How To Make A Good Bet
- How To Make Bets Online
- How To Make A Good Beat On Splice
- How To Make A Good Beat On Mixpad
- How To Make A Good Man Better
- How To Make A Good Bet On Football
- How To Make A Good Beat Drop
- How To Make A Good Beat In Lmms
- The best way to start explaining this concept is by proving a fact. You can have a winning sports betting record (meaning more wins than losses), be betting the exact same amount with every bet, and still be.
- Understand the concept of value. If you don't have this, walk away. Sure you might be.
Here are 20 examples of bets so dumb we can't imagine these people will ever shake hands on a bet again. Jimmy Fallon kicked it off with this sad tale of a man who ate too many Peeps. Yes, there's such a thing as too many Peeps.
Making money betting on sports can be tough, but there are a lot of sports bettors who consistently win, and there are even a lot of professional bettors who make a good living off of sports betting. On this page you will find sports betting strategy and tips to help you become one of the winning bettors.
How To Make Bets Online
Below I talk about the basic sports betting strategies for beginner bettors, but if you are more experienced you can check out the advanced sports betting strategy articles towards the bottom of this page.
The Basics To Sports Betting Strategy
In order to help yourself make money or a profit from sports betting there are a couple of basic strategies or tips you will want to understand and follow. None of these sports betting strategies are secrets by any means, but following them will help you win money betting on sports.
The bettors who don’t follow any of these strategies are often referred to as “squares” and those are the type of bettors that the sportsbooks will make their profits from.
#1 Money Management/Bankroll Management
When you are betting on sports you should always set aside a certain amount of money, which we refer to as your “bankroll”, in which you can afford to lose. Like with any type of gambling, you never want to bet betting on sports with money you cannot afford to lose. Set aside a certain amount of money that you can use for your bankroll for the week, the month, or the season. A general sports betting strategy for money management is to only make bets with 1%-5% of your bankroll. For example, if your bankroll for the NFL season was $1,000 you would be making $10-$50 bets on each NFL game you wanted to bet on. It is also very important that you do not chase your loses with bigger bets. It is common for some sports bettors to be down money and feel in order to win it back they need to increase the size of their bets. This is putting yourself in the wrong mindset and will often lead to you losing even more money. Work with the size of your bankroll, and look to slowly increase it over the length of the season.
Here’s a video going over Bankroll Management strategies for sports betting:
#2 Bet Sober and Don’t Go on Tilt
Although betting while sober seems like common sense, you’d be surprised how many people bet on sports under the influence. Is it a coincidence that the Las Vegas casinos offer free alcoholic drinks while you are gambling? I don’t think so. I don’t want to sound like your mother here, but betting while under the influence will impair your judgement and should definitely be avoided if you want to become a winning sports bettor.
The second part of this tips is “Don’t Go on Tilt”. Going on tilt or “tilting” is a commonly referred to term with poker players and basically means letting your emotions take over, which often leads to bad decisions. If you are angry or upset at something, such as a couple bad beats with your sports bets, you shouldn’t be placing any more bets. Take a break, go for a walk, get your mind clear before you start making anymore sports betting picks.
#3 Do Your Homework
This is maybe the most important sports betting strategy. You will always want to do your research before placing your bets. Although going with your hunch when betting your favorite sport may work some of the time, in the long run it will not lead to you winning money betting on sports. In order to profit from sports betting you will need to research, study, and do your homework for each pick you make. Look at stats, find trends, create sports betting systems, analyze past games – basically do everything you could possibly do to ensure you have value in your pick before you place your wager.
#4 Line Shopping
A very big step to becoming a winning sports bettor is to make sure you are shopping for the best lines. What this means is that you will have to have an account at a couple of different online sportsbooks and when you are ready to make a bet on a certain team or outcome you check the different sportsbooks and find which book is offering the best line for you (this ties in with our advanced how to find max value article). For example, if you are looking to bet on the New England Patriots on a 7 point spread, you would want to check a couple different sportsbooks to see if any of them are offering the Patriots at 6.5 points, or at the very least find the best price you can get them at 7 points at. Over the course of a sport betting season you can win yourself a lot of money from shopping the lines that would otherwise would not be one. Line shopping is definitely one of the best sports betting strategies used by winning sports bettors. To see a list of sportsbooks we recommend signing up for visit our Online Betting Sites section.
I’ve created a line shopping video and posted it on YouTube (seen below):
#5 Avoid Buying Points
Avoid falling into “square” tendencies such as buying favorites down or underdogs up. For example, some bettors always feel the need to buy an NFL favorite of -3.5 down to -2.5. The sportsbooks are smart enough to charge more juice to do this, mathematically making it a bad strategy. The same goes with buying an NFL underdog from +2.5 to +3.5 for example. In 99% of cases I would advise against it. Check out the video I made below about buying points on NFL underdogs.
Other Sports Betting Strategies and Myths
Above are the four main basic strategies you will want to follow in order to become a winning sports bettor, but there are a couple of other tips you can use to help you win money.
For one, you can try following a sports handicapper who is using a proven sports betting system. Be careful of scammers out there though. If they don’t show their past records long term plus proof I would pass, and in most cases I wouldn’t be paying for picks at all.
An old sports betting strategy is to bet on home underdogs. The theory is that teams are usually more inspired to play at home, and they will often not fold if they are down like they may when on the road. Betting home dogs in the past could have made you money, but this isn’t true as much anymore. You can read the current betting market article to learn why.
The last tip I have for you is to try and place your bets at the right time. With lines shifting from the time they are posted to the time the game starts, you will want to get your bet in at the time when you are getting the best price. Predicting line movements is extremely hard but it is worth looking into. Check out the video below that I made titled “When To Place Your Bets”.
Advanced Sports Betting Strategy Articles
» How to Place a Bet
» How to Win at Sports Betting
» Sports Betting Math
» Teaser Betting Strategy
» Prop Betting Strategy
» How to Get Max Value When Betting
» Future Betting Strategy
» NFL Bye Week Betting Strategy
» Parlay Betting Strategy
» Pleaser Betting Strategy
» Sweetheart Teaser Betting Strategy
» Current Betting Market
» How to Research Your Bet
» Mistakes You Need to Avoid
» Things Beginners Need to Know
» Win/Loss vs Value
See All Guides
There’s a lot of information on the internet claiming to offer “foolproof” methods to instant sports betting success. Unfortunately, there is no such thing. Becoming a successful sports bettor requires hard work, determination, knowledge, and experience.
Part of gaining these necessary skills is to learn which strategies to apply and when to implement them. In this article, we’ve compiled 10 quick betting tips and strategies that will move you towards being a stronger, more successful bettor over time.
Like anything worth doing, achieving a better sports betting winning percentage takes both time and perseverance. Sports betting is not tantamount to gambling, so we advocate betting with skill, measure, and precision. Don’t leave everything up to luck!
1. Manage Your Bankroll and Create a Unit Size
It’s integral that, as a sports bettor, you decide how much money you’re going to dedicate towards betting on sports. Of course, this hinges on your individual financial situation. It’s never wise to bet money that you can’t afford to lose.
Now that you’ve established a pre-ordained bankroll, decide on unit size. We recommend that beginner bettors stake 1-5% of their bankroll on every bet they make.
This is undoubtedly thecrucial first step in becoming a more successful sport better. Every single “sharp” scrutinizes both their bankroll and unit size regularly. For more information, we’ve written a whole guide on sports betting money management.
2. Understand Your Risk Tolerance and Goals as a Bettor
How To Make A Good Beat On Splice
Different types of bettors like to make different bets. The sooner you decide which types of bets you prefer making, the sooner you can perfect your strategy and start winning.
Some people like to bet on significant underdogs or highly improbable events. They’re attracted to the longest of long odds. These are the same bettors who are more inclined to create huge parlays and bet on games like the Browns beating the Patriots on Monday night.
Others have a preference for smaller profits, but more likely outcomes. Betting on heavy favorites and welcoming short odds may not pay out as big, but these bettors are likely to win more often.
Some bettors think strategically, with a long-term view of players or teams. These bettors spend a lot of their time and bankroll in the futures marketplace.
How To Make A Good Beat On Mixpad
You may bet once a week or stay active in sportsbook live betting, placing many bets every day (or even multiple bets on the same event).
Of course, none of these types of bets are mutually exclusive. Seasoned sharps are highly active in every single kind of wager, no matter whether it’s got long or short odds attached to it.
Focusing on one particular kind of bet is a wise move if you’re looking to improve quickly.
3. Develop Realistic Expectations
A successful “sharp” wins 54% of the time. A historically great “sharp” wins at around a 60% clip. These are the best sports bettors in the entire world.
Wanting to achieve these numbers at the jump or even over an extended period of time is a tall order. We can’t stress this point enough.
Even if you win your first 10 bets (which is not unheard of), the law of averages suggests that unfortunately, you’ll come crashing back to the earth at some point. Knowing this and setting realistic expectations can help prevent you from doing anything rash.
Don’t deviate from the strategy and methods that made you win 10 in a row in the first place.
4. Keep a Record of Your Bets and Review Them Periodically
This strategy might seem unsexy, but it’s nevertheless incredibly important.
It isn’t fun to revisit losses, but if you do, you might prevent yourself from making the same types of mistakes twice. Sometimes, you’ll lose bets even if you’ve done everything right. Other times, you knew you were reaching, but made a bet anyway. Correcting misguided reasoning will benefit your bets in the long run.
An occasional retrospective on your successes and failures will doubtless provide a long-term boost to your bankroll.
5. Bet with Your Head, Not Your Heart
The majority of sports bettors began betting because they were sports fans. As such, they probably had allegiance to one or more teams. If this applies to you, we’d recommend from abstaining on betting on any event related to your favorite team (or teams).
How To Make A Good Man Better
Loyalty can cloud our judgment, and we recommend being rational and measured in your sports betting. Bias can affect us in both conscious and unconscious ways. For this reason, we recommend skipping lines that you have a personal interest or an emotional investment in.
6. Avoid “Sunk Cost Fallacy”
For this tip, we’re going to borrow a standard term from behavioral economics. The “sunk cost fallacy” means that the more time or money one invests in something, that harder it becomes to abandon. This encompasses everything from business investment to a bad relationship.
How To Make A Good Bet On Football
Decisions are colored and tainted by accumulated emotional attachments related to the investment. People engaging in the “sunk cost fallacy” will throw more money at a project or venture that’s doomed, just because they’ve invested so much time in it already. They simply don’t know when to cut their losses.
This applies to sports betting just as much as it pertains to investments. If you’re having a bad day, cut your losses. And whatever you do, don’t keep upping the size of your bankroll to cover a nasty losing streak.
7. Bet on One Sport
As Warren Buffet says, invest in what you know. The same applies to sports betting.
If you’re new to sports betting, it’s worth it to stick to the one sport you know the most about. You’ll already be ahead in the methods you need to get an edge in over the bookmakers, just based on your pre-existing knowledge of how the game is played.
You’ll already know how to evaluate players and teams, and where to gather information about the sport. This is integral to finding the smartest wagers.
8. Line Shop
Line-shopping is all about taking advantage of pricing discrepancies between the same event at different sportsbooks. Finding the best odds possible is guaranteed to have a significant positive effect on your sports betting ROI.
Line shopping is the closest thing to a foolproof, sure-thing strategy in sports betting. It’s guaranteed to net you bigger profits and long-term success in sports betting. The sooner you start doing it, the better.
We’ve written a full guide on all things line shopping, and why it’s essential.
9. Hedge Your Bets When It’s Appropriate
How To Make A Good Beat Drop
At its core, hedging is a risk management technique that can be applied to sports betting. It’s a way to either reduce your bankroll exposure or lock in a profit on bets.
Hedging is complicated and beyond the scope of this quick strategy guide, but every hedge you make will be done by betting on a result that’s different than your original wager.
10. Do Your Research and Talk to Other Bettors
How To Make A Good Beat In Lmms
In the age of the internet, getting involved in the sports betting community has never been easier. Join sports betting forums, peruse sportsbook-related subreddits, and talk to anyone you know in real life who may be keen on sports betting.
Not only will you become more accustomed to sports betting lingo, but you can also exchange sports betting strategies with your friends.
Patience Is a Virtue
As we’ve mentioned, becoming a successful sports bettor takes time. As you develop more in-depth knowledge and comfort within the sports betting world, you’ll start to see a more significant ROI.
Remember, never become a gambler. Everyone has rough days sports betting, but betting responsibly and sticking to a plan will help you remain successful. Discipline is integral to keeping your cool, having fun, and staying successful.