Betting on sports is a unique opportunity in the gambling world. Unlike Blackjack, Roulette, and Slot Machines, it does not have a built-in house edge that can never be overcome. No matter how good of a Blackjack player you are, you will still lose 51% of the time over the long term (unless you’re counting cards, of course). It simply cannot be avoided. Additionally, you are not playing against nearly infinite long odds as with lotteries. If approached as an investment, with a cool head and disciplined manner, it can and will be profitable for you. Precision Plays has put together the following primer for sports betting. These are the methods we employ in our wagering and we have shown a profit for our clients each and every year since 2001.
Never chase your losses. Your sports picks will lose and periodically several times in a row. There’s no avoiding it, but by doubling up your next bet or following some progressive scheme where the stakes constantly increase, your losses will only mount. Figure out why you lost and learn from it. Sometimes the reason can’t be determined, but often it can.
Establish a fixed bankroll, unit size, and fiscal period. For example, $1000 to wager over the course of an NFL season. Your unit size should not be more than 2% of your bankroll. In this example, you would bet $20 on each football pick. After 50 bets you would have turned over your bankroll ($20 X 50=$1000). At this point, you can either cash out any money above $1000 as profit or roll it over into your bankroll and increase your unit size accordingly.
Never vary your unit size lightly, unless it is to decrease it. It should ALWAYS be tied to your bankroll. Precision Plays occasionally decreases our unit size on certain bets we feel may cash, but are also riskier (and therefore more profitable). Decreasing unit size should be temporary and rare. A fixed unit is always best.
Never vary your bankroll lightly. It should be an amount you can lose with no financial hardship at all. The best way to increase your bankroll is with profits.
See your fiscal period through before varying it. In the above example, we gave an entire football season as the fiscal period. It does not matter what it is – a half season, a month, even a week.
Several things may happen regarding the fiscal period and these are the best responses:
1. You reach your turnover point before the fiscal period ends.
Simply remove your profits or increase your bankroll and unit size accordingly and continue on to its end.
2. You’ve reached the end of the fiscal period with a loss.
Continuing with the same example, you’ve reached the end of football season and have $800 left out of your original $1000. Our recommendation is to go into the next fiscal period with the smaller bankroll and unit size. In this case, a bankroll of $800 and unit size of $16. Be sure to study your sports picks to determine why they lost, if possible. Never increase your bankroll, unless you show a profit. Making solid sports picks is a learning curve and it is better to lose a little money while learning and improving than a lot.
3. You’ve lost your entire bankroll before the fiscal period ends.
Stop. The fiscal period is there to prevent you from getting into financial trouble. Our recommendation if this happens is to temporarily quit betting your sports picks with real money and make virtual bets, using all of the above methods, until you can turn a virtual ‘profit’. Remember, learning curve – better to lose less money while learning than more. Even better to lose none.
Fixed bankroll, fixed unit size, fixed fiscal period and the discipline these instill are what is called Money Management and it is absolutely essential to being a successful sports bettor and avoiding financial troubles. Money Management is equally as important as studying stats and trends and making solid plays. Some would argue it is even more important.
Shop for odds and lines and get the best one for your pick. A point or half-point in the line can be the difference between winning your play and losing it, and a few cents here and there will add up over the years. I calculated this during the baseball season of 98, noting every time I found better odds and how many cents. Had I played the first odds, I would have profited less by $580. Simply shopping around created an improvement of 2 percentage points in profit for that season.
Make solid sports picks, do your homework, and keep detailed records. There is no perfect way of picking a good play. I know over a dozen professional sports gamblers and each has a different method that works. Some focus exclusively on line and odds movements. Some on long-term trends, some on seasonal and situation trends, others on performance stats, and various combinations of these methods. All have demonstrated success in their wagering. So there is no secret ‘system’ or method. Try everything, seek new ways. Once you have demonstrated a profit over the long term, you’ve found the way to do it right.
Avoid the two great myths of sports betting: ‘Vegas’ and ‘the Public’. You yourself are the public. It is made up of, yes, dweebs without the first clue, but also sharp players, decent players and players in between. It is a spectrum. ‘Vegas’ doesn’t exist in the sense of some secret group of geniuses setting ‘traps’, and knowing something about a matchup that you don’t. It is simply an odds marketplace. This marketplace does NOT gamble. It is influenced entirely by supply and demand, like any marketplace. If there is demand for a certain product, say, Oreo cookies, its price will increase, until the demand levels off. If there is great demand, its price will increase greatly. At the same time, Oreo’s competitor, Fig Newtons, will lower its price appropriately, until the marketplace achieves balance. That is how the lines and odds market works.
‘Vegas’ is the inhuman marketplace governed by the laws of supply and demand and ‘the Public’ is simply the millions of consumers setting the prices – odds and lines – by their choices. Consuming some bets (favorites) at a higher rate than others (underdogs).
Remember, the dog is there to win the game. Don’t buy a product simply because it is more popular than another (Yankees -300, Ray-bans $100 a pair). Perhaps another product, a much cheaper one, will work just as well (Devil Rays +190, Cheap Sunglasses $9.95).