#1 Sports Betting Strategy – 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 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 5% of your bankroll. For example, if your bankroll for the NBA season was $1,000 you would be making $50 bets on each NBA game you wanted to bet on. When your bankroll grows to $2,000, then you can increase your bets to $100. It's 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 the need to increase the size of their bets in order to win it back in a hurry. This is putting yourself in the wrong mindset and will generally lead to losing even more money. Work with the size of your bankroll, and look to slowly increase it over the length of the season. If it happens fairly fast, that's a nice bonus.
#2 Sports Betting Strategy – 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 sports betting strategy says “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 Sports Betting Strategy – 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 Sports Betting Strategy – 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. 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.
