One hundred and twenty minutes of football is often not enough to separate two teams who carry the hopes and expectations of more than a million fans. It comes to the point where it is going to take a dramatic tie-breaker called the penalty shootout to shower one team with glory and the other with disbelief. It goes without saying that the pressure on the players is immense. The strikers, especially, are the ones you have to feel sorry for. Seldom is blame laid on the goalkeeper for not keeping the ball out of the net in such a situation, whereas the strikers know that they are simply expected to score.

In sharp contrast to this scene, is the intelligent better sitting cozy before his television, rubbing his hands at the prospect of making money out of this situation. Because unlike most bets where you risk losing money for an incorrect prediction, live betting in penalty shootouts is a sure-shot way of winning if you do it right.

One fact you need to pay attention to is that for a penalty shootout to end, at least one player must miss or have his penalty saved (essentially the same thing – from now I’ll stick to the word ‘miss’ to refer to both outcomes). The shootout keeps going on and on if players keep scoring. So the basic idea is, you keep betting that penalty takers from both sides will not score their penalties, as long as the score is level (it is a bit of a risk to place such a bet when the scores are not level because the condition that at least one player must miss is no longer true). You might be wondering how you can not lose money when you keep betting on players missing. What if I win only one bet and lose all the others? Well, the thing is, you don’t keep betting the same amount each time. Every time you are wrong, increase your stake so you can make up for your earlier loss. You might have heard people telling you never to bet big just to make for your losses. But that piece of advice is based on the fact that you stand to lose an even greater amount if you get it wrong again. In the case of a penalty shootout, however, you will win at least one bet, and one bet is all you need to win to make up for your losses.

Let’s take an example to clear up this concept. Say, the odds of a player scoring are 5/2 and that of a player missing is 3/1. The penalty shootout is about to start and the scores are level, which is the condition for this trick to be foolproof. I place a stake of 100 on each player to miss.

Scenario – 1: Both players miss

This is the best thing that can happen to you from the betting point of view. You win 250 from each of the player’s miss. Taking your initial stake into account, you make a profit of 300. The scores are still level, and you proceed to make a bet again as though you are starting afresh.

Scenario – 2: One player misses

Since the odds favour scoring a penalty as opposed to missing one, you make a profit if one player scores and the other misses. You would win 250 for the miss, which ends you up with a profit of 50. It may seem small, but they do increase with a higher stake, and is certainly better than nothing, or worse – a loss. At this point, the score is 1 – 0, which is not a level score. So you do not place any further bets until the scores become level again (remember, by level, I mean level after both teams have taken equal number of penalties).

Scenario – 3: No player misses

This is obviously not what you want, but it certainly doesn’t mean that you’d end up with losses. You would’ve lost your stake of 200 completely, but here’s where you try to win it back. Now, you bet, say 500 on each player missing instead of 100. This time, if you encounter scenario 1, awesome! Taking, all your losses into account, you end up with a profit of 1300. If you encounter scenario 2, well, you still make a profit of 50. If you’re unfortunate enough to encounter scenario 3 again, then repeat your earlier scenario 3 steps with an even greater amount, say 3000. You might be getting a little nervous with these rapidly multiplying numbers, but fear not, you will win at least one bet and that’s all you need to end up with a profit.

As you can see, if you avoid emotional overcome and have enough cash to invest in your bets, the penalty shootout is a terrific system for betters to win and have fun. Your favourite team may not win, but hey, there is a bright side.

There are pros and cons in every game and penalty shootouts play a huge role in turning the tables no matter how strong or weak your team is because you need to keep your emotions in place without getting carried away as though it is a mere round of poker online Indonesia.

I figure that should give you an idea how to bet on penalty shootouts. Remember, always pay attention to the odds and the carefully calculate how much you’re going to increase the stake by if you encounter scenario 3. Good luck!