Sports Betting Advice
by Predictem.com Staff
We’re glad you found our page on sports betting advice because we like to help prevent people from making the same mistakes that we made when we were novice sports bettors.
It seems like just yesterday when I picked up my first copy of the now defunct English Sports Betting newspaper in a sportsbook in Reno, Nevada.
I had been a sports fan my whole life and a serious sports enthusiast since the age of 12. So much so, that I had a ledger in which I’d pick who I thought would win a game before it was played, mark the teams down in a book and keep stats on my performance! This was before I was even aware that you could bet on games. I guess it could be said that I was born for this!
Getting back to being in the Reno sportsbook, I recall reading that you only had to be 18 to place wagers over the phone and that you could live anywhere in the world to do so. I was instantly in love with this idea. It was indeed love at first site and I bet you felt the same way when you were faced with your first wager as well.
I placed some bets. Some won, some lost. I didn’t care. I was hooked. The euphoria was some kind of cross between orgasmic, hitting your first homerun over the fence and/or seeing your newborn baby for the first time. Having action was the bomb and the next days games couldn’t start soon enough.
THEN CAME REALITY. My bets were only 22 bucks to win 20 or so, so I wasn’t spending my bill money (yet) but I will openly admit that every extra dollar I had was used for sports gambling. I didn’t care about going to movies, I already had a nice car, my rent was cheap, college was a breeze, it was game on.
Like many newbies to the game, I started betting every single game because the action was so intense. I simply could not get enough. I then knew how crack smokers felt! The next game, the next game! When was the next game! Action! I loved it and couldn’t get enough!
Well, betting all those games caught up to me. I started losing and doing so on a regular basis. Do you think I was smart enough to stop? No way. I loved the action and didn’t care about losing the money. I made excuses such as “it’s entertainment.” As much as the goal was to win, I really didn’t care about losing, as don’t many novice sports bettors.
This pattern went on for years. I was fine with it too. I always paid my bills. Had a good college life etc. Well, losing got boring and tiring after a while, I started to mature as a person and set out, just like you may be doing right now by reading this article, to find out how to win. It was surely a doable feat, I just was approaching it the wrong way.
I started reading stuff on the internet about money management and how much should I bet on games.
I quickly came to the realization that not only was I betting too many games (the whole card on Saturday college football!), but my expectations were bent. I was playing too much into the “thrill of the kill.” To further explain, I was in love with the big winning weekend that I’d win 5k or so and totally disregarding the other 3 weekends in the month that I’d lose 2k. It was then that I realized that sports betting is a marathon, not a sprint and that profits would need to be grinded out over time. Not only was it apparent that betting on sports is not a get rich quick scheme, it was becoming very obvious to me that the only way to win was to approach it like a marathon, grind out games which maybe means betting only 3-5 per week and only making those moves where value was present and blatantly on my side.
Low and behold, all of a sudden I started breaking even, which was a huge change. I was collecting from the man rather than having to pay him.
With some new self discipline, money management techniques and new attitude that the best weapon in my sports betting arsenal was that I could pass on a game, my luck turned around but it wasn’t luck at all. It was the formula to becoming a winning sports bettor. That’s not to say that I dont’ lose. Heck, even the pro’s only hit 60% or so.
This doesn’t come without some hard work though. You will need to spend many hours handicapping games and many of those will be wasted hours because you will come to a point in your capping that you find something that doesn’t mesh so you will need to pass. You can’t look at it as if though you wasted time though, because you didn’t, you just potentially saved yourself some loot that might have otherwise been a loss.
In summary, sports gambling is a grind. You will not get rich quick, no matter how much you know about sports. The ball bounces in weird directions. Your going to suffer from bad beats, your going to hit good beats, your going to endure fat losing streaks, nice winning streaks etc and all the while you can’t let yourself get too emotional about any of them.
You need to act only when value is present. How do you know when value is present? That’s another article in itself, however all this info is provided in each section of this website. We have HUNDREDS of articles with tips, advice and strategies about wagering on games. Their all sport specific too. These can be found in any of our sports sections which can be accessed at the bottom of this page or in the left menu of the homepage.
We hope that you will take heed to this advice and not get your ass handed to you for 4-5 years before learning how to break even or become a winner like we did. We thought we’d write this article to try to save you some time and act as a mentor to save you from the same mistakes we made.
Good luck with your action!
Predictem.com Staff
Related: Alternatives to Betting the Hook
