Getting The Most Out Of Sports Betting

Putting Some Thought Behind Your Picks

Successful sports betting is based upon making superior bets, and this does require at least some thought behind them. This isn’t to say that you can’t do well just going with hunches, if these hunches are based upon some sort of solid subconscious thought processing, or if you have some real psychic ability.

It isn’t likely that you are a good enough psychic to be able to beat the games just based upon that though, although a lot of less successful sports betters bet with such little thought behind their picks that they really need to be psychic to win consistently.

You may do pretty well with your hunches though, although the proof of your skills here will come out if you are willing to try this, and I don’t want to discourage anyone from trying. Keep in mind though that the folks who are truly good at this use far more than just a hunch to decide how they are going to bet.

Up to a certain point, the more thought you put into your picks, the better they will tend to be. There is a point of diminishing return though, where the more time you spend on this, the less of an advantage you will get from the additional time spent, and casual bettors don’t really have that much time or may not want to devote that much time to their picks in the first place.

However I do recommend that you mull over your picks at least decently, and if you want to use the hunch factor as well, which really isn’t a bad idea to be honest, apply your hunches after you’ve made your picks, to further distinguish them.

Don’t Bet Too Often

One of the mistakes that less successful sports bettors make that the pros don’t is in making too many bets. You don’t have to bet all the games, and in fact it’s far better to be more selective. Your picks will be of varying degrees of quality, and it’s simply better to go with the ones that have a higher degree of certainty and avoid those which don’t.

If not for the vig, you’d only have to be right half the time to break even, but the vig is real, and if you’re only right half the time and wrong the other half then you will pay the vig and lose that much per bet. This is not a way to make money, and in fact it’s a sure way to lose it.

This is not meant to discourage you, as skilled bettors have no trouble overcoming the vig, which just means that you have to be right only a small percentage more often than you are wrong to break even. However, this does mean that if a bet is too iffy then you should consider not making it at all.

Those with the most success at this game tend to be pretty selective in fact, and may even just choose a small percentage of available games to bet on, the ones that look the best. I think that at least some of these bettors may be going too conservative here, but overdoing it and betting too many, especially those that you are only a little confident with, is a lot bigger of a problem and should be avoided.

Being more selective with your bets also cuts down on the amount of variance that you will incur, as the higher the percentage that you are right, the less the size of the downward swings that you will incur. This is important as you don’t want to have to deal with bigger downward swings in your bankroll, and if you lose less often, you will then see smaller losing streaks due to bad luck.

Stay Away From Longer Odds

Another thing that the pros tend to do that casual bettors don’t pay enough attention to is keeping the odds fairly stable and avoiding long shots. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you always want to bet favorites, but you don’t want to play too many underdogs either, even though this can look pretty tempting.

Playing longer odds simply increases your variance, and can dramatically increase it if you favor betting underdogs too much. Ideally, the bets should be even up less the juice or vig, like a point spread handicap system provides. So each team has a standard payout of 1:1 generally, and the difference in the outcome is expressed as points one way or the other.

This avoids the long shot syndrome and is in fact ideal, and is why in most sports this is so popular. Those who realize the importance of reducing their downside risk tend to strongly prefer schemes such as this for that very reason.

There will be instances where a certain bet can be very appealing on the side of the underdog, but bets like this should be reserved for these special situations, in other words you should have a good reason to bet them and not just do so out of wanting to make a bigger score on the game.

If you do too much of this you risk dropping more money than you should faster than you should, which is not a good recipe for longevity if you only have a smaller bankroll and limited ability to replenish it. Even if your bankroll is large, you don’t want to see it sink too fast and have to fight your way back just to get where you once were.

Don’t Move Up Too Fast

Like just about everything, it takes time to get good at something, and sometimes sports bettors can go though a period of good luck and think that they are better than they actually are. They then may start betting larger on games, and as their luck normalizes, may end up giving back all their gains and then some.

One of the things about moving up that you always want to keep in mind is that it is not really wise to move up and then have to move down, so you want to be careful when you up your bets. The problem with moving down is that it will take a lot longer to make up for what you lost at the higher betting level, and while this isn’t catastrophic by any means, it still should be avoided.

Moving down also delivers a psychological blow as well, as now you are betting less and that simply isn’t fun, and fun is an important part of the process here. Moving down is indicative of something gone wrong, and indeed, something has if you are forced into a position to need to do this.

So if you move up too fast you may have to move down just to protect your bankroll, and when this happens, it isn’t because you’ve been too successful at the higher betting amount, it is the opposite that happens. So this means that you have had pain inflicted upon you and you now have to go back to where you were and deal with it.

There’s really no way to prevent this entirely, but being too bold here simply invites this to happen more often than it should. So make sure that you are pretty confident that you can handle higher stakes before you make the leap to them.

Moving up can be a very exciting thing though when done properly, as it takes you closer and closer to the promised land of big success and big bucks. Just make sure you do it wisely and not without some real thought.

Taking Advantage Of Freebies

Any time a site offers you something for nothing, they are essentially willing to spend their money on you to make sure that you are happy, so you should pretty much always look to take advantage of these deals.

I wouldn’t go as far as to place bets on something you wouldn’t normally bet with just to take advantage of these deals, but I would definitely consider anything which I do have at least some knowledge of and go with the promotions. The house edge is a small one normally and when they roll out promotions such as this, they not only give it up, they turn it into your favor significantly, and some of these are even no lose propositions, such as getting a free bet if you lose, or getting free bets period.

Speaking of that, Titan Bet, my preferred online betting site, offers lots of these deals, and quite a bit more than your normal online sports betting site in fact. They start you out with some very nice free bets in fact just to try them out. I invite you to take advantage of this by simply clicking on my link to them.