In-play betting is basically what it says, placing a bet while the action is in-play. Until recently, punters could only place in-play bets if they were either down at the local betting shop or over the phone at certain major high street bookmakers, and providing you had an active account with them. Today, almost every online sportsbetting site offers markets for in-play betting.

It doesn’t matter if you miss the start of a match any more because you can now place bets right through to the last minute of the game while betting in-play. Not all sports have in-play markets, but most of the major ones do, such as football, tennis, darts, snooker, rugby, hockey, American football, baseball, cricket and other sports, plus various other special events such as the recent hit TV talent show, The Voice.

While the actual event is taking place, markets become available that never used to exist. For example in football, punters can predict which minute the next throw-in could occur, when the next corner will be, when the next goal will be scored, who will actually score next, or even when the next bookable offence will be.

This gives punters more betting variety, but they have to think a lot faster because the odds are constantly fluctuating when betting in-play. For each action that takes place during the game, the odds will correspond to what is happening.

The sites that offer in-play betting also generally have commentary for those events (mainly audio), but they may even have video commentary of the event, plus all of them will have real-time match updates. In-play betting is certainly very exciting and when you win while betting in-play, some of the sites pay you almost instantly, whereas other sites make you wait until the end of the game before you are paid.

If you are lucky enough to be watching an event perhaps on television as it is happening or listening to a live event, in-play betting is an absolutely fantastic tool which has taken gambling to a whole new level. If you have a hunch that someone is about to score, you can now place that bet.

A common scenario is that the bets which you placed before the game even started are lost within five minutes of the event starting. This is why in-play betting is so useful, because you can now reassess the situation (if your bets are instantly lost) and then place new ones, kind of like a second chance, but multiple second chances.

If you are a serious gambler and this is how you make your living, in-play betting can be very profitable, especially if you are willing to place large bets. For example, the game could be three minutes from the end and Manchester United are beating Manchester City 2-0. With the odds being just 1.03 (decimal value) or 1/33, (fractional value) for the score to stay the same, you could place a massive £5,000 bet in those dying three minutes in order to win £5,150 (a £150.00 profit).

Placing these types of bets is risky business, but they are almost guaranteed winning odds and this is why such large bets like this are becoming more common and more frequent. With enough cash to place a large bet like this, you will collect a cool £150 for your effort. Obviously if you have much less cash to spare, you can still place similar bets but on a smaller scale. For example placing a winning £250 bet with odds of 1.11 would see that you receive £277.50, giving you a total profit of £27.50. This is why in-play betting online has become so popular with punters over the past few years, in particular with the highrolling professional gamblers.