Betting strategies

Do you usually sit down on Friday nights to do your research before NFL weekends?  Do you then wonder why, despite your best efforts, you continue to lose your wagers?  While you may think you are ahead of the game because you are putting in several days of effort, the reality is that you are still behind the sharps and the real professional handicappers.  Even if this is your part-time job, you have to treat it like a full-time job in order to be successful.  And that means taking the whole week to keep up with NFL teams.&nb

What is the hardest thing about betting on sports for you?  Is it keeping up with all the news?  Staying on top of games as they are going on?  Planning and testing and executing betting strategies?  Learning new statistical concepts?  There is so much that goes into becoming a successful punter, and the more dedicated you become, the more overwhelmed you can be by all the tasks you need to focus on.  Productivity may in fact be your greatest challenge.  In

If you first got into sports betting as a casual gambler, you can remember the days when it was all fun and no work.  If you are starting to get serious about it, though, you may feel overwhelmed by the amount of work involved in betting for a living, especially when you are still at the start of the learning curve.  For many bettors, time management can be the greatest challenge in betting!  You may especially struggle if you still work a 9-5 day job—and odds are you do.  Here are some helpful productivity tips and tricks to manage your time and become a better sports b

Recently we did a series on common types of sports wagers, including accumulators and teasers.  These types of bets are more complex than single bets, because they combine straight bets and/or totals into a group.

If you have an account at an online betting site, you know that many websites offer dozens or even hundreds of different types of events for you to wager on.  This is a big selling point for a lot of these sites.  It is exciting to think that there is an abundance of opportunity out there waiting for you.  But how many different types of games and matches should you realistic try wagering on?  Should you wager on just one sport, or should you diversify and bet on as many as possible?

Lots of people like to talk about “hedging their bets,” but how familiar are you with hedging and how it actually works?  Hedging is a strategy where you bet on both sides of a game or a match.  Some people incorporate hedging strategies before things start going south, while others may only fall back on hedging if they believe they are about to lose a bet they have already placed.  Used properly, hedging can reduce or even eliminate your risk on a bet.  Done incorrectly, it can cost you money.

A lot of sports bettors look at what the betting public is doing before they place a bet.  Some bettors even make that their primary strategy (although this may not be the best strategy to use over the long run).  But who exactly is the betting public?  Why are they contrasted with betting sharps?

It is very common to use averages in sports betting.  The idea of an average is very simple and straightforward, and provides a useful quantification for performance statistics.  But what type of average do you use when you are doing your analysis?  Have you considered the shape of the distribution data?  Or are you only looking at the overall picture while ignoring the details?

Newbies to sports betting online often worry about getting scammed by disreputable betting sites or purchasing picks offered by less-than-savory dealers.  There certainly are online betting scams out there, but there are also plenty of reputable and very well-known websites you can bet on.  What most new sports bettors don’t realize (or don’t want to admit to themselves) is that the most likely scam isn’t going to come from anyone else—it’s going to come from yourself.

With 2014 behind us and 2015 still mostly ahead of us, I have been taking a lot of time lately to talk about making changes through New Year’s betting resolutions and leaving bad habits behind.  Here are some changes that I suggest: