Patricia
Bet the farm! Americans wagered $7.6 billion on the Super Bowl in 2022. More and more states are legalizing sports betting, and more and more Americans are making money off of it.
If you love sports and want to make money off of it, you should figure out how to win at sports betting. Unfortunately, winning your bets isn’t easy. You need to acquaint yourself with a few tips before you venture to a casino.
What do you need to study before you make your bets? How should you manage your gambling money? How can you handle changes in your luck?
Answer these questions and you will be a master at how to get good at betting. Here are seven essential betting tips.
1. Pick a Team
You can bet on nearly any sport in sports betting. But it’s a good idea to focus your efforts on one particular team. This lets you research the team in full and pick good opportunities to win a bet.
Study the team’s offensive and defensive strategies, coaches, and backup players. Read the news about your team every day, as an injury can drastically affect what happens. Visit websites like https://www.bookmakersreview.com/sportsbooks/bovada/ and browse sportsbooks that give you the latest updates.
It is okay to put bets on your hometown team, but you may be biased or make emotional decisions. Consider selecting a team in a different conference or division than your hometown. You may also want to select a sport you don’t love, as you’ll be able to make more calculated decisions.
2. Keep Your Expectations Limited
It will take time for you to get good at betting. In the meantime, you may lose a lot of money and spend time researching wagers that don’t work out.
Be prepared to go through downswings and don’t panic if you lose money. Even when you are earning money, you should keep in mind that your bets will eventually go sour. Be conservative and don’t bet more money just because your recent bets have gone well.
Very few people are able to make a living off of sports betting. You should see sports betting as an opportunity to earn a few dollars a week, not thousands of dollars a year.
3. Study the Basics
Do not make any bets until you understand important terms and basic concepts in gambling. Betting odds are written as figures with positive and negative signs in front of them.
A +105 means you must bet $100 to profit $105. A -105 means you must bet $105 for a $100 profit. Positive odds mean that the team you are betting on is the underdog, with longer odds of winning.
The point spread is how many points the winning team must win by. When you bet on the point spread, you need to exceed the spread in order to win your bet. You can bet against the spread and say a team will not score significantly more than their opponent.
You should also learn how to bet with a bookmaker. Each bookie has their own rules, but you generally have to fill out a sheet describing your bet and pay them in cash.
4. Budget Your Betting
You can win big without spending a lot of money. Never gamble with more than 10% of your regular income, and never sell property so you can gamble. Create a separate bank account to store your gambling money and ask a financial advisor to keep an eye on it.
You should make one wager at a time, and that wager should not cost more than 5% of your gambling money. This may sound restrictive, but small bets are easy to track and prevent you from losing too much money at once.
5. Make Simple Bets
Most gamblers make money off of betting on the outcomes of games. They also bet on the point spread, especially if one team is significantly favored over the other.
Start with simple bets on who will win the game. As you develop experience, you can try point spread bets and bets on players you know a lot about.
But do not make parlay bets, as you need to make several simultaneous wagers at once. If you lose one wager, you lose all of your money, which can make parlays very costly. You should also avoid futures bets, as they often involve random variables you can’t control.
6. Document Your Betting
You should keep all of the documents related to your betting. If you filled out a sheet and gave it to your bookie, you should get a copy or take a photograph of it.
You should also keep all of your financial paperwork. Track how much money is going into your gambling account and what your profit has been. If you’re going through a downswing, you should scale back your gambling or transition to another team.
7. Experiment
You can experiment with your sports betting in several ways. Prop bets involve betting on things that do not directly affect the outcome of a game or a player’s performance. Feel free to make a couple of prop bets, wagering on whether someone will get injured or if a commentator will say a particular word.
You can also bet on particular events within your sport. If you bet on the NFL, you can wager on the outcome of the Super Bowl.
Figure Out How to Win at Sports Betting
You can understand how to win at sports betting by focusing on a few concepts. Target one team and learn everything you can about the players. Keep your expectations low, as you may not win money for months.
Study how to make bets and then write a betting budget. Keep your bets small-scale, focusing on the outcome of a particular game. Store the paperwork related to your betting in a binder so you reduce your expenses and experiment with bets.
These tips are just the essentials of sports betting. Read betting guides for experts by following our coverage.
