How To Make Profit On Sports Betting
- Money Management/Bankroll Management. When you are betting on sports you should always set.
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If you want to know how to make money sports betting, you’re probably already a sports fan.
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.
I have bad news for you – most sports fans lose money sports betting.
That’s because they have biases and prejudices toward and against teams that wouldn’t exist if they weren’t fans.
In other words, it’s hard to make money sports betting unless you’re objective about the teams’ odds.
But if you’re a fan who can set aside these notions, you can probably win money sports betting.
This post introduces some ideas you need familiarize yourself with to pull off this feat:
You Must Understand Some Math to Make Money Sports Betting
To break even as a sports bettor, you need to win 52.4% of your bets.
Some people might be confused by that, thinking that if they win 50% of their bets, they should break even.
And anything above a 50% win ratio should result in profits, right?
Wrong.
While it’s true that most bets have a 50% probability of winning based on the point spread, the bookmakers make you wager $110 to win $100. (You’ll sometimes run into books which want you to risk $120 to win $100, and you’ll also find some that want you to risk $105 to win $100.)
If you’re losing half the time, but you’re losing more money than you’re winning the other half of the time, you’re going to lose money in the long run.
Imagine if you place 2 bets, winning one and losing the other.
You win $100 on the bet you won, but you lose $110 on the bet you lose, which leads to a net loss of $10.
And that’s just the beginning of the math you need to understand to make money sports betting.
More about Sports Betting Math
Let’s look at a more detailed example, just to give you a clearer idea of what I’m talking about when I say you need to understand the math behind sports betting.
You go to your favorite bookmaker’s website, or visit the book at your favorite online casino, and you see the following posted:
Buffalo Bills -3
New Orleans Saints +3
The team with the – sign next to it is the favorite. To determine the winner of that bet, you subtract 3 from their score before comparing it with the other team’s score.
The team with the + sign next to it is the dog. You get to add 3 to the team’s final score for determining which team wins.
In either case, when it’s not listed, you’re expected to wager $110 to win $100.
Those point spreads are also called the lines.
The book creates the line so that they don’t get an overwhelming loss when the favorite beats the dog. If there weren’t a line, everyone would bet the favorite and win most of the time.
The point spread creates a situation where you (theoretically) have a 50% probability of winning.
The lines are set by the handicappers working for the bookmaker. And for the most part, they’re good at their job.
The lines aren’t always right, though, and when they’re wrong, you can profit.
How to Use Moving Lines to Track Sharp Action
A “sharp” is an educated, winning sports bettor. Sharps generally bet large enough amounts of money that bookmakers will adjust the point spreads (“lines”) to stimulate action on the other side. If you watch how the lines move, you can track the sharp action and make betting decisions based on what the sharps are doing.
One thing to look for is called “reverse line movement.” That’s just a fancy way of describing when the line moves away from the side with more money bet on it – the popular side.
That’s easy enough to do – find a line that moves from +7 to +6, for example, then look at how many people are betting that side of the match.
Now you know which side the book is trying to stimulate action for.
Combine this with shopping lines from one bookmaker to another, and you have a powerful tool for placing bets with a positive expectation.
Be a Contrarian
You can find plenty of websites that estimate what percentage of the action is on one side or the other of a sporting event. For example, you might find a football game where 70% of the public is betting on one side, and 30% of the public is betting on the other side.
If you bet with the 30% rather than with the 70%, you’re being a contrarian – you’re betting the other side of the event from what most people are.
I like to root on underdogs, but as it turns out, betting on an underdog to cover results in a higher percentage of bets won than betting on the favorite.
It won’t result in a high enough percentage to make you profitable in the long run, though – you’ll still need to pick and choose.
But betting underdogs is a great starting point for a winning sports betting strategy.
Manage Your Bankroll Appropriately
You might have heard the expression “on any given Sunday.” This refers to the possibility of an upset in pro football – on any given Sunday, any team can win, regardless of what people might think.
This means that no matter how confident you are in your bets you still might lose.
And, in the short run, you might lose a higher percentage of bets than you expect.
What does this mean in terms of managing your bankroll?
It means that you shouldn’t have too much of your bankroll in action on any given bet.
For example, suppose you’ve found a bet that you’re confident has a 65% probability of being a winning bet. That’s a stellar percentage; if you won 65% of your bets in the long run, you’d be breathing rarefied air. You’d be the Warren Buffett of sports betting, in fact.
But if you have a bankroll of $10,000 and wager all of it on that one match, you have a 35% probability of losing your entire bankroll.
This means starting over and building a new bankroll, which takes time.
And when it comes to winning at sports betting, time is money.
You’ll see varying estimates of how much of your bankroll you should risk on any single bet.
Your tolerance for risk should determine your bet sizing, but 1% to 5% of your bankroll is a good guideline to follow.
If your tolerance for risk is high, bet up to 5% of your bankroll on each bet. With that $10,000 bankroll, you’d limit the size of your bets to $500.
You can adjust those bet sizes based on your confidence level in your picks.
If you’re sure about a bet, you might wager $200 or $300 (2% or 3%) on it even if you’re risk averse.
Limiting the size of your bets prevents a series of upsets or a run of bad luck from running you out of the hobby.
Don’t Buy Picks
Here’s the problem with buying sports picks:
The people selling these picks are usually no better at picking winners than you are.
Companies that sell sports betting picks are called tout services. They have an interesting history.
I have a friend who worked for a tout service in Las Vegas back when they still used call centers and 900 numbers to sell their picks. He explained to me one of their strategies with their customers, which I’ll share with you below:
In a room full of touts over the phone, half the room would sell picks on one side of a game.
The other half would sell picks on the other side of the game.
This would result in half their customers winning each week, while half their customers would lose.
How To Make Profit On Sports Betting Odds
If any of the losers called to complain – and they often did – they’d give them a free pick on the Monday night football game.
And they’d follow the same strategy – give half the losers one side while giving the other half the other side.
Half their losers won their money back and became satisfied customers, buying more picks.
I also read a story in a book about gambling about a gentleman who started his own tout service via a 900 number, and he let his 5-year-old son make all his betting picks for him.
The kid got lucky and was right 60% of the time in his first season.
It was dumb luck, but if you’d used his service, you’d have showed a profit that season.
I saw a tout selling an entire season’s worth of picks for $3000.
What kind of winning percentage would you need to see to generate a positive ROI on that $3000?
That’s a sunk cost, so you’d need to win more than $3000 for that package to be a profitable deal.
You already need to win 52.4% of the time to break even, and you need to win 52.5% or more to be profitable.
If you make less than $3000 profit, you’re still losing money.
It’s hard to make money betting on sports when you have an upfront investment of $3000.
Conclusion
Yes, you can make money betting on sports. People do it every day.
But it takes a smart approach, preferably a contrarian one. You need to thoroughly understand the math and manage your bankroll appropriately.
Most importantly, you should avoid buying sports picks from experts who might not really even be experts.
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.
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
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.
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
Sports Betting How To Guide
» 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