So many people have always thought that winning a bet is only about luck. Well, it may be dependent on luck, but there are other factors that play a very big role in winning. I can make several suggestions to the person serious about
making money betting on sports:
1. Bet with your head, not your heart.
A good way to lose is to let your emotions sway you from such reasons like cold, hard, dry, dull, mathematical, boring, logical reasons-for or against any bet you could make.
Don't bet on a team because you grew up rooting for them. Don't bet on a game because it's televised. Don't bet more on Monday Night Football because you want to catch back what you lost over the weekend (or because you want to go for the big kill after a winning weekend). Don't hedge a bet because you have a psychological preference for safety. Don't bet a game because you haven't found anything to bet all day and it's getting late and you really wanted to gamble today. Don't bet a "teaser" just because it's a "fun" way to bet. and so on and so forth...
If that kills it for you because it sounds too much like a job, then accept that you're a "recreational" bettor, and not destined to make money at this.
2. Learn math.
Simple addition, multiplication, division, fractions, percentages, etc. will handle a lot of what you need to do. But the more knowledge you have of probability and statistics and more advanced areas like that, the more you'll find it opening up new opportunities for you and enabling you to better exploit existing opportunities.
3. Realize that it takes money to make money.
A lot of the factors talked about below are easier to do the more money you have. People with $100,000 to invest in sportsbetting can pursue a lot more strategies a lot more effectively than people with $1,000 to invest.
4. Have as many sports betting accounts as you can handle.
If you're playing with the neighborhood bookie, making all your bets with just one person or shop, that eliminates or lessens almost all the ways you can make money sportsbetting. So I'm assuming you have legal access to online sportsbooks. If so, don't pick one or two and put all your action in there. Pick ten or twenty or thirty. (When you're playing online, it's not unrealistic to manage that many.
5. Be careful to use only the safest sportsbooks.
Don't open an account at a sportsbook just because you got a mailer in your mailbox, or a spam e-mail, or saw a banner ad, or saw a link in an online article. Go to the various sportsbetting forums online and research which places people recommend. Then research them further through Google or other means, looking to see if you can find anyone claiming them to be a scam or pulling anything underhanded. Call them and make sure you're comfortable with them before committing. After you join, keep your eyes open for further news on the forums and elsewhere so you can get out if it sounds like people are having bad experiences with them.
This is a largely unregulated area. So you have to do a lot more homework. Sportsbooks range from legitimate companies roughly as safe as "conventional" big name businesses, to the equivalent of Nigerian e-mail scams, and everything in between.
6. Shop lines and shop odds.
The more accounts you have, the more you can shop. Don't make a bet at -4.5 when -4 is available. Don't make a bet at -120 when -115 is available. (-120 means the odds are such that you have to risk $120 to win $100; -115 means the odds are such that you have to risk $115 to win $100.) Often the difference is slight, but those pennies add up.
7. Learn how to scalp and middle.
If you have multiple accounts funded, you can sometimes come upon opportunities to play both sides of a bet at different places. So maybe you can get -3 on one team at one sportsbook and +4 on their opponent at another. (That's a "middle.") Or maybe you can get +180 on one team at one sportsbook and -175 on their opponent at another. (That's a "scalp.")
In effect, scalps and middles reverse the house edge to put you in the position of advantage.
8. Take bonuses.
Most online sportsbooks offer incentives and perks of various kinds to get business. The most common is a sign-up bonus on your initial deposit. A 20% sign-up bonus, for instance, means if you send them $1,000, instead of depositing $1,000 in your account, they'll deposit $1,200.
You can also sometimes get bonuses for subsequent deposits if you happen to lose your whole balance, referral bonuses for other customers who sign up that you recommended, and more.
Don't get too caught up in the "free money" and lose sight of whether these are places you'd want to play for other reasons (safety, good betting opportunities), but bonuses can be a nice boost to one's bottom line.
Some bonuses are of more complicated types, such as a "free play" instead of cash. Be sure to research how to use any such bonus, because there can be big differences in its value (that wouldn't be obvious to a beginner) depending on how you use it.
9. Don't buy "picks."
Total waste of money. Total scam. Success as a tout is all about marketing, not handicapping. Don't get caught up in that. If you absolutely have to follow someone else's picks rather than do your own work, there are no shortage of handicappers on the sportsbetting forums who share their picks with each other and the public for free just because they enjoy this activity or it boosts their ego for people to see them pick winners. On average they're as good or better than the people trying to sell you their picks.
10. Research, crunch numbers.
For example, learn more than the betting public about how much a team's roster was helped by free agency or the draft, or how likely it is their injured starters will be able to play in their next game.
Learn whether it's better to take +7 at -110 odds, or +6.5 at even money.
11. Look for obscure angles other people don't know about.
Years ago a bettor who made a lot of money on golf said that a certain golf tournament has a tradition of making the pin placements particularly difficult on Day 4. So he'd look for shops offering props on individual golfer scores on that day, and bet the Over (remember, in golf low scores are better than high scores) on all of them.
When NASCAR first became a big sport, neither the betting public nor the oddsmakers were all that knowledgeable about the ins and outs of the sport. For awhile, they grossly underestimated the importance of the qualifying rounds. Drivers that qualified with the highest speeds barely had their odds adjusted for the race itself, whereas in reality their likelihood of doing well increased a lot more than that. So savvy bettors who knew that cashed in.
12. Learn about all the non-conventional bet types.
There are times parlays are more advantageous than straight bets. Same with teasers. There are times it might make more sense to bet a half or a quarter than a whole game. Occasionally (rarely) it's to your advantageous to move the line by "buying points." And so on.
Find out what those occasions are and why.
If you limit yourself to making straight bets on whole games like 90% of gamblers, you'll miss all this.
13. Disregard all betting "systems" that purport to give you an edge by how you alter bet size.
You simply cannot overcome (or even change) a house edge against you by how you order your bets. (This is true of casino games like craps or roulette as well.) Any system of "double up after a loss, then start over at a win," or "bet one unit until you win at least three in a row, then bet 2 units until you lose two in a row, then bet one unit," or whatever is mathematical garbage. Period.
Good luck with your wagering. But better yet, bet smart and let the luck take care of itself over the long run.
1. Bet with your head, not your heart.
A good way to lose is to let your emotions sway you from such reasons like cold, hard, dry, dull, mathematical, boring, logical reasons-for or against any bet you could make.
Don't bet on a team because you grew up rooting for them. Don't bet on a game because it's televised. Don't bet more on Monday Night Football because you want to catch back what you lost over the weekend (or because you want to go for the big kill after a winning weekend). Don't hedge a bet because you have a psychological preference for safety. Don't bet a game because you haven't found anything to bet all day and it's getting late and you really wanted to gamble today. Don't bet a "teaser" just because it's a "fun" way to bet. and so on and so forth...
If that kills it for you because it sounds too much like a job, then accept that you're a "recreational" bettor, and not destined to make money at this.
2. Learn math.
Simple addition, multiplication, division, fractions, percentages, etc. will handle a lot of what you need to do. But the more knowledge you have of probability and statistics and more advanced areas like that, the more you'll find it opening up new opportunities for you and enabling you to better exploit existing opportunities.
3. Realize that it takes money to make money.
A lot of the factors talked about below are easier to do the more money you have. People with $100,000 to invest in sportsbetting can pursue a lot more strategies a lot more effectively than people with $1,000 to invest.
4. Have as many sports betting accounts as you can handle.
If you're playing with the neighborhood bookie, making all your bets with just one person or shop, that eliminates or lessens almost all the ways you can make money sportsbetting. So I'm assuming you have legal access to online sportsbooks. If so, don't pick one or two and put all your action in there. Pick ten or twenty or thirty. (When you're playing online, it's not unrealistic to manage that many.
5. Be careful to use only the safest sportsbooks.
Don't open an account at a sportsbook just because you got a mailer in your mailbox, or a spam e-mail, or saw a banner ad, or saw a link in an online article. Go to the various sportsbetting forums online and research which places people recommend. Then research them further through Google or other means, looking to see if you can find anyone claiming them to be a scam or pulling anything underhanded. Call them and make sure you're comfortable with them before committing. After you join, keep your eyes open for further news on the forums and elsewhere so you can get out if it sounds like people are having bad experiences with them.
This is a largely unregulated area. So you have to do a lot more homework. Sportsbooks range from legitimate companies roughly as safe as "conventional" big name businesses, to the equivalent of Nigerian e-mail scams, and everything in between.
6. Shop lines and shop odds.
The more accounts you have, the more you can shop. Don't make a bet at -4.5 when -4 is available. Don't make a bet at -120 when -115 is available. (-120 means the odds are such that you have to risk $120 to win $100; -115 means the odds are such that you have to risk $115 to win $100.) Often the difference is slight, but those pennies add up.
7. Learn how to scalp and middle.
If you have multiple accounts funded, you can sometimes come upon opportunities to play both sides of a bet at different places. So maybe you can get -3 on one team at one sportsbook and +4 on their opponent at another. (That's a "middle.") Or maybe you can get +180 on one team at one sportsbook and -175 on their opponent at another. (That's a "scalp.")
In effect, scalps and middles reverse the house edge to put you in the position of advantage.
8. Take bonuses.
Most online sportsbooks offer incentives and perks of various kinds to get business. The most common is a sign-up bonus on your initial deposit. A 20% sign-up bonus, for instance, means if you send them $1,000, instead of depositing $1,000 in your account, they'll deposit $1,200.
You can also sometimes get bonuses for subsequent deposits if you happen to lose your whole balance, referral bonuses for other customers who sign up that you recommended, and more.
Don't get too caught up in the "free money" and lose sight of whether these are places you'd want to play for other reasons (safety, good betting opportunities), but bonuses can be a nice boost to one's bottom line.
Some bonuses are of more complicated types, such as a "free play" instead of cash. Be sure to research how to use any such bonus, because there can be big differences in its value (that wouldn't be obvious to a beginner) depending on how you use it.
9. Don't buy "picks."
Total waste of money. Total scam. Success as a tout is all about marketing, not handicapping. Don't get caught up in that. If you absolutely have to follow someone else's picks rather than do your own work, there are no shortage of handicappers on the sportsbetting forums who share their picks with each other and the public for free just because they enjoy this activity or it boosts their ego for people to see them pick winners. On average they're as good or better than the people trying to sell you their picks.
10. Research, crunch numbers.
For example, learn more than the betting public about how much a team's roster was helped by free agency or the draft, or how likely it is their injured starters will be able to play in their next game.
Learn whether it's better to take +7 at -110 odds, or +6.5 at even money.
11. Look for obscure angles other people don't know about.
Years ago a bettor who made a lot of money on golf said that a certain golf tournament has a tradition of making the pin placements particularly difficult on Day 4. So he'd look for shops offering props on individual golfer scores on that day, and bet the Over (remember, in golf low scores are better than high scores) on all of them.
When NASCAR first became a big sport, neither the betting public nor the oddsmakers were all that knowledgeable about the ins and outs of the sport. For awhile, they grossly underestimated the importance of the qualifying rounds. Drivers that qualified with the highest speeds barely had their odds adjusted for the race itself, whereas in reality their likelihood of doing well increased a lot more than that. So savvy bettors who knew that cashed in.
12. Learn about all the non-conventional bet types.
There are times parlays are more advantageous than straight bets. Same with teasers. There are times it might make more sense to bet a half or a quarter than a whole game. Occasionally (rarely) it's to your advantageous to move the line by "buying points." And so on.
Find out what those occasions are and why.
If you limit yourself to making straight bets on whole games like 90% of gamblers, you'll miss all this.
13. Disregard all betting "systems" that purport to give you an edge by how you alter bet size.
You simply cannot overcome (or even change) a house edge against you by how you order your bets. (This is true of casino games like craps or roulette as well.) Any system of "double up after a loss, then start over at a win," or "bet one unit until you win at least three in a row, then bet 2 units until you lose two in a row, then bet one unit," or whatever is mathematical garbage. Period.
Good luck with your wagering. But better yet, bet smart and let the luck take care of itself over the long run.
