Hockey betting
The interest of many bettors, betting in several sports at once, in hockey is limited to only a few top tournaments: NHL, KHL, World Championship and Champions League. It is difficult to bet successfully in such hockey competitions, in bookmakers a large group of high-class professional analysts are responsible for them, setting the odds in the line with maximum accuracy.
For this reason, many hockey bettors, betting on top battles, began to “go” more to the championships a little lower in the rating, where in bookmaker they are opposed by significantly fewer analysts who periodically make mistakes and allow them to make promising bets. Let's pay a little attention to such less-rated tournaments.
Content
- Champions League clubs
- Sweden Championship
- Swiss Championship
- Czech Championship
- Finnish Championship
- Championship of Austria
- Summing up
Champions League clubs
It is worth looking at which clubs managed to reach the 1/8 finals of the Champions League.
The following reached the 1/8 finals:
- 4 clubs from Switzerland;
- 3 clubs from Sweden;
- 2 – Finland;
- 2 – Czech Republic;
- one club each – Germany, Austria, Italy, Norway, France.
At the same time, the hockey representatives of Germany, Austria, Sweden and the Czech Republic managed to get into the semifinals. The winner of the Champions League 2018-2019 was “Frelunda” – the finalist of the playoffs of the national championship of Sweden. Let's start our analysis with this tournament.
Sweden Championship
This is the final standings of the group stage of the 2018-2019 season, where it is worth highlighting a large group of strong middle peasants. Even clubs closer to the relegation zone are also not much inferior in class to opponents from the playoffs. And this picture has been observed over the past years. In a challenging competitive environment, clubs maintain a high level of play and achieve good results in the international arena. There is another side to such high competition – even the championship leaders gain clear victories in regulation time in just over 50% of their home matches.
This is where the analysts of bookmakers should be caught, when they overestimate the odds in the Swedish championship on the victories of home strong middle peasants, which makes it possible to prospectively bet on not losing, a zero head start and a positive handicap of visiting strong guests.
This is how one of the leaders of Sweden played against a strong contender from among the ordinary middle peasants. This match is interesting for one thing. The bettors played well not losing the guests, demonstrating strong hockey, but not claiming direct playoffs. And the guests did not lose in the main time. Such a non-loss of the guests is connected with one moment.
The leaders of the Swedish championship are very vulnerable during the Champions League, where they have to give their best, which is reflected in the result on the domestic stage. It also allows you to successfully bet against the Swedish leaders when they play on the international stage.
It is worth noting how often teams from among the leaders and strong middle peasants demonstrate stubborn struggle in face-to-face confrontations, which leads to frequent draws within a single period. This allows you to successfully use the catch-up strategy for a draw in the period. You can use an effective safety net: when a strong middle peasant in one of the matches never drew with his opponent in a period, in the next fight, where a strong middle peasant or a leader became the rivals, you can start catching up.
Swiss Championship
The trends found in Sweden are clearly visible in the Swiss national ice hockey championship, where a large number of strong middle peasants also stand out, demonstrating approximately equal level of play.
What a hard fight is going on in the Swiss championship for getting into the playoff zone. Here, even the leaders at home win pure victoria in the main time in a little over 50% of the matches.
In Sweden and Switzerland, half of the clubs have approximately equal playing potential, which leads to the same patterns:
- Playing against a highly overvalued home strong middle peasant or leader;
- A bet against a member of the Champions League when he had a tough international fight in an extreme meeting;
- “Catch up” for a draw.
These are the results of the club, which is one of the strong middle peasants, here the draws in the periods are dazzling. The strategy of “catching up” to this event has great prospects with the active use of the safety net indicated just above. And even taking into account this tendency, bookmaker's analysts set high odds for a draw in the period: from 2 and higher, which is one of the important conditions for a successful catch-up game.
Czech Championship
In the Czech national tournament, a similar picture is observed as in Sweden and Switzerland. For this reason, we will not describe this championship, and the game strategies are the same as in the two previous ones.
Finnish Championship
In Finland, there is already an even distribution of teams in the standings. This is the final table for the 2018-2019 season. If you look at the previous seasons, you will see the same picture. This is a classic case where all 4 categories of commands are present:
- Leaders;
- Strong middle peasants;
- Ordinary middle peasants;
- Outsiders.
Leaders often confidently outplay outsiders and ordinary middle peasants at home, where it is better to bet not on their negative handicap, but on “individual total more”, for which the bookmakers set good odds. At home, the leaders and productive strong middle peasants, being in good shape, almost on a constant basis throw 3-5 goals to newcomers to weak opponents.
In general, the Finnish championship shows good performance, exceeding 5 goals per game. For this reason, bookmakers in the matches of this national championship usually set approximately equal odds for “total 5.0” and “total 5.5”. In this regard, it is worth waiting for a strong Finnish club to demonstrate low performance for several matches in a row, and as soon as it meets an opponent with a weak defense, you can safely bet on “total over”.
“Tappara” is one of the strong productive clubs in Finland, it showed weak performance in two rounds in a row. In the third match, this team met with an outsider with the weakest defense, which led to a high performance of the meeting.
Championship of Austria
This national championship is worth highlighting in a special way for one reason: in addition to local Austrian clubs, several clubs from other countries take part in this competition.
Clubs from Italy, Czech Republic, Hungary and Croatia take part in the Austrian League. True, the Croatian club will no longer play from the 2019-2020 season.
It is worth understanding the importance of home matches for clubs from other countries. For example, the Italian Bolzano will approach their home matches with special motivation, especially when approximately equal opponents come to visit. If Bolzano is in good shape, then with the overwhelming motivation of local players, they will achieve a positive result, which allows them to make promising bets on them when they play on the home ice arena.
Summing up
As the analysis shows, almost all the leading European national championships have the same characteristics. Having developed a successful strategy for playing one of these national tournaments, it can be safely used in other championships with similar characteristics.
