When predicting the outcome of a basketball match before betting, there are many things for you to consider to enable you to make the right predictions. One of them is the home-court advantage. The problem is that we sometimes let the home-court advantage guide us, unconsciously.

While various statistics and studies have shown that teams win more of their matches at home, there is no real cause for that. That is, it is hard to understand why teams perform better in such a situation. Although there are speculations that the advantage could lie in crowd motivation and the unconscious or unintentional bias of the referee, those are not still real reasons.

When making a prediction, you have to consider things you can account for, and the home-court advantage is not one of them. The team’s home success could be because they are better or that their opponents make mistakes or feel weary from travelling over to their home. But it is not always constant, and there are many cases of the away team trashing the home team. So relying on home-court advantage is a bigger risk when you really think about it, even though bookmakers generally favour the home team more.

Rather than place all hopes on crowd behaviour when betting on a home team, you can look at some other pointers to guide you.

The Opponent

Like we said before, some opponents do not play good games. And this has nothing to do with being weary from travels but because they cannot be matched with the home team. Some teams are better than others. Such teams are referred to as underdogs. A weak team has no chance of displacing a stronger team, whether home or away. Also, a stronger away team would easily beat a weak home team. So study the opponent the home team is playing before placing your bet.

The Home Team’s Form

How strong is the home team? The home-court advantage does not cover injuries and other things that would cause a team not to perform well. In other words, if a team is not in form, do not expect them to do well, regardless of the odds listed.

Simply relying on the fact that a team is playing at home would serve you no purpose. It would be merely betting on luck, and that is not a good way to go about betting.