Professional sports betting refers to bettors who consistently make money from betting on various sporting events. Some bettors make sports betting their life’s vocation, while others hold down day jobs and bet on the side. The proliferation of the Internet means that you can bet any time from any place. Like any other form of speculation say, stocks or foreign exchange, professional sports betting involves a high level of discipline and money management in order to be successful. Unlike stocks or other financial markets, however, there can only be two outcomes to sports betting. Either you win or you lose. The trick is to win about 55% of your bets. At this win rate, if you place 2000 bets, you will have 1100 winners and 900 losers. Assuming that each bet is the same size (2% of your capital), this will fetch you a return of 400% before expenses. That’s a pretty good number. However, it takes a lot of discipline to achieve this kind of result because for many of us, we let our emotions interfere with our judgment. Here are some tips for successful betting:
1. Manage your money. It is estimated that up to 99% of people who bet on sports lose money. Good money management is at the very heart of successful sports betting.
2. Establish the size of your investment. This should be limited to the amount of money that you were prepared to lose.
3. Limit the size of each bet. Generally speaking, you should invest no more than 1% to 5% of your capital on each bet. Let us say you invest 2% and have 10 straight losers. 80% of your capital will still be intact. Remember that the more you lose, the more you have to earn on your remaining capital just to stay even. To give you an example, if you lose 50% of your capital, you have to earn 100% on the remaining capital just to get back to your starting point.
4. Increase or decrease the size of your bets after carefully sizing up the situation. As a rule of thumb, you can consider increasing bets when your starting capital goes up to 150% or more. Conversely, if your starting capital drops to 75% or 80%, you should positively reduce the size of your bets.
5. You don’t win a prize for trying to make money quickly. Concentrate on a slow and steady accumulation of profit. In financial speculation, this technique is called “scalping”. Reckless betting is a certain recipe for disaster, especially the technique called the Martingale strategy where you double the size of each bet that follows a losing bet.
6. Do your homework. Place your bets on some kind of factual basis instead of uneducated guess work. Over a period of time, a system will evolve that you can use on a continuous basis.
7. Do not let success or failure go to your head. Once you have established a successful system by trial and error, stay with your system and follow your trading discipline.
Above all, professional sports betting should be treated as just that, a profession, and your capital should be considered your investment in your profession. Treat this investment as you would handle any business investment.
