How To Study Sports Betting

If not, then before you tackle a specific betting system and/or strategy, make sure you understand the concepts below, and maybe keep our Sports Betting Glossary page open while you study. It is the first step in becoming a successful sports. Solid betting research should always form the foundation of any serious sports betting system. Academic Research Papers on Sports Betting. A sizable body of literature examining the “efficiencies of the sports betting marketplace” already exists. We examined some of the better known works in hopes of educating sports.

To most sports gamblers, a professional bettor seems to have a perfect life. They wager on sports for a living, make their own hours, and earn serious profits.

That said, professional sports gambling may seem like a glorious career. However, it actually involves a long and slow climb to the top.

This guide discusses the realistic points of the path towards becoming a success when betting on sports. It also covers the small edges and long hours that gamblers must put it into turning pro.

Professional Sports Bettors Deal With Small Edges

When the general population envisions an expert sports bettor, they think of somebody who makes thousands of dollars with every wager.

They probably also picture a gambler who just can’t seem to lose night after night. The reality, though, is much different than this.

Instead, they have a small edge that they exploit through large bets.

Many sports gamblers consider themselves successful if they win 50% of their wagers at -110 odds. Of course, gamblers can win more far more bets against the sportsbooks if they back heavy favorites (e.g. -300 or better).

But -110 is a nice measuring stick for how successful you are in terms of win-loss percentage. Even if you win 50% of the time at these odds, though, you still won’t be making profits.

After all, you need to take the juice into account. A bookmaker takes 10% from the losing side in a -110 wager, meaning a 50% win rate won’t get it done.

Some handicappers claim they correctly guess over 60% of their sports betting picks. However, no handicapper or professional sustains such a win rate in the long run.

At best, one can only expect to be successful on 55% of their bets long term. This win rate certainly isn’t the 80% mark that many would envision for a pro.

You Can’t Expect to Win Big With a Small Bankroll

You won’t get very far if you have a 53% to 55% win rate and are only placing $10 bets. You can’t even earn a dollar profit from each wager at this rate.

You need to exploit your long-term edge with big bets in order to make serious profits.

Here’s an example on how much you might win as a lower-level pro:

• You place $2,000,000 worth of bets throughout the year.
• You win 54% of your wagers at -110 odds.
• 2,000,000 x 0.54 = $1,080,000 in winnings
• 2,000,000 x 0.46 = $920,000 in base losses
• 920,000 x 0.1 (juice) = $92,000 in juice paid
• 920,000 + 92,000 = $1,012,000 in total losses
• 1,080,000 – 1,012,000 = $68,000 profit on the year.

Unless you strictly bet point spreads, most profitable opportunities that you find aren’t going to be at exactly -110 odds. But I keep referring to these odds because they make for the simplest examples.

You also need to capitalize with large wagers as well. You can only place these big bets if you have the bankroll to do so.

You Must Build Your Skills & Bankroll

Sports gambling definitely isn’t something that you jump right into and immediately conquer. Instead, it requires you to put long hours into the matter.

You’re most likely not going to win right away. Therefore, you want to study general sports betting strategy while slowly increasing your bankroll at the same time.

You also need to work on your handicapping skills.

This way, you won’t lose too much money if your betting skills aren’t yet up to par.

All the while, you should also be slowly adding to your bankroll. This process involves saving money and using it to build your gambling funds.

You probably don’t have $50,000 or $100,000 just sitting around for gambling purposes. But you can build up to this amount through a combination of steady investments and improving your skills.

Eventually, You Need to Increase Your Bet Sizes

I highly advise that you don’t jump into sports gambling and start placing $1,000 wagers right away. Eventually, though, you want to up your bet sizes to make more money.

With a large enough bankroll, you may even theoretically earn thousands of dollars per wager.

Of course, you want that bankroll to back up those huge bets.

Otherwise, the volatility could ruin your betting career.

Therefore, you should put serious consideration into your bankroll size. Here’s an example:

• You want to place $500 bets.
• You also want a bankroll with at least 100 units to survive the volatility.
• You’ll risk 1-3 units on each match, depending upon how confident you are.
• 500 x 100 = 50,000
• You should start with at least $50,000 (100 units at $500 apiece).

Can You Grind From a Low Roller Into a Pro Bettor?

If you’re like most amateur online bettors, you’ll probably start with a $50 or $100 deposit. These amounts give you just enough money to make several bets on the games you watch.

However, you may also have aspirations of turning your small bankroll into a fortune someday.

The odds are definitely against you depositing $100 and eventually becoming a top pro. Then again, though, everybody has to start somewhere.

The reason why most sports bettors feel this way comes down to two aspects:

• They fail to put the work into strategy and handicapping.
• They exercise poor bankroll management.

Sure, everybody who sets out on the road towards professional gambling blames bad luck or external factors for their failures. In reality, though, the average bettor is lazy and impatient.

They don’t want to put an hour into handicapping a single bet. They want to put five minutes into handicapping 12 wagers and pray that they’ll win most of the bets.

Furthermore, the typical sports gambler doesn’t wish to grind their way up towards larger wagers. They want to quickly increase their bet sizes and take shots at the big time.

Long story short, it’s possible to go from a small initial deposit to becoming a professional gambler. But you also need discipline, patience, and steady investments into your bankroll.

Most gamblers aren’t willing to make these sacrifices. That said, it can sometimes feel impossible grinding up towards pro status.

Tips for Starting on the Path to Becoming a Pro

As discussed throughout this post, you’re not going to become a professional bettor overnight. But you can at least get started on the right path by following the tips below.

Save Up for a Starting Bankroll

A $100 bankroll isn’t going to help you become a professional gambler. Even a $1,000 bankroll won’t do the trick.

You need a sizable bankroll so that you can make large bets and survive potential losing streaks. The amount needed all varies based on how much you want to get out of sports betting.

Of course, you don’t have to put your betting activities on hold just because you don’t have a small fortune.

Instead, you can learn the ropes by making small bets while slowly adding to your bankroll on the side. If you save up enough money, you’ll eventually be able to become a serious pro.

Break Your Bankroll Down Into Units

Most professionals don’t look at their bets in terms of dollars. Instead, they break their bankrolls down into units.

If you normally wager $100 per bet, then your unit size will be $100.

Of course, you’ll likely bet more than $100 when you feel extremely confident about an outcome. Therefore, you might risk 2-3 units in these situations.

In any a case, here’s an example on how to break your bankroll down into units:

• You have a bankroll worth $75,000.
• You want 100 units.
• 75,000 / 100 = 750
• Each unit size will be worth $750.

Narrow Your Focus

You might be tempted to bet on multiple markets. After all, wagering on a variety of sports is more entertaining than just one or two.

But the goal here is mastery. You stand a much better chance of making profits someday if you truly know a market.

Going further, you should also pay attention to a specific division rather than constantly trying to scout an entire league. If you know one division extremely well, then you’ll be an expert on matches involving that division.

Never Stop Studying

Sports betting is fun because you may never truly master it. You could dedicate a lifetime to this pursuit and still get fooled by the bookies sometimes.

That said, you have lots of room to grow with betting. If you truly dream of becoming a professional, you should constantly be studying general strategies and handicapping tips.

As long as you never stop researching advice, you’ll improve over time. Improve enough, and you could very well make a nice living off of sports gambling.

Conclusion

Sports gambling may seem like a quick path to riches for skilled bettors. But in reality, it’s a long journey that involves lots of planning and patience.

You can’t go from zero to 60 and expect to win big right away. Instead, you should grind your way up the ladder while slowly adding money to your bankroll.

With this approach, you can improve your handicapping efforts while also building your gambling funds. You should also steadily increase your bet sizes—especially as you develop an advantage.

Many of us enjoy a bet on sports, but few fully research enough about what to do to win at sports betting in the long term. Casual sports gamblers will often bet on the team they follow, or bet on who they think is the better team, without considering several other important factors.

In this article, I’m going to go through some key strategy points you need to know to increase your chances of winning and help you to master sports betting.

1. Understand value

The number one mistake that losing sports bettors make is not properly considering the odds that are being offered. When deciding on their bets, they simply try to work out who will win, and then bet on that team regardless of the odds on offer.

Let’s use an example: Say Spain are playing Scotland in soccer. The vast majority of people will think ‘Oh, Spain are going to win this game easily so I’ll bet on them. Scotland have no hope’.

On the surface of things, that seems correct, but this shouldn’t necessarily be the way to look at things. Betting on the less likely winner could actually be a great idea. Let me explain how value betting works.

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What is a Value Bet?

A value bet is a kind of bet where the odds being offered are higher that the probability of an outcome happening.

Imagine you could get 10/1 on Scotland winning, would you consider it a good bet then? What about 20/1? Of course you would probably have a little bet on Scotland then, because the odds represent better value. Every match-up has odds that represent the real chance of the event outcome happening, and if you can get better odds than this, then you’re making a bet which will make you money in the long run.

In our example, you might expect Scotland to beat Spain maybe 1 time out of 10, meaning that if you get odds greater than 9/1, you should consider making the bet. To put this into context, here’s how these two teams in the example have fared head-to-head:

The concept of making the bet which represents good value (and not simply betting on who you think is going to win) is one of the most difficult concepts for amateur sports bettors to accept.

So now that you know that you need to find bets that represent value, how do you go about finding good value bets? The first step is to convert the odds on offer into implied probability.

Let’s look at some examples. If you’re being offered 2/1 (3.0 in decimal odds), simply put the bottom number over the sum of the top and bottom numbers and convert this to a percentage to get the implied probability. So, 1/3 = 33.3%. Taking another example, 7/4 would convert to 4/11 = 36.3%.

If you think the probability of the event outcome that you’re betting on exceeds that which is implied by the odds, then you have a good value bet and should consider putting some money on it.

Let’s say you think that there’s a 60% chance that the Giants will beat the Patriots, and the odds on offer are evens (1/1; implied probability 50%), then for every dollar you bet on the game, you can expect to make 20c profit on average.

Value bets exist because bookmakers can get it wrong, or perhaps they might adjust odds to make them more appealing. Either way, you can take advantage of them.

2. Do the research

Another critical aspect that you need to master if you want to win at sports betting is to come up with the probabilities that you need to compare with the odds the bookmakers are offering. The most effective way to do this is through dedicated research.

If basketball is your sport and you’re weighing up a game or deciding which team you think will cover the spread, you need to factor a number of points into your decisions. Things like whether each team on a winning/or losing streak; results of previous games between the teams; individual player match-ups; injuries etc.

You can go into a huge amount of statistical detail if you want to, and many professional sports bettors keep very detailed logs and analyse teams and players in minute detail in order to come up with their bets. The great thing about the internet age is that all of the stats are at your fingertips on sites like footballpredictions.net which provides detailed analysis on soccer matches and betting markets. In order to get up to speed it will pay to make the time to access available resources, then read and absorb the relevant information (stats and news).

3. Don’t spread yourself too thin

If you want to consistently win at sports betting, you’re also usually better off sticking to one or two sports maximum so you can study them in detail. This gives you a better chance to gain an edge over the bookmakers and make some money. The deeper, more specialised knowledge will work to your benefit.

It’s also important to keep the long-term profit goal in mind, as short-term losses courtesy of some freakish bad luck can be discouraging. The probability of success will be higher by keeping your knowledge sharp and up-to-date. So, better to stick to what you know unless you are particularly knowledgeable in several sports.

4. Take advantage of special offers

Many bookmakers have special offers, and often these are featured on major sporting events. For example, make sure that you are aware of things like current money back specials. These are far more common for UK and Europe serving bookmakers than for US books, but they represent another opportunity for you to pick out winning bets.

For example, Paddy Power who like to show their Irish patriotism might make an offer like ‘Money back on all Irish players if Rory McIlroy wins the US Masters’. The effect of these offers can often be the difference between a good bet and a bad one, so study them and hard and do the maths on them to see if they’re worthwhile!

5. Make fewer selections

Everyone loves it when a 6-fold accumulator comes off because the odds are always going to be very high. However, if you want to develop a consistent strategy for winning at sports betting, you will be more likely to do much better with single bets.

You stand a much higher chance of winning with singles and punters often overlook this fact. The fact is that bookmakers lose the most on single bets, so small really can be beautiful in the quest to make a profit. We recommend keeping any multiple selections to 3 or perhaps 4 at the most and all at reasonably low odds.

The chances of multiple results all coming in on the same bet are slimmer with each one added. That said, where the option for cashing out is available, it should be considered. That’s why it is critical to keep an eye on bets in progress.

6. Know the best sports betting odds

As mentioned previously, the vast majority of people don’t understand the concept of ‘value’ when it comes to sports betting and therefore don’t pay enough attention to getting the best odds. Naturally, bookies are competitive and often provide odds that are fairly close to each other, but some are more competitive than others overall. We’re continually monitoring betting sites for our reviews and here is the shortlist of the sportsbooks with the consistently best odds:

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7. Understand less common markets

It can sometimes happen with sports betting that you may think that you’ve won but then you check the bet results to find that it lost on some ‘technicality’. It clearly pays to know what the technicalities of each bet market are, as they might influence your decision in what to bet on.

Take soccer betting, for example. In knockout cup competitions where extra time may be invoked, some win markets are restricted to the win “in 90 minutes” but you need to make sure you know that beforehand. Many a punter has celebrated an extra time or penalties win only to discover that they have actually lost the bet.

Another one to watch out for is ‘half time/full time’ versus ‘to win both halves’. For the half time/full time bet on, a specified team must be winning at half time as well as full time. Obviously.

In the ‘to win both halves’ market, a team needs to win the first half as well as the second half as if they are separate bets. The team can’t go 2-0 up in the first half and then go on to win 3-2. Or even if it stays at 2-0, the bet does not win. Just keep aware of these nuances to avoid disappointment.

8. Never bet on hope

Sports Betting Study

We’ve all done it, but know that it’s wrong. The team that you support desperately needs a win and you decide to back them. It’s generally no way to beat the bookies, though. They thrive off bets like that! Going with your heart might feel like the dutiful thing to do but after too many disappointments, some get to the point where they will not even bet on their own teams. However, we feel that going to that extreme takes some of the fun away from sports betting.

How To Study Sports Betting Websites

Rather than not bet on your team at all, look for a more measured approach. Take a step back and assess the actual or more likely probabilities before taking the plunge with your cash. You might not be able to stomach betting on your team losing but perhaps there are other more obscure markets available that can give you some money even if they lose. That’s generally where the smarter money is.

These pointers are designed as a general guide to assist with increasing the chances of winning at sports betting. Of course, no system is completely reliable so proceed with caution. Good luck with your selections.

Sports Betting 101

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