Sportsbetting

Name a sport, discipline, or hobby. With repeated practice, you will improve in your chosen field over time.

98% of people will end up being career-losers when it comes to sportsbetting, attesting to the fact that the latter phenomena does not apply to our activity. You can do it your entire life and still be a pathetic loser.

The reasons for this are evident. Sports themselves have defined rules and motions. It is possible to determine how one can improve in a quantifiable manner. Coaches inform us, and trainers allow us to carry out the repetition.

This is not true for sportsbetting. With mass misinformation floating around the world of gambling, it becomes difficult to determine how to achieve this improvement. Obnoxious personalities claiming to be “Vegas experts” flood your timelines with bullshit spewed out with the intention of selling you their picks. Even if you do not directly fall for their scam, they leave a permanent and damaging fingerprint on your subconscious.

Sit back, relax, and forget everything that you think you know about sportsbetting. Its time to discuss the five biggest mistakes that all rookie sportsbettors will make at least once.

1. Not Being Straight

Its only the first body paragraph and I’ve already been sued six times, great.

One of the biggest mistakes that new sportsbettors make is getting distracted by all the different types of bets. Only a fool tries to order pasta at a steakhouse. If your gambling goal is to make money, which it should be, why would you ever bet on something that is guaranteed to lose you money? Parlays are exciting; they give you the opportunity to win a huge amount of money with only a small wager. That may be fun today, but it will not be tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that. Mathematically, you are likely to lose more money from parlays than straight-bets. Here is a tweet from WagerMinds that sums it up by expected losses per $100 staked:

[embedTweet url=”514826243238535168″ align=”center”]

There is only one time that you should ever consider making a parlay bet. Under the rare circumstances that you are able to pair two or more events that are correlated, a parlay may be a viable option.

Years ago, there were less restrictions on what you could throw into a parlay. For example, it was possible to pair the over on a football game with player prop yardage overs for one of the team’s quarterbacks, wide receivers, or running-backs. While there is still the possibility that only one of the outcomes were to win, the partial correlation of both events, along with the larger odds, gave value to this practice.

There were also many situations that allowed the under on a soccer game to be parlayed with the draw. For a game revolving around an average number (say 2.5 for the total), it is much more likely of having an 0-0 or 1-1 draw than one with both teams scoring multiple goals.

Many sportsbooks have smartened up. It is rather impossible to do anything like this anymore. Keep a look out, but expect nothing of this nature to be available in 2015. Stay away from parlays.

Teasers are another story. These allow you to bind two or more events, but rather than getting higher odds, you will be rewarded with a more favorable spread or total. This means that you could turn Packers -7 and Patriots -7 into both -3 spreads. These are meant to seem tempting, since it seems improbable for these modified spreads and totals not to hit. Well, thats the point. You are binding two or more events, while getting rewarded with odds around pick-level. Its not worth it.

I am not going to get into details on some of the other forms if parlays such as reverses and round-robins. The advice to take away from this section is to stick to straight-bets. These are just one market; an over, an under, a spread, a moneyline. Whatever it is, just one thing. Do you like the Patriots, Packers, and Saints against the spread? Bet them individually for the same amount.

Repeat after me: “There is no fun in betting parlays”.

2. Betting To Win

This one always seems to surprise people, but hear me out. Earlier this article, I mentioned that 98% of people will end up being career losers when it comes to sportsbetting. It is not unreasonable to think that 98% of people bet based on which wagers they think are going to win.

The sportsbook does not want to beat you, so why are you trying to beat them? Before you can understand how to place a good bet, we need to gain knowledge of how oddsmakers set their odds.

The lines that you see at a sportsbook are set based on perception, and not probability. This means that if two teams had a 50% chance of winning a given game, you should not expect both teams to be evenly lined at -110. Why is that?

Lets say a sportsbook was taking bets on an actual coin-flip. Heads or tails. They needed to take $220,000 worth of action on the game. If both sides were lined at -110, implying “50/50”, what would be their desired distribution of wagers? $220,000 on heads, $220,000 on tails, or $110,000 on both sides? While having a disproportionate amount of money on one side of a 50% outcome allows them the opportunity to be big winners, it also opens up the possibility that they will lose a significant sum of money. Thats called gambling, and last time I checked we were the gamblers. They aren’t.

A responsible casino would want the $220,000 split equally between both sides. This guarantees that they will make $10,000 profit regardless of the outcome.

The sportsbooks are not trying to slaughter the sheep, but rather to split them into two equal pens. The problem is that sheep do not want to separate from their friends for no reason. They need to be coaxed into making the decision. If the sportsbooks set a game based on probability, the betting distribution would leave them at risk.

Lets think of an example. Please keep in mind that I am making up numbers here, these are in no-way meant to be accurate to the 2015-16 season. Imagine an NFL match that saw the Seattle Seahawks hosting the Tennessee Titans. The former are good, the latter are terrible. For the sake of discussion, lets assume that Vegas’ top statisticians projected that the true spread of this game, if it were to bet set entirely on probability, was 6.5. This means that Seattle would cover the -6.5 with a near .500 ATS record, and Tennessee would do the same with the +6.5. Would they dare release this line?

Absolutely not. If you offered the Seahawks at -6.5, everyone would jump on them. Regardless of the fact that this would have a 50% chance of losing, it still puts the sportsbook at a large risk due to the impending imbalance of action. One of the best teams over the last two seasons hosting an absolute dumpster fire for less than a touchdown? Sign me up!

Instead, they will move the line based on the way that the game is perceived. Oddsmakers would make the Seahawks much bigger favorites in this case. You could expect them to be -8.5, or even -9 in this hypothetical tilt.

Now, there is only one correct decision over here. If you were to bet on the Seahawks an infinite amount of times at -8.5, you will lose money, considering that a -6.5 spread would win close to 50% of time (still operating at a loss due to the juice). There are at least 2 point of value on the hypothetical Titans. This is a huge advantage, leading to long-term profit if bet over a large sample size.

If you analyze each game through this angle, and make the correct decision based on the margin between true and perceived spread, you will be guaranteed to make money. Seriously, its math. Its never wrong. 

The mistake that so many is selecting their wagers based on which ones they think are going to win. Are the Seattle Seahawks 9-0-0 against the spread in their last nine games? How about the Titans, they seem to be 1-8-0 so far this season. I will get into more details on trends in the next section, but regardless of how bad the line deviates from the true statistical value, some people will still find themselves taking the home favorite in this case. You should always analyze games by determining where the margin is, not by which team you think is going to cover, or which side of the total the game will lie on.

Its a very difficult habit to break. For some it will take years, for others it will take a lifetime. The sooner you remove yourself from this line of thinking, the more success you will find in your sportsbetting career.

3. Absorbing Terrible Information

Anything that goes against what I discussed in the previous section is irrelevant. The biggest culprit are trends, even some of the most basic are utterly useless. Each game is its own entity. Streaks happen. If you flip a coin a thousand times, you are bound to have sets of heads and sets of tails clump together.  They have nothing to do with future events.

Twitter has become a powerful tool to connect with other users with the same interests. Unfortunately, it also forces information down your throat. Even if you know what is important and whats not, you are still being exposed to terrible advise at a rapid rate.

Make sure you watch out who you follow. You should avoid taking any risks. Even if you are following someone because you enjoy their tweets, its not worth the risk of their frequent cancerous deposits of useless information. If someone tweets something about Washington Redskins unders on Sunday afternoons when it rains, it might hide in the back of your mind, affecting the decision you end up making. Trust me, its not worth it.

The best way to ace this part of the guide is to only surround yourself with people who think the same way we preach on this website. If people do not decide who to bet on by determining the true odds of the match and analyzing the margin between that and the perceived line, then they are not worth your time. NEXT!

4. Tailing Picks

There are many reasons why tailing picks will always lead to losses. You have no idea how good the person you are following is. Even if you know of their reputation, very few people keep accurate public records. Third-party tracking sites are great, but in a field where every number counts, slight inaccuracies will serve them useless. Some of these sites restrict you to flat-betting, others will only take lines from one sportsbook. I will write another article about these tracking sites another time, but in most cases you will never run by anyone worth tailing you uses one. The only accurate form of documentation for a full-time sportsbettor is via a spreadsheet. The problem with this is that there is no way of knowing that it is accurate.

But for the sake of discussion lets say that we actually found someone who was a winning sportsbettor. Should you tail them?

The answer is still no. As stated, every number counts when you are doing this for a living. If you do not bet the game at the exact time, and at the same sportsbook, as the person you are tailing, then it defeats the purpose.  Your edge will always be smaller than his, considering his action should be enough to make the line worse (if any movement is to be observed at all). Winning sportsbettors are also not very fond of sharing their picks. I am in no position to name names, but one of the most successful professional sportsbettors that I know began sharing his picks at one point in time. He would always get his action in first to ensure that he was not jeopardizing his work. Some people reverse-engineered what he was doing, and began getting to the lines before he could. He stopped posting picks, but it took over a year and a half for him to get back the same edge as before, to a lesser margin.

Stay away from others. Tailing picks also stunts your own development, preventing you from improving. You will never learn how to correctly identify and quantify an edge margin if you do not learn yourself. It may seem frustrating at first, especially with lots of losses. Find solace in the fact that you will only have yourself to blame. Trust me, its a lot better than cursing out some random person on Twitter for posting a free 50-unit lock that ended up losing by 10 runs. We have all been there.

5. Enjoying Betting

Professional sportsbettors hate gambling. They are so impartial to having money on a game that they will rarely even watch it unfold. Are they sociopaths, or are they just focused on the ultimate goal?

Everyone enjoys betting when they start. Lets be honest, it gives you something to cheer for on every single game. You do not have to wait for your favorite team to play, you can get that experience every night of the week. With this, it can become dangerous. Some people never get away from that thrill, and it eventually leads to their demise. However, there are a portion of people who get bored of betting, regardless if they are winners or losers. They stop betting on each game, and naturally become more selective. These people will become the best sportsbettors in the world.

Its tough to tell people to stop liking something that is natural to enjoy. This is just something I wanted to throw in at the end of this post. Set it at the back of your mind, and hopefully it will help you in the future. Give it consideration. As long as you are betting with money you do not mind losing, there is no problem starting off enjoying every minute of each bet. But strive to start hating it.

It will make you see the world in an entirely different way.

How much should you be betting per game? There are two ways of doing it: An advanced one, and a simple one. The one you choose depends on your experience level in evaluating edge margin. Today we will be examining the simple method that can be understood by anyone regardless of experience level.

Defining your Bankroll

The first step is to figure out how much money you are going to allocate to betting. These funds are strictly for sportsbetting. They are separate from your rent, utilities, and other expenses. It is pivotal that you maintain a space between these two entities. I recommend opening up a partition in your bank account to ensure that the funds are entirely separate, even if it costs you a few extra dollars per month. There is a reason for doing this. Its more than just the fact that its not a good idea to gamble with money that you cannot afford to lose for the sake of potentially losing it. You will have a different mindset when you are risking something that you are afraid of. The human mind becomes defensive when threatened. You will change the way you bet when terrified, which will cause you to opt towards overs and favorites more at a higher frequency. This is not conducive to generating a long-term profit.

How much money are we talking about exactly? Every person is different, but lets make up some numbers. Lets say you have $60,000 to your name. I think its a smart idea to save one year’s worth of each recurring resource. Lets say rent costs $1,500 per month, thats… $18,000 per year. How about utilities? $400 per month, $4,800. I am just making up numbers here. How about groceries? Can we survive on $100 per week? Probably, $5,200 per year. Transportation is important as well, lets put that at $3,000. I am sure there are some other things that I am forgetting, but that totals out to $31,000 of stored funds. I was probably a bit conservative on the estimates, so lets also throw in an emergency fund and bring that up to $40,000. This means that we technically have $20,000 of free money available to do as we please. We still do not want to be gambling with all of that, so lets cut out $10,000 to designate our “bankroll”.

Now remember, we are only going to be risking a fraction of this per game. We also will not have more than 10% of this in our sportsbook account at once, so it is always accessible if something were to happen in the real world. In this case, we are safe for up to a year in the event that you were to lose your job. 

The Simple Unit System

If you pick a random person and ask them what a safe unit system is, they will regurgitate something along the line of 1-5% per game. While this is a decent range, it can still be a bit misleading. Its very rare that you will ever have a big enough edge to warrant a 4-5% bet. There are times when its justifiable, but its far less than you imagine. For someone who is starting off, it is safer to eliminate the larger end of the unit spectrum entirely. Its just not worth the damages it could do.

Instead, I recommend a more conservative unit system of 1-2% (you may be wondering where Mr. 3% went, fuck him, he is a douchebag. But in all seriousness, he will show up in a moment). While this will take away some of the sexiness of a massive play, it will teach you the proper way of analyzing and appreciating your edge. Even in the games that have the biggest margin between true and perceived odds, it is very unlikely that you will reach a double-digit percentage advantage above the mid-point.

Adopting the Simple Unit System

Now that we have determined that we will never risk outside of the 1-2% range, we need to figure out how much actual dollars we will be putting down. In the earlier example given with the $10,000 bankroll, this would indicate a betting range of $100-200. Remember, while that might not give you entry into the high-rollers club, it will more than likely give you a higher ROI% at the end of the year. Which one is more important to you?

How you apply the unit-system in terms of electing to flat-bet or not is up to you. Flat-betting means that you will be risking flat increments of your unit size (in this case, increments of $100) on each wager. For the conservative 1-2% range, you will have the option of putting $100 or $200 on a game depending on your level of confidence. While there is technically no problems doing this, you may learn some important lessons by avoiding flat-betting.

The other alternative is betting to-win a fixed unit increment when dealing with favorites, and betting the flat-increment for underdogs. This means that if you were to bet on a -130 favorite, you would be risking $130 to win $100 for a 1-unit wager, and $260 to win $200 for a 2-unit wager. In this case, you will have the potential of risking 2-3% on a play, and that is perfectly fine. I will let you do it, but only in these circumstances. For underdogs, they will be bet with flat amounts. A +130 underdog would mean $200 to win $260 for the latter bankroll.

You may be wondering what advantages you get from not flat-betting favorites. To be honest, the main benefit you will get is developing a heightened appreciation for odds. If you are risking $200 to win $100 on a -200 favorite, you may feel invincible. But if you are suddenly asked to wager $400 to win $200 with the non-flat style, then you think twice about what you are doing. But I will leave this part of the process up to you.

The Advanced Method (in brief)

For the sake of quenching your curiosity, I will provide a brief summary of how the advanced method works. The Kelly Criterion is a method of determining exactly how much of your starting bankroll you should be risking on a game using a mathematic equation. One of the most important variables in this equation is the numerical quantification of your edge. You need to put it in the actual numbers, which is difficult for someone who is just starting off. Not only do you have to pick the right games, but you have to decide how confident you are. Each mistake you make in assessing your advantage can be very costly, and may very well defeat the purpose of the whole unit system.

It is for this reason why even some very experienced sportsbettors may never fully adapt the Kelly Criterion method into their process. Its normally recommended for people who model games, as their system will generally output a quantifiable edge.