There’s little doubt that the bet365 Virtual soccer option is one of the most popular features of all the Virtual Sports games on Bet365 sport offers, but what exactly is it? If you have some burning questions about the sport itself, such as “how is virtual football programmed?” then take a look through our FAQ section of ten of the most common questions asked about the game itself.
Hopefully, through the answers given, you will get to understand a little more about the world of Virtual Football on Bet365.
Let’s begin with our first question which is coming from the perspective of someone who is not a keen follower of the sport in the real world.
1. I don’t understand or play football, so will this be a hindrance when betting on Virtual Soccer?
No, fortunately for you Virtual Football is not based on any real-life football, and any knowledge of soccer is not required to enjoy betting on the game in the same way you don’t need to know anything about the subject matter of a slot game before you play it.
All the betting and payouts are automated in bet365 virtual soccer, so if you have placed bets in other sporting areas and understand how they work, then you can enjoy betting on any Virtual Sport without requiring any real-life knowledge about it.
2. What markets are the best for a new Virtual Football punter to bet on?
Best is an unfortunate term to use to describe the different markets available in Virtual Football at Bet365, however, there are some easy tips you can follow to help you place bets on markets that you stand more chance of winning.
As a novice, I’d bet on markets with the fewest options, such as the Match Result Market which has just three options, Home Win, Draw, or Away Win. By reducing the number of possibilities for your bet, you give yourself more chance of landing a win.
Then as you gain more experience betting on Virtual Sport, you may wish to try some of the markets that have more options available and thus a greater range of prices, such as the Correct Score market.
3. How much should I wager?
I always advise punters to place smaller bets on Virtual Sports for two key reasons. Firstly, this is a sport that is decided by a random number generator, which cannot be predicted and which cannot be researched. As a result, this is more like a slot game, than an actual sports bet. As such, I tend to avoid betting too much on games where randomness is a key factor. There may not be one simple bet365 virtual football strategy for example.
The other issue is that Virtual Sports are superfast and you can go through an entire match in just three minutes. That means you can make a lot of bets even in just 30 minutes or 60 minutes of play and so to ensure you can enjoy your betting for longer, it is better to make smaller sized bets.
4. Why don’t Bet365 Sports use real names for teams for the Premiership and Superleague competitions?
The reason Bet365 Sport can’t use real team names for these events is that the team names are now protected and in order to use them officially, you have to secure the right to use the names by paying a fee, and in many cases, these fees can be excessively high. To get around this Bet365 uses fictional teams based on their real-life counterparts.
So, for example, East End United are the equivalent of West Ham United, Mersey Blues are Everton, and Mersey Reds Liverpool. In some cases, team nicknames are used, for example, The Cherries are the Virtual Football equivalent of Bournemouth.
The reason that Virtual World Cup games can use real-life international teams is that being countries, these are not covered by any rights issues, so Bet365 is free to use real-life names of countries for this Virtual Football offering.
5. Are the virtual football teams roughly the same ability as their real-life counterparts?
No. What happens is that when the software selects two teams for a game it will weight each team based on a number of factors, making one team a stronger team, one a weaker team or it may make it a game between two well-matched sides.
However, as far as I am aware, there is no sliding scale that says one specific team is always going to be the strongest team and other teams are always likely to be the weakest. Like many aspects of Virtual Football, these decisions can be down to random chance. There’s certainly no evidence that the strong real-life teams are also the strongest in the Virtual Football world.
6. How is the result of a match decided?
The result of a match is decided by a number of factors, but with a heavy element of randomness built into the game so that any result between any two teams is a theoretical possibility. We have already established that teams are weighted to be weaker, stronger or the same ability as their opponents and that weighting is incorporated in all the processes that decide how a match scoreline pans out.
As we have stated, random elements play a key role in this and the random number generator (which is essentially the driver of the software) will decide initially how many of the ‘highlights’ from the game you will see. Furthermore, it will randomly select which highlight you see, for which team the highlight will be and whether that highlight will be a goal for the team or not.
Some games can have more highlights than others and the number of highlights you see per half can be different. This is all due to the random nature of the game.
What is true is that the stronger teams have a greater chance of having highlights selected for them than weaker teams, but there’s no guarantee those selected highlights will be goals. A weaker team may only have one highlight selected but if that one is a goal highlight, then they will win the game.
By having so many variables allied to the weighting of teams, the outcome is a game that mirrors real-life football in that stronger teams should win more often, but there is always the chance of an upset and they can and do occur.
7. Does the Virtual Football software know which bets have been placed on the game?
People who ask this question are wondering if the software in games like bet365 virtual soccer is programmed to ensure that if a large amount of money has been placed on a particular market, can the software adjust itself to ensure that this bet is a loser and thus the bookmaker wins?
Of course, the Virtual Football software tracks all bets and will keep a close record of them to ensure all customers are paid out the right amounts at the end of the game. However, in terms of the betting affectin
g the result, it has no influence on the outcome at all, virtual soccer at bet365 is not weighted in the bookmakers’ favour. This is for two key reasons.
Firstly, the result is decided by random factors from the Random Number Generator that drives the game. No matter how much has been bet on any game or any market, the output of this device is always entirely random.
Secondly, if a site was so unscrupulous as to do this, then they would be found out very quickly and their reputation as a betting site would be compromised and the authorities informed.
8. Does Virtual Soccer have any real-life players?
No, all the players for the virtual teams are entirely nameless and faceless and are simply used to show the highlights of the game. Portugal does not have Cristiano Ronaldo playing for them, nor does Argentina have Lionel Messi in the virtual world.
9. Who provides the commentary for Virtual Football and how does it work?
The current commentator you hear on all Bet365’s Virtual Football games is Ian Darke. He has been a sports commentator on a number of different sports for Sky TV for many years including football and also most notably on boxing.
The commentary works by the commentator saying a number of stock phrases that are then linked up to specific pieces of action within the game where the phrase is relevant. When the game is played through, if a specific piece of the action like bet365 virtual soccer results is selected to play, then the commentary that goes with it is also played. In some cases, you can have several different snippets of commentary for the same piece of the action, which helps stop the commentary from becoming too repetitive.
10. Can I make a profit betting on Virtual Sports?
You certainly can, but it does depend a great deal on luck, perhaps more so than it would if you were betting on real-life football where you can at least undertake a bit of research to help inform your bet and give you a better chance of picking the right bet to be a winner.
That said, it is a fast and fun way to bet on football and it is a game that is growing in popularity. With smaller stakes and regular bets, Virtual Football is fast becoming an alternative to other forms of random chance gaming. You are best looking at a bet365 virtual soccer bet as being a bit like a slot game spin, you are having a wager, but you really can’t control the outcome a great deal.
What you can use to help you make the best decision regarding betting on the game is to select the markets that have the fewest options (such as the Match Result market, which has three options, home win, away win or draw) as opposed to those options with many more options (Correct Score, for example, has a lot of different possibilities). Fewer options means a greater chance for you to pick the winner.
Finally, as a little extra, many users ask:
How is Virtual football programmed?
Without going into great technical detail about how virtual football is programmed, what we can explain in simpler terms are the different elements that are programmed, collated, and then combined to produce the finished product that is Virtual Football.
The first and perhaps the key element of the game is the betting part of the game. This is key as it is the engine that powers it; without betting there is no Virtual Football game. The betting section is designed to work off a number of factors that can be ascribed random values within set parameters (such as the strength of the teams playing, their chances of scoring goals or not) and once these are calculated, this then produces a betting template for the games based on the two teams selected.
The next part of the software is the game presentation, which is the graphics, animations, sound effects, and commentary that you can see when a game of Virtual Soccer is being played. These are created by the developer (Inspired) and a ‘bank’ of these is created within the software and when a game runs, it will select which is the most relevant highlight and commentary to use for a specific highlight in the game. This part also has a high degree of random selection built-in to ensure they are as different as possible.
These two different aspects of a Virtual Sport are then ‘bolted’ on to each other so that they work in conjunction with each other so you end up with a finished product.
The beating heart of any Virtual game, football, speedway or any sport you care to mention is the programming and the random number generator (RNG) that plays a key role in determining the results of any Virtual Sport. Indeed, you could argue the RNG is the thing which turns Virtual Sports from being simply highlights of pretend games, into an opportunity for betting. Without them, Virtual Sports (as well as things like online slots and casino games) would be impossible.
You should think about Virtual Football the way you think about video games like Pro Evo or FIFA. When you can’t find anyone to play against, you might end up playing against characters controlled by the game. In essence, this is happening in any Virtual Football match except there is no human element, both teams are controlled by the computer. In the same way that no two games of football can be identical, the same can be said for the virtual version of the game.
Over time, as technology improves, we are likely to see refinements and improvements to all aspects of the programming and development of Virtual Sports and how virtual football is programmed. We are already seeing this in games such as Virtual American Football and Virtual Darts for example.
