Professional Sports Betting Strategy
Do you believe you have the ability to go from a novice sports bettor to a professional? Well, there are several different factors that separate the pros from the average Joe. I’m going to cover a few of those factors in this article to show you how the pros go about making a living betting on sports.
Obviously, the pros are betting a lot more than the average Joe. They are almost solely banking on making a living from betting on sports. The average Joe is just betting for the sake of action and having money on the biggest games. You’ll never see a pro just betting for the sake of action.
Money Management
- Expert Sports Betting Tips. Professional sports picks from a hand-picked world-class roster with 50+ of the best professional sports handicappers in the world. This is your one-stop-shop where you’ll find professional sports bettors with guaranteed sports picks and predictions to bet on.
- Manage Your Bankroll and Create a Unit Size. It’s integral that, as a sports bettor, you decide how.
With SBD’s comprehensive guide, you too can master the betting strategies used by the pros. Learn to shop for the best lines and make the most of time-tested strategies to get an edge on the public and your sportsbook. Sports betting is hard, and we want to see you get the best possible return on.
This is the single-most important factor to becoming a pro. Setting aside a specific amount of money, known as your ‘bankroll’, will keep your gambling on a budget. Your bankroll is the amount of money you can afford to lose. You never want to have your bankroll be your life savings.
Once you have your bankroll established, you never want to be more than 5% of your bankroll on a given game. In fact, most pros would only bet up to 2% of their bankroll on one game. As your bankroll steadily increases, the size of your bets will increase, but you should never raise your bets if your bankroll isn’t increasing at the same time.
If your bankroll is only $1,000, then you should not be betting more than $50 on a given game. At 2%, you would only be betting $20 per game. If your bankroll is $10,000, then your max bet would be $500 if you are wagering 5%. At 2%, you would be betting $200 per game.
Mindset
There is a common expression out there in gambling known as “going on tilt”. This is especially a common phrase in poker, but it also applies to sports betting. It means that after you have suffered a few losses in a row, you go out of your mind and out of your norm and bet more on the next game.
Staying consistent with your bets is very important. You should never chase after your losses, and you should never bet a lot more when you’re winning just because you have more. This goes back to money management, where you only want to bet anywhere from 2% to 5% of your bankroll on a given game. Don’t let your emotions get the best of you.
Line Shopping
This is huge for the pros. They have several different sports books to choose from to make sure they are getting the best lines possible. The average Joe probably uses just one book and doesn’t worry about the lines on a game nearly as much as the pros. Having the best available line at your disposal makes a huge difference.
There are tons of games that are decided by a half a point or one point. So, getting a half-point or a point in your favor over the long-term will certainly be beneficial to your bankroll. I would recommend having a minimum of three different sports books to choose from to maximize your potential profits.
Finding Value
This comes in a variety of different ways. You have to find value in numbers to be a successful sports bettor. One of the biggest ways to find value is to fade the betting public. The public influences the lines more than anything else. They are more likely to want to ride a hot team than to take one that is on an extended losing streak coming in.
If you see a team has covered the spread let’s say four times in a row, then the chances are the public is going to be on that team. This forces oddsmakers to set the line higher than it should be, and there can be value in backing the other team catching more points than they should be.
Handicapping Situations
With the internet today, the entire betting public has all kinds of numbers to sift through. While technical handicapping, which is the handicapping of numbers, is important, it’s not the only thing you should be looking at. The most successful pros will be handicapping situations that the general public doesn’t see.
Situational handicapping is my personal favorite because it has proven to be the best strategy for me over time. There is a human element to every game, and figuring out which team is going to be more motivated is very important. This can be tricky and you can look foolish if it doesn’t play out like you believe it will, but getting a feel for which team will be more motivated is huge.
Let’s say an NFL team is coming off a win over the defending Super Bowl champions. Are they going to come back with the same motivation they played with the next week? The chances are that they are not going to, and as a result they will suffer a ‘letdown’ so to speak.
There are also ‘lookahead’ spots I like to focus in on. We’ll use the last example again. Say a team has won three straight and has the defending Super Bowl champs on deck next week. Well, there’s a very good chance that they’ll be looking ahead to that game rather than focusing on the game at hand.
Another situation to look for is rest. If a team is tired, they likely aren’t to perform at the optimum level. This is huge in NBA as teams sometimes have to play 4 games in 5 days, which is very difficult. If the team they are playing is coming in on at least one day of rest while they are playing a back-to-back, then the team on more rest is likely to give the better effort that night.
Conclusion
These are just a few of the different factors that separate the pros from the average bettor. There are many more out there, and I could go into greater detail, but if you master these five your chances of becoming a pro will greatly increase. Money management, having a clear mindset, and having patience are certainly the three biggest keys. With practice, you’ll be able to find value in games and to avoid jumping on with the public.
Situational handicapping cannot really be taught. It is a learned skill that will come over time simply by studying how games play out in certain situations. Obviously, you’re not in the team’s locker room so you don’t know precisely how they are going to react emotionally to every game. However, you’ll find that more times than not you’ll be right on letdown, lookahead and rest situations once you understand the element of human nature.
Now that almost every state in the country has either legalized sports gambling or started to make a push towards legalizing it, there are more people betting on sports than ever before. They’re making wagers on everything from NFL games to golf matches.
If you’re one of the millions of people placing bets on sports these days, you should do whatever you can to give yourself a decided advantage every time you plop down money on a contest. There are lots of professional sports betting tips that you can use to increase your winnings over time.
By learning how to be a successful sports bettor, you can make sports gambling more fun for yourself and earn more money while betting on sports. Here are seven sports betting tips you should start putting to good use right away.
1. Create a Bankroll for Sports Betting and Stick to It
One of the very first things you should do when you begin betting on sports is come up with a bankroll for yourself. You should set aside a specific amount of money that is devoted to sports betting.
You can then use this bankroll to help decide how much money you’re going to put down on individual sports bets. Each bet that you make should represent a small fraction of your total bankroll.
If, for example, your sports betting bankroll is going to be $100 for this month, you shouldn’t be making $25 bets on games. You’re going to blow through your bankroll too quickly by taking that approach.
Instead, you should bet, say, $5 or, atmost, $10 on games. It’ll help you steadily build up your bankroll with each bet that you make. This is one of the most useful pro sports betting tips of all.
2. Bet on the Sports You Know Best
Nowadays, people who bet on sports can bet on almost any sport they want. Sportsbooks obviously do most of their business by offering lines on NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB games. But they also offer lines on more obscure sporting events, too.
That being said, you shouldn’t get into the habit of simply betting on any old sports if you want to enjoy successful sports betting. Rather, you should bet on the sports that you follow the closest and that you know best.
You shouldn’t feel like you’re flipping a coin when you pick one team or one athlete over another. You should feel like you have enough knowledge to make smart bets when it comes to sports gambling.
3. Keep Tabs on the Latest Lines for Your Preferred Sports All the Time
If you’re the type of sports bettor who places bets on contests five minutes before they start without doing any research into them at all, you’re going to be setting yourself up for failure. You should be monitoring betting lines in the days and even weeks leading up contests so that you’re able to make educated bets.
You should constantly check the latest lines for your preferred sports through a sportsbook so that you know where they stand. You can learn a lot about lines by seeing how they fluctuate over time.
4. Research Contests Ahead of Time Before Placing Bets on Them
In addition to looking at the betting lines for sporting events and monitoring their movement, you should also dig a little deeper into individual contests. It’s important for sports bettors to learn how to research games effectively so that they’re able to make smart picks.
You should carefully consider things like:
- A team’s previous win/loss record against another team
- A team’s previous win/loss record in home/away games
- A team’s previous win/loss record in certain weather conditions
By doing the right amount of research on teams, you might be able to spot trends that will help you figure out which bets to make.
5. Turn to the Pros for Help Making Your Picks
Since sports betting has turned into such a big deal in the U.S., there are a lot of professional sports bettors offering up their services these days. They give away and sell sports picks to those who don’t have time to use all the tips for sports betting listed here.
Visit this website to see how easy it is to get your hands on sports picks from the pros.
6. Maintain a List of Your Sports Betting Wins and Losses
When you bet on sports, it’s impossible to win all your wagers. Even the very best sports bettors only win about 55% of their total bets.
But you can learn a lot about your sports betting tendencies by keeping track of your wins and losses. It’s why you should write every bet you make and take a look back at your wins and losses from time to time to learn from them.
Think about what went wrong when you made losing bets, especially when you find yourself losing a number of bets in a row. It can help you switch up your approach to wagering on sports.
Professional Sports Betting Strategy Strategies
7. Avoid Chasing Your Sports Betting Losses at All Costs
Sports Betting Strategy Pdf
There are inevitably going to be times when it feels like you can’t buy a win when wagering on sports. Cold streaks come with the territory when you’re a sports bettor.
During these times, steer clear of trying to “chase your losses” by putting down bigger bets than usual to cover money you’ve lost. This could very well lead to you blowing through your entire bankroll and then some if you’re not careful.
Of all the professional sports betting tips found here, this one might just be the most important. The last thing you want to do is put yourself into debt because you chased losses when you shouldn’t have.
Let These Professional Sports Betting Tips Serve as Your Sports Gambling Guide
Sports betting is supposed to be fun. But it’s not going to be very much fun if you aren’t winning any money while you’re doing it.
Use the professional sports betting tips that we’ve included here to guide you on your sports gambling adventures. They should help you win more money from now on.
Check out our blog for more sports gambling articles.