Being a successful sports bettor is a dream that many aspire to, but many are put off by the risks, the losing streaks and the ‘stigma’ associated with sports betting. However, we’re here to tell you that being a successful sports bettor is an achievable aim, providing you work hard, stay disciplined and stick to several key principles.
- Diversify
This is such an important aspect of sports betting. In the simplest sense, it means that betting your entire of your bankroll on one game is a sure fire way to lose in the long term. It is not a sustainable approach, and will not make you a successful sports bettor. Instead, you should look to focus your sports betting on more than one area. Don’t look and research only the English Premier League, instead, get information on 5, 6… 10… 20 leagues and lower your average stakes proportionately. If you can find 10 sources of information for 10 different leagues, then use them all. By doing this, the inevitable losing runs from each league will be absorbed by the winnings in the other 9 leagues. This lowers risk significantly. Think about volume of bets, and the stake in relation to your bankroll. - Think Long Term
So you’ve won your first 3 bets, that’s great. Does that mean you’ve cracked it and will be a hugely profitable sports bettor? Probably not (necessarily). Over the course of a month, quarter, year or longer, you’ll inevitably have some hot streaks, and some losing streaks too, which is why you need to think about the long term gains. You balance will fluctuate heavily from time to time, but so long as the overall trend is positive, that’s all that matters. People sometimes go 2 or 3 months making losses, only for it to balance out with 2 or 3 winning months right after. - Accountability
A short statement here, but equally as important. Make sure you keep accurate records of your sport betting activities. Conveniently ‘forgetting’ about last night’s losing bet won’t fool anyone, especially not your bank balance, so keep a detailed track record so you can see what you’re doing well, and what is pulling your profits down. - Remain Impartial
To make a profit over a long period of time can be very tough. It becomes ever more difficult if you can’t remain impartial. Most people support a club team, and almost everyone will support a national team, but it’s important to use your head and not your heart when betting on games involving ‘your team’. It can work two ways: you could give bias towards your team, increasing their perceived chance of success – or – you could be extremely pessimistic during a bad run or after a player injury/suspension. This needs to be eliminated from your betting before you can hope to take it to the next level. A successful sports bettor rules with their head, using the statistics and data available to them, not with their emotions. - Use Reliable Sources
Arguably the most important aspect of becoming a successful sports bettor is being able to know where you can get good quality information at an affordable cost. There is a lot of information out there for you to analyse and digest, but this takes a lot of time so ideally you would find experts in each league/sport you wanted to include in your portfolio. If they give you solid information, you can gain an edge over the bookmaker and ultimately turn a profit.
Obviously, the above factors aren’t the holy grail of sports betting (we doubt there is such a thing), but by using these principles, you can certainly begin to look at sports betting as a more serious investment, with more potential for decent profits and a more sustainable income.
Next week, we will talk about the numbers a little more, understanding odds, maths, value and a few other things that will hopefully give you a better insight in to the world of sports betting.
