Sports betting strategy
Every sports bettor employs some sort of strategy when it comes to wagering money on different sporting events. The question is, what sort of strategy works best? After all, there are sports bettors out there who make a living betting on games, so there must be some sort of system that gives these guys a consistent long-term edge. First thing you need to understand about successful sports betting is that it is a long-term undertaking. It's not roulette in the sense that you can just wager a bunch of money on black or red, double up and ride off into the sunset with the dough. The edges you can secure on individual games are extremely minute. You need to exploit them over and over again in order to make them compound and amount to something of a certain significance. This is why it is extremely important that when you purchase sports betting picks, you do not acquire a single day or single week package, but rather go for the whole 9 yards and get a full season package.
It has been proven statistically that people who purchase such full season packages do much better than those who plan ahead in terms of weeks instead of months. The reason why most square sports bettors fail to stick around for the long run is bankroll management. Bankroll management takes a great deal of patience and understanding of the overall trends, as well as the mechanisms that are at work in sports gambling. Basically, the whole thing works the same way poker does. One has to work hard to find value to begin with, and that value isn't really worth much unless the player doesn't spare the effort to pair it with proper bankroll management. Positive expected value is extremely minimal on each and every individual matchup, even for seasoned handicappers. The reason is a simple one: there just isn't that much room for value in sports betting. Usually the bookmaker kills all value on both sides of the match-up, as that's his job at the end of the day: to balance games as close to 50-50 as possible.
When he is forced to leave value on one side or the other, he does his best to minimize that value. Even when it is there indeed, that value is usually spotted extremely fast by smart bettors who pounce on it right away, and kill it. The bottom line is that because of the extremely flimsy margins, variance - which is usually a friend to most gamblers who play on negative expected value games - becomes your enemy. In order to defeat variance, you need to be around for the long run. This is why most expert bettors advise rookies not to put more than 3% of their bankrolls on the line on any one game. If you want to be on the cautious side, you may want to take that number down to 2%. Those who feel extremely strong about an upcoming game, may bet as much as 5% but never more. Always remember that there are no locks in sports betting and don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise.
Don’t let winning streaks make you too greedy and thus make you bet more than you should on individual games. Don’t chase after your losses either. I know all these things are easy to say and much more difficult to actually accomplish, but they do act as a decent blueprint you should always aim to follow.
Another article you may find of interest is The Biggest Mistakes Gamblers make when Sportsbetting
