Professional Sports Betting Strategy
If your sports betting strategy involves consistently backing outcomes which are overpriced, you will make money in the long-run. Let’s explain in simple terms using the above example. If we are betting on Chelsea to win at 2.50, and we believe the true probability is 50% or 2.0, then over 10 bets the following will happen to £1 stakes. Money Management/Bankroll Management. When you are betting on sports you should always set.
- Professional Sports Betting Strategy Tactics
- Best Sports Betting Strategy
- Professional Sports Betting Picks
- The average professional bettor wins somewhere around 53% to 55% of their wagers at -110. 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.
- How to Become a Professional Sports Bettor. By Loot, Sports Handicapper, Lootmeister.com. The pros are the bettors who make the money in this business. They have the power to move lines and are the real movers-and-shakers in sports betting. Let’s see if we can find some things within the profile of a professional sports bettor that we can can.
Making money betting on sports can be tough, but there are a lot of sports bettors who consistently win, and there are even a lot of professional bettors who make a good living off of sports betting. On this page you will find sports betting strategy and tips to help you become one of the winning bettors.
Below I talk about the basic sports betting strategies for beginner bettors, but if you are more experienced you can check out the advanced sports betting strategy articles towards the bottom of this page.
The Basics To Sports Betting Strategy
In order to help yourself make money or a profit from sports betting there are a couple of basic strategies or tips you will want to understand and follow. None of these sports betting strategies are secrets by any means, but following them will help you win money betting on sports.
The bettors who don’t follow any of these strategies are often referred to as “squares” and those are the type of bettors that the sportsbooks will make their profits from.
#1 Money Management/Bankroll Management
When you are betting on sports you should always set aside a certain amount of money, which we refer to as your “bankroll”, in which you can afford to lose. Like with any type of gambling, you never want to bet betting on sports with money you cannot afford to lose. Set aside a certain amount of money that you can use for your bankroll for the week, the month, or the season. A general sports betting strategy for money management is to only make bets with 1%-5% of your bankroll. For example, if your bankroll for the NFL season was $1,000 you would be making $10-$50 bets on each NFL game you wanted to bet on. It is also very important that you do not chase your loses with bigger bets. It is common for some sports bettors to be down money and feel in order to win it back they need to increase the size of their bets. This is putting yourself in the wrong mindset and will often lead to you losing even more money. Work with the size of your bankroll, and look to slowly increase it over the length of the season.
Here’s a video going over Bankroll Management strategies for sports betting:
#2 Bet Sober and Don’t Go on Tilt
Although betting while sober seems like common sense, you’d be surprised how many people bet on sports under the influence. Is it a coincidence that the Las Vegas casinos offer free alcoholic drinks while you are gambling? I don’t think so. I don’t want to sound like your mother here, but betting while under the influence will impair your judgement and should definitely be avoided if you want to become a winning sports bettor.
The second part of this tips is “Don’t Go on Tilt”. Going on tilt or “tilting” is a commonly referred to term with poker players and basically means letting your emotions take over, which often leads to bad decisions. If you are angry or upset at something, such as a couple bad beats with your sports bets, you shouldn’t be placing any more bets. Take a break, go for a walk, get your mind clear before you start making anymore sports betting picks.
#3 Do Your Homework
This is maybe the most important sports betting strategy. You will always want to do your research before placing your bets. Although going with your hunch when betting your favorite sport may work some of the time, in the long run it will not lead to you winning money betting on sports. In order to profit from sports betting you will need to research, study, and do your homework for each pick you make. Look at stats, find trends, create sports betting systems, analyze past games – basically do everything you could possibly do to ensure you have value in your pick before you place your wager.
#4 Line Shopping
A very big step to becoming a winning sports bettor is to make sure you are shopping for the best lines. What this means is that you will have to have an account at a couple of different online sportsbooks and when you are ready to make a bet on a certain team or outcome you check the different sportsbooks and find which book is offering the best line for you (this ties in with our advanced how to find max value article). For example, if you are looking to bet on the New England Patriots on a 7 point spread, you would want to check a couple different sportsbooks to see if any of them are offering the Patriots at 6.5 points, or at the very least find the best price you can get them at 7 points at. Over the course of a sport betting season you can win yourself a lot of money from shopping the lines that would otherwise would not be one. Line shopping is definitely one of the best sports betting strategies used by winning sports bettors. To see a list of sportsbooks we recommend signing up for visit our Online Betting Sites section.
I’ve created a line shopping video and posted it on YouTube (seen below):
Professional Sports Betting Strategy Tactics
#5 Avoid Buying Points
Avoid falling into “square” tendencies such as buying favorites down or underdogs up. For example, some bettors always feel the need to buy an NFL favorite of -3.5 down to -2.5. The sportsbooks are smart enough to charge more juice to do this, mathematically making it a bad strategy. The same goes with buying an NFL underdog from +2.5 to +3.5 for example. In 99% of cases I would advise against it. Check out the video I made below about buying points on NFL underdogs.
Other Sports Betting Strategies and Myths
Above are the four main basic strategies you will want to follow in order to become a winning sports bettor, but there are a couple of other tips you can use to help you win money.
For one, you can try following a sports handicapper who is using a proven sports betting system. Be careful of scammers out there though. If they don’t show their past records long term plus proof I would pass, and in most cases I wouldn’t be paying for picks at all.
An old sports betting strategy is to bet on home underdogs. The theory is that teams are usually more inspired to play at home, and they will often not fold if they are down like they may when on the road. Betting home dogs in the past could have made you money, but this isn’t true as much anymore. You can read the current betting market article to learn why.
The last tip I have for you is to try and place your bets at the right time. With lines shifting from the time they are posted to the time the game starts, you will want to get your bet in at the time when you are getting the best price. Predicting line movements is extremely hard but it is worth looking into. Check out the video below that I made titled “When To Place Your Bets”.
Advanced Sports Betting Strategy Articles
» How to Place a Bet
» How to Win at Sports Betting
» Sports Betting Math
» Teaser Betting Strategy
» Prop Betting Strategy
» How to Get Max Value When Betting
» Future Betting Strategy
» NFL Bye Week Betting Strategy
» Parlay Betting Strategy
» Pleaser Betting Strategy
» Sweetheart Teaser Betting Strategy
» Current Betting Market
» How to Research Your Bet
» Mistakes You Need to Avoid
» Things Beginners Need to Know
» Win/Loss vs Value
Sports bettors all around the world are constantly on the lookout for Sports Betting Strategies That Work. Everyone seem to have their own wagering secrets and tips that they use to beat the book, but the truth is that very few bettors can make money sports through sports betting consistently. So which strategies and systems can you trust?
First of all; the best strategies have shown documented long-term profits. It’s also important to stay with the proven strategy even when hitting a rough patch and not panic and abandon it at the first sign of a losing streak.
All successful sports bettors know that it’s impossible to win all wagers and continue using their methods without ever second guessing them. The key to winning year after year is staying consistent and disciplined and exercise good bankroll management. So let’s take a look at three strategies that have proven to give sportsbooks nightmares over the years.
Betting Against the Public
Betting against the public is without a doubt one of the best strategies for sports wagering, especially when betting on sports like the NFL due to its popularity.
Sportsbooks are very good at predicting what teams are going to be the most heavily bet by the public, and they adjust their lines accordingly to steer bettors the way they want. This gives sharps the opportunity to fade the public and bet the opposite side.
The most popular teams for casual sports bettors are those that get the most media coverage, so remember to always stay unbiased and ask yourself why you like one team over another. Try to block out how much a team is featured on the radio or television and find unique angles.
HOW TO WIN AT SPORTS BETTING
Handicapping Injuries Etc.
Serious sports bettors are fully aware that offseason, preseason and in-season moves all will have an impact on the games no matter the sport.
Did a team lose a star player to free agency, and if so, how does it affect the dynamic of the roster? Did a team hire a new head coach and how will that move affect the players?
How will injuries to certain key players impact a team’s performance, and can they overcome the loss due to good coaching or roster depth? Is there a battle for a certain position in training camp that could boost players’ performances and make the team stronger than a season ago?
These are all scenarios that no doubt will happen over the course of a season. You will then also need to take into consideration how the sportsbook will handle the new information as they seek to adjust the lines to the public and the sharps.
One Trick Ponies = Winners
While it’s tempting to bet College Football & Basketball, NBA, NFL etc. all at once and sweating 10+ tickets across multiple sports on any given Sunday, note that the most successful you will ever meet are the ones who specialize in one or two sports at a time.
Sharp bettors know that they can’t keep tabs on everything about every single sport and will instead narrow their focus. This is particularly true for College Football and College Basketball as staying on top of hundreds of college teams (often with limited information) in addition to the pros is near impossible.
Best Sports Betting Strategy
Specialize in a particular sport where you feel you can have a significant edge, even if it means less wagers, and watch the profits pile up.