without any strategy involved. It is also very easy to get caught up in the emotion of games you win/lose, and start increasing your wager amounts.

Trying to chase losses is the ultimate Achilles Heel for the average sports bettor. This can take a person’s entire bankroll out in one weekend.

So once you find a system that works for your betting needs, then stick with that system and remember to implement the most important element to make money sports betting: discipline.

C. M. Coolidge, known for his “poker playing dogs”, was a brilliant man with innovative ideas and an entrepreneurial instinct about art. Born in a small town in upstate New York to Quaker parents, he didn’t receive a formal college education, but did take some college business classes later in his life. By the time he was 18 or 19, he took a few lessons in portrait painting, along with a course in bookkeeping a few years later. His love for reading resulted in a solid self education. At the age of 19, he started doing cartoons for newspapers in surrounding neighborhoods. A few years later, while living in Rochester, NY, he wrote and illustrated a weekly newspaper column.

Coolidge loved people and was quite social. At around the age of 20 or 21, he was elected Superintendent for one of the local school districts. Later, he was elected Town Clerk. Around the same time, he became active in the Masonic Lodge. Coolidge had lofty plans for himself, although most of his pursuits didn’t work out or were short-lived. When he was 27 or 28, he started the first bank in the town of Antwerp, NY. He worked there for a short time, and then became a druggist. That; however; did not hold his interest for long. And, a year later he founded his hometown’s first newspaper. Unfortunately, that failed a short time later.

Between jobs and in his free time, he would draw cartoons for area newspapers and would do caricatures of people. One of his many elaborate projects was the writing of a comic opera concerning the elimination of mosquitoes. Interestingly, it was produced but made no real money. He also applied for a patent for collecting fares on street cars. Although, again, nothing became of it.

The one consistent endeavor he held onto was his love of comics and art. He began to do dog paintings around the turn of the century. Mainly, they were purchased by cigar companies and used as giveaways. Coolidge’s big break came when the advertising firm Brown & Bigelow approached him to do a series of paintings that would be used on calendars and other memorabilia. That was in 1903. Around this time is when his infamous poker dog paintings got underway.

Over the next ten years, Coolidge created 16 paintings of dogs - seven that portrayed dogs playing pool. The other nine were dogs surrounding a poker table. By putting dogs in art, yet in a situation familiar to middle class Americans, he not only anthropomorphized them, but created an instant kitsch fad. It certainly helped the cigar and calendar businesses for which he worked. A few of his original dog paintings sold for US$2,000 to US$10,000 dollars’ which was an astonishing amount for the time period.

For years his images of dogs playing poker while drinking, smoking, and basically getting into trouble graced bachelor pads, bars, and taverns around the country. The scenes always evoked feelings of something American and something modern. Recently, a pair of his poker dog paintings entitled A Bold Bluff and Waterloo, expected to go for US$30,000 to US$60,000, surprised the art world by selling for $590,00 for the pair.

More meaning for A Friend In Need:

A few theories about his art give more meaning than what initially meets the eye. One theory states that the painting A Friend In Need has great significance. “Coolidge’s painting was used in the Second World War to boost the moral of Dutch citizens. The dog with the cigar being Churchill giving America help (on his left hand side), which goes unnoticed. Russia (the most left dog) tries to attract USA’s attention, while Hitler (the dog with the pipe and the ‘big ears’ in front of the clock) watches anxiously.”

Poker enthusiast Jim McManus has stated, “[In] A Friend in Need, the blatant cheating refers back to the early nineteenth century, Mississippi riverboat days, when poker was mainly a series of opportunities to fleece the suckers.”

A specialist for Sotheby’s Auction House, Alison Cooney, says that people who dismiss the painting as simply “kitsch art” are missing the deeper meaning of his work. “It’s a humorous, ironic take;’ she continues, a jab at middle-class America; another way of poking fun at ourselves.”

Another theory suggests that the dogs were all aspects of C.M. Coolidge himself. Known to his friends as “Cash”, he loved a good bet and was something of a hustler. He wore a hat and often held a cigar, just as his paintings of dogs did. Other sources hint that he looked like the bulldogs he painted.

In a recent tongue-in-cheek article by Steven J. Rolfes, he writes “In this iconic work, we see a masterly representation of the Last Supper, with Christ (on the left) sitting conveying His wisdom to His followers. We see Judas to His right, with the bag of silver coins at his pawside.” He asserts that the painting A Friend in Need has deep arcane roots in a very secret society that even precedes the Illuminati called the “Prior of Dogbone.”

This important insight is one that Coolidge himself would appreciate.

After his success with painting dogs, a new idea provided him a profitable income. He started the invention of “Comic Foregrounds”, which are wooden life-size cartoon stand-ups with the face cut out so that one can place their head for funny photos. He completed hundreds of them, including the famous Man Riding a Donkey and Fat Man in a Bathing Suit. Some of these comic foregrounds had hand lettering at the bottom. He would often hire students to do them.

C.M. Coolidge was a bachelor for most of his life. When he was 64, he met Gertrude Kimmel, an art student who was doing some lettering work for him at the time. They were married in 1909 and had a daughter a year later.

A few years later, when Coolidge was about 70 years old, he fell and hurt his knee. According to an account written by his daughter Marcella Coolidge, he didn’t visit a doctor and was lame the rest of his life. He tried his hand at writing, but it didn’t take off. Still, Coolidge remained in good spirits. His wife went to work and he was strong enough to do work around the house.

Coolidge’s daughter has also said that his dog paintings were not taken seriously at home by herself or her mother. She said that she never liked them - that it was simply commercial. Furthermore, she relayed that they never had a dog, but that her dad was fond of them. This is clear as seen in the widespread influence they had in his art.

Andy Warhol was influenced by Coolidge’s work. Coolidge set a precedent for the weimaraner photos of William Wegman. Today, we find Coolidge’s canine posters at many places. If you have US$590,000 or more to spend, contact Doyle Auction House in New York to see when they will have another original Coolidge dog painting to auction.

Copyright © 2008 Melanie Light

There is little in life that is guaranteed, especially when it comes to gambling in order to make money sports betting. However, you can follow some simple advice that experts use to give you the upper hand when choosing your picks.

I have listed 3 tips EVERY sports gambler should take into account when analyzing a potential pick, and each of these could be the deciding factor in determining whether you pull the trigger or whether you wait for something better to come along.

Tip #1 - Pay attention to Team Chemistry

A team being loaded with big time players doesn’t necessarily mean they have a good team. And conversely, if a team is loaded with no names, it doesn’t mean they are weak. A good example of this is the New England Patriots a few years back when they lost practically all their starting secondary, replacing them with a bunch of no names.

They even had a receiver (Troy Brown) filling in as DB on dime coverages. This rat tag bunch managed to shut teams down, and their defense was just as strong as they were in previous years. The Patriots ended up winning the Super Bowl that year thanks, in large part, to the dominant performance of their defense .

An example from the opposite side of the spectrum would be the New York Yankees. Each year they have the highest payroll in baseball and on paper, they look unstoppable. Yet, they did not even make the playoffs this year.

In order to make money sports betting you need to be able to pinpoint these types of scenarios and hit a few games where the spread maybe off because the public will go with the personnel on a team, but not how well that personnel plays as a team.

Tip #2 - Pay attention to Team Momentum

Winning and losing can be contagious, and a teams general frame of mind can be affected by their winning or losing ways. A team can generate a winning attitude by starting off the season strong, and that can carry them through the entire season.

In order to make money sports betting, you should be able to pick out the potential teams who have the momentum on their side. The key is to be able to jump on these opportunities at the right time.

Tip #3 - Pay attention to Home Field Advantage

There are a lot of teams that play completely differently on the road vs at home. It is important to recognize which teams can play a solid game at home and which teams can play just as well on the road. Once a pattern is recognized you should be able to make money sports betting by jumping on the opportunities home field advantage provides.

For example, the Arizona Cardinals from about 2004-2007 were a very solid team when playing at home, but they were a completely different team on the road. Throughout their season, there were plenty of opportunities to take advantage of this pattern in order to make money sports betting.

If you play close attention to these variables, I have no doubt that you will see your profits skyrocket as you begin to make money sports betting.

Matt Trojan