How To Make Profit On Sports Betting
This is the first out of a three-part article series, which purpose is to investigate how one can make money from sports betting and the requirements of making a living from it.
Part 1: Having realistic expectations AND Different ways to make money from betting
Setting realistic expectations
- It's a shocking revelation but if you really want to learn how to make a profit from football betting you need to start thinking and acting like a bookmaker. This information is without doubt, something that.
- Money Management/Bankroll Management. When you are betting on sports you should always set.
If you already feel like skipping this part you are the type that would benefit the most from reading it.
First off, it is important to have realistic expectations.
As with anything in life, making money from sports betting requires time and effort.
And those looking for a get-rich-quick solution or minimal work are setting themselves up for disappointment.
To make consistent profit with sports betting, one should approach it as a long-term investment, like a marathon. With regards to managing your bankroll (money), the most important thing to pay attention. Our Vegas handicapper Kenny White gives his best bets for the Conference Tournaments.SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL:FOLLOW.
Whether you have a job or are a student, things like this start as a side project.
Most of the people who work for Trademate are building their bankroll on the evenings and weekends, while working on Trademate during the daytime.
Whether you are studying, working a 9-5 job or making a living from playing poker, we think this approach makes a lot of sense.
It happens to be very compatible with value betting since that is when the majority of games are played anyway, and thus when the edges occur.
If you don’t need the money from betting to cover living expenses, it also reduces your risk as you have more legs to stand on financially.
It also enables you to reinvest any profits you make and keep building your bankroll. This, in turn, increases your turnover and potential profits.
You can keep doing it this way until you reach a point where it makes economic sense to do it full time.
Different ways to make money from sports betting
There are 2 main ways to make a living from sports betting:
The first is being able to pick winners. Which is what 99% of all tipsters and bettors out there are trying to do, and of which probably 98.9% are failing at.
To do this successfully, you would need to specialise in a market, preferably a niche market, where the bookmakers do not have the same level of information and knowledge as you, or where they can not interpret it as well.
If you want to try and create your own odds models, this article can help you get started.
The second way is to find value in the odds. Finding value can again be split into three groups: 1) Matched betting, 2) Arbitrage betting and 3) Value betting.
These can be ranked based on their potential risk and reward. The pros and cons of them are discussed in this article.
Also this guest post examines the pros and cons of arbitrage betting vs value betting.
At Trademate we are all about value betting as this gives the highest potential return of the 3 ways to make money.
The downside of value betting is that the risk is higher than for arbitrage and matched betting. This is because you only bet on one side of the game, the variance is higher. These articles and video explain variance.
Let’s use an example: If one takes a bet with 2.0 in odds, one can only expect to win 50% of the time. In the short run, anything can happen, e.g. losing 10 coin tosses in a row.
But over a large sample size, let’s say 10,000 tosses, the distribution of the number of heads and tails will be pretty much spot on 50/50 (the theory behind it is explained in this article and our big data analysis has shown that it has worked very well in practice for the Trademate users).
In practice, the potentially high variance nature of value betting, means that one needs to be prepared to place hundreds of bets, maybe thousands depending on the average closing edge and odds before one can expect the variance to even out.
One thing they all have in common is that they have hit bad swings, but made it through them.
We have had users who were breakeven at 1,500 bets, before they hit a good run and their profits soared up and past their EV line (expected value).
Before you start you should make sure that you understand the underlying principles of value betting, mainly exploiting market inefficiencies in our case.
It is not for everyone and if you decide that it is not for you, then that is ok. But then you will not be making a living from betting anytime soon.
Next, one needs to have the patience and discipline to stick with it, through both the upswings and downswings.
Reducing variance in value betting
There are steps you can take to reduce the variance in value betting, such as placing on lower odds, only placing one trade per game, placing trades close to kick-off, using a proportional staking strategy such as the Kelly Criterion and limiting it to 30% of the Kelly.
Also, one should apply a max stake size. We recommend operating with 1-2% of your overall bankroll. It is possible to set it higher and also to use a higher Kelly percentage if one wants to take more risk and increase the turnover.
Bookmakers limit winning players and how to increase your lifetime value
Whether it being matched betting, arbitrage betting or value betting, the soft books do not like winning players.
To stop players from winning, bookmakers will impose stake sizing limits on them.
Without getting a solid turnover, making money from either option becomes really difficult.
How long it takes varies from bookie to bookie. There are also internal differences at the bookies.
All of this does not mean that it is not possible to extract good value from them first though!
Also, there are steps one can take to make the accounts last longer before they get limited and thus increase the lifetime value of the soft bookmakers.
A topic we have covered in multiple articles, such as:
Article: How to stay under the radar and avoid bookmaker limitations
Article: How bookmakers track your every move and how to get around it.
Article: How bookmakers profile winning players
At Trademate we are currently supporting 100+ soft bookmakers. Playing through all of them should take some time.
Also, because we have so many different bookmakers and also trades to choose from, the number of people who pick the same trade is not particularly high and thus each individual account lasts longer.
We also switch out a couple of bookies every few months to keep things fresh and have added 10 new bookies this year. So our overall value offered is constantly increasing.
Sports trading
Finally, what about sports trading? Traditional trading involves buying and selling assets. Sports trading involves either placing a value bet, an arbitrage or hedging a bet.
Hedging a bet is basically to turn a value bet into an arbitrage bet. The difference between arbing and hedging is that when hedging, the bets are not necessarily placed at the same time.
For example in an arbitrage you place a bet on the home, draw and away within a short period of time, e.g. 1 minute. When hedging you would first place a value bet on e.g. the home team to win.
Then you can turn it into a sure win or a sure loss by taking a bet on both the draw + away team, or an Asian Handicap bet at a later point in time.
Hedging enables you to reduce your risk, but it also reduces the potential profit. We have covered the topic of hedging a bet in this article.
Ready for Part 2?
In the second part of the article series, we will have put some numbers on the different input factors that affect potential earnings and run some simulations.
Making money betting on sports can be tough, but there are a lot of sports bettors who consistently win, and there are even a lot of professional bettors who make a good living off of sports betting. On this page you will find sports betting strategy and tips to help you become one of the winning bettors.
Below I talk about the basic sports betting strategies for beginner bettors, but if you are more experienced you can check out the advanced sports betting strategy articles towards the bottom of this page.
The Basics To Sports Betting Strategy
In order to help yourself make money or a profit from sports betting there are a couple of basic strategies or tips you will want to understand and follow. None of these sports betting strategies are secrets by any means, but following them will help you win money betting on sports.
The bettors who don’t follow any of these strategies are often referred to as “squares” and those are the type of bettors that the sportsbooks will make their profits from.
#1 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 betting 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 1%-5% of your bankroll. For example, if your bankroll for the NFL season was $1,000 you would be making $10-$50 bets on each NFL game you wanted to bet on. It is also 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 in order to win it back they need to increase the size of their bets. This is putting yourself in the wrong mindset and will often lead to you losing even more money. Work with the size of your bankroll, and look to slowly increase it over the length of the season.
Best Online Sports Betting
Here’s a video going over Bankroll Management strategies for sports betting:
#2 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 tips is “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 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 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 (this ties in with our advanced how to find max value article). 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. To see a list of sportsbooks we recommend signing up for visit our Online Betting Sites section.
I’ve created a line shopping video and posted it on YouTube (seen below):
#5 Avoid Buying Points
Avoid falling into “square” tendencies such as buying favorites down or underdogs up. For example, some bettors always feel the need to buy an NFL favorite of -3.5 down to -2.5. The sportsbooks are smart enough to charge more juice to do this, mathematically making it a bad strategy. The same goes with buying an NFL underdog from +2.5 to +3.5 for example. In 99% of cases I would advise against it. Check out the video I made below about buying points on NFL underdogs.
Other Sports Betting Strategies and Myths
How To Do Sports Betting
Above are the four main basic strategies you will want to follow in order to become a winning sports bettor, but there are a couple of other tips you can use to help you win money.
Betting On Sports
For one, you can try following a sports handicapper who is using a proven sports betting system. Be careful of scammers out there though. If they don’t show their past records long term plus proof I would pass, and in most cases I wouldn’t be paying for picks at all.
An old sports betting strategy is to bet on home underdogs. The theory is that teams are usually more inspired to play at home, and they will often not fold if they are down like they may when on the road. Betting home dogs in the past could have made you money, but this isn’t true as much anymore. You can read the current betting market article to learn why.
The last tip I have for you is to try and place your bets at the right time. With lines shifting from the time they are posted to the time the game starts, you will want to get your bet in at the time when you are getting the best price. Predicting line movements is extremely hard but it is worth looking into. Check out the video below that I made titled “When To Place Your Bets”.
Advanced Sports Betting Strategy Articles
» How to Place a Bet
» How to Win at Sports Betting
» Sports Betting Math
» Teaser Betting Strategy
» Prop Betting Strategy
» How to Get Max Value When Betting
» Future Betting Strategy
» NFL Bye Week Betting Strategy
» Parlay Betting Strategy
» Pleaser Betting Strategy
» Sweetheart Teaser Betting Strategy
» Current Betting Market
» How to Research Your Bet
» Mistakes You Need to Avoid
» Things Beginners Need to Know
» Win/Loss vs Value