Anyone can have a good day, a good week, or even a good month as a sports bettor. Sustaining that popularity is a lot more difficult, and over time, decent sports betting will gradually grow to the top.
Most would accept that winning sports betting consistently is not about chance, but rather about having a plan. I don’t think it’s sticking to a list of rules and giving the house easy money.
In this post, I’m going to set out five of the features that can be seen in almost every sports bettor who wins on a regular basis.
1 – They Do the Work
I don’t care how much sport you watch – “feel” or “instinct” driven sports betting is never a winning strategy. Many who bet professionally, or even enjoy success as an amateur gambler, often do their job before making a choice.
You don’t generally need to have complicated statistical models at your disposal (although they do help), but some capability analysis is needed. Even if that actually means looking at each team’s schedule and judging the nature of the competition and how they did it.
It should take you more than a few minutes to make a decision on how you’re going to bet.
1. You need to make sure you’re looking at all the odds — you can’t find merit in a play if you don’t look at it.
2. You need to compare the hard numbers. This means looking at the rank of each team in those categories that could be important to the outcome of the game.
3. This one is ignored (in my opinion) – strive and determine items that don’t appear on paper.
For Example:
Things like motivation or “need to win” play a part in the final outcome. I know it sounds cheesy, but even at the professional level, desperation does a lot to get the team to play their best. Only look at how many NBA teams win Game 3 after going 0-2.
At the end of the day, just have a justification to make the decision you’re going to end up with. Ask yourself the question, “Why do I chose to bet this way? “If you can answer that, at least you have met the bare minimum criteria to be a competitive sports bettor.
2 – They Prioritize Profits, Not Wins
Winning is awesome, but at the end of the day, it’s not about how much you win, but how much money you clear up when you win.
To explain this idea in an analogous way, I like to think of it in terms of investment. If someone invests in 10 firms, and 7 of them end up paying money back, that’s awesome. However, if all of them return just a small sum of money, we’re going to say 20%, it’s not going to drive the investor to the top of the Forbes list.
There’s another investor on the other hand. He’s still putting money into 10 firms, and only two of them are giving money back. The difference is, both of them resulted in massive amounts of income. But the question is, who’s the right investor? If you think rationally, the right answer is: the one who walked away with more money.
It’s just a must to have a degree of risk tolerance as a sports bettor. If you’re always making low-value bets because you just want to win the game, it’s going to catch up with you.
The bottom line is not all wins are obviously good bets, and not all losses are poor bets. The more plus-money bets you have, the more you can lose while you’re still winning money.
3 – They Lay off Occasionally
Often, after doing your homework and looking at the numbers, you just don’t come to a conclusion – and that’s all right! Part of being a good gambler is understanding when to hold back. As Kenny Rogers said, “Know when to fold it.”
You should be selective when making your picks, and not throw money on a game simply because it’s available. Recognize that there’s no penalty for laying off. If there’s one thing that is certain, it’s that there will be endless games to play in the future. As much as winning money is the focus of sports betting, not losing money is a close second. You have to play to win, but you don’t lose if you don’t play.
One way to determine whether or not to make a bet is to assess your confidence in the game. Are you making a bet because you truly believe in it, or are you making a bet because you feel like you have to?
4 – They Track Results
Nice, attentive bankroll management is perhaps the single most important thing you can concentrate on as a sports bettor.
If you don’t know where your money is going, you’ll never know whether or not your plans are successful. The only way to really know how you’re doing over time is to keep track of your performance.
Each person is different, and the system you use to track your bets, bankroll, and results can be entirely up to you. Whether it’s a notebook pen and paper, an Excel spreadsheet, or an online software specifically built to track bets, there’s a choice out there for everyone.
In addition to helping you manage your money, monitoring your performance will help you see where you’re going to excel and where your plan needs to work. For example, you might find that you’re really profitable when you bet on baseball, but you can’t get out of the red when you bet on soccer. This may mean that you either need to invest more focus and time in your soccer picks, or you just need to go to baseball.
No matter how you do it, just make sure you’ve got a way to chart your plays. You’re not going to run a company without keeping track of cash flow, and you shouldn’t gamble without keeping track of it.
5 – They Focus on Long-Term Gains
Continuing your market analogy, your career betting is going through good times and poor times. The rollercoaster ride isn’t for everybody, but those who know it will stay on even when it feels like they’re never going to win another bet.
When you’re going through a losing streak, it may be tempting to throw a large sum of money around, trying to win something back quickly. The truth is that this sometimes leads to even greater losses and can place you in severe financial jeopardy.
Part of being a good gambler is simply hanging around before luck turns to your advantage. If you’re spending your bankroll looking to get rich-quick, that’s an unsustainable tactic that’s likely to crash.
Develop betting patterns that favor a long-term strategy and put yourself in a position to be competitive.
Conclusion
If you assume that the difference between a good sports bettor and a poor sports bettor is simply chance, you won’t be profitable. Since the margins between winning and losing money are so tiny, it ‘s important to do all you can to ensure consistent success.
Follow these tips that I’ve set out in this post, even if it’s only a few weeks away, and see if it helps you take your plan to the next level.