Tips and Strategies for Successful Sports Gaming
Every sports betting fan wants to be able to wave a magic wand and win every bet they place. Sadly, this isn’t how things work.
Even what you consider a dead certain bet can go catastrophically wrong. This is because of the unpredictability of humans and sports events. Any team or player can perform way beyond their expectations on any given day. Similarly, the best teams or players can have an absolute stinker.
Despite this and the luck factor in sports betting, you can still bet smart, manage your bankroll, and increase your chances of a positive outcome. We aren’t guaranteeing you a win, but the eight tips outlined below should help you make the most of your online sportsbook funds and mitigate any losses you make.
- Never Bet 100% of Your Bankroll
It’s frightening how many people regularly bet 100% of their bookmaker’s bankroll and wonder why they have nothing left. You must ALWAYS have a safety buffer and a minimum bankroll amount you want to maintain.
We advise setting this to 25%. Therefore, if you had £150 in your sportsbook account, you would only ever bet a maximum of £112.50 to ensure that there was at least £37.5 left. You have to be disciplined with this!
- Take Advantage of Bonuses & Promotions
All online bookies offer a range of promotions and bonuses for new and existing customers. These are often tailored to specific sports and can be things like free bets, bonus money, or bet boosters. Make sure you claim these promotions and take advantage of them!
Any bonus money or free bets can help maintain your sports betting bankroll, and in the right circumstances, you can do well from the promotions. Just make sure that you carefully read the terms and conditions of the promotions so you understand things like minimum odds, sports market limitations, and wagering requirements.
- Base Your Bets on Analysis, not Emotion
To even have a chance of being a decent sports bettor, you MUST look at stats and analyze the sport beforehand. Look at previous matchups, current team or player form, injury reports, and other available data. The more you know about each matchup you are betting on, the more information your bets become. You eliminate the irrationality of emotive betting and replace it with bets formulated by cold, hard statistics and logic.
Most bookies have a wealth of stats for each match you can bet on. Failing that, all you have to do is do a quick Google search, and you can find info like league tables, player injury reports, and previous results between the teams or players. Take advantage of the vast range of information on the internet!
- Make Your Betting Mainstay Low-Odds Bets
You can take tip 1 a step further and manage the value of bets you make. We understand the desire to make large-value bets, but as discussed, this empties your bankroll quickly. Also, in the case of longevity and profit, it pushes you into an all-or-nothing approach. If you make two large bets, each using 50% of your betting allowance, you’ll take a big hit if they both lose.
In contrast, if you instead made 10 smaller bets, each using 10% of your betting allowance, you’ll have much more flexibility and room for failure. We always advise making smaller bets at a smaller percentage of your overall bankroll. Building on that, ensure that most of your bets (80% or more) are on low-odds wagers – i.e., bets that are as close to a “sure thing” as possible.
- Keep Track of Your Betting History
The best online bookies keep a log of your betting history. You can usually access this by clicking on your account management or betting sections. There is typically a betting history tab with a range of filters to search for specific bet types, bets on specific competitions, etc.
By monitoring your betting history, you can look at which bets worked, which typically failed, and the areas of different sports or markets you have profited from. This allows you to make adjustments and improve your betting strategies in the future.
- Use In-Play Betting to Take Advantage of Match Trends
Live betting is one of the best things you can do to improve your sports betting skills. Live betting sites have dedicated sections where odds change in real-time as the action unfolds. Often, they have live streaming of the event, too. Usually, the full range of bets is available for in-play betting, including props bets and outright bets.
Instead of betting on future bets before the match starts, save your deposit money and jump into the action as the game begins. You can often get a feeling for how the game is progressing and which team or player is playing better. This can allow you to make smart in-play bets that you wouldn’t have thought of if only placing futures bets.
- If You’re Having a Down Day, Walk Away
Emotive betting is the quickest way to empty your bankroll and ruin your day. Similarly, pushing through a losing streak due to the “sunk cost fallacy” can be just as costly.
The sunk cost fallacy is where you believe that by putting in more time, money, and effort into something, you must ultimately get good results. This just isn’t the case with sports betting! You could have lost five bets in a row and still lose your next three! There is no guarantee that having bad luck will ultimately turn good.
If you have hit a bad losing streak, the best thing to do is close your sportsbook app or website, walk away, analyze what went wrong, and start again another day.
- Concentrate on One Sport
Many people try to bet on football, tennis, golf, cricket, and more. This can be done, but branching out into multiple sports ultimately reduces your betting effectiveness. This comes back to tip 3 – using analysis and stats to make your bets.
Can you realistically track what’s happening in 3-4 different sports and make educated bets? Probably not! Instead, concentrate on one sport – the sport you most enjoy watching. Place all your efforts into improving your knowledge and betting strategies for that sport before you even contemplate researching another.
Bet Sensibly and Responsibly, Using Your Head for Improved Results
We hope you have found these eight sports betting tips helpful. We want to reiterate that luck remains the overriding factor when betting, and sometimes, things simply don’t go your way. Regardless of what anyone says, there is no such thing as a “sure bet.”
For example, you could bet on Man City to beat Brentford in the EPL. Logic and statistical analysis say that this is as close to a “sure bet” as possible – Man City is the best EPL team, while Brentford struggles to stay in the top flight. However, what if Haaland has a bad day? Or what if City gets a man sent off early in the game, and Brentford loses?
This is where loss mitigation and smart betting come into play. Using the above eight tips, you can bet sensibly and ensure you still have a backup plan when the odds don’t go in your favour.
