Sports betting picks are as old as sports betting itself. As long as there have been people betting on sports, they have been trying to find an edge, however slight. All the punter needs is to be right 51% of the time, to be in the money. Most picks will be for singles, but you can also get parlay picks, which are becoming more and more popular.
There are really 2 main types of sports picks, which are computer picks and human picks. So what are the differences between computer picks and human picks, and which ones should you use?
Computer Picks
Computer picks are sports picks generated by an automated system. Here’s how they work. An algorithm will be developed and then uploaded to a computer database. The program will then start to ingest as much data as it can. This date will typically be historical data related to how teams have performed in the past, both the distant past and the recent matches. Once this data is in the database, it will be analyzed and applied against the system algorithms in order to generate the picks.
Human Picks
Human or manual picks rely on a very similar process to computer picks. A person will analyze historical data, and then put them against their own equations in order to make a pick based on that. The biggest two differences between computer and human picks are the amount of data that can be analyzed and the speed with which it can be done. A computer can much more data than a human can, and can do it much faster. However, a human pick still has that level of experience that perhaps a computer might not have and the ability to make adjustments based on once off instances.