10 Ways to Pick Winners When Sports Betting
Today is a great day to bet on sports if you believe that choosing the winner of a game, match, or fight is the best way to do so. Why? This is absolutely not the case. While the majority of bettors do choose their wagers in this fashion, doing so will result in a diminishing bankroll and no gains. In this tutorial, we'll show you how to pick winning bets like a pro. By the time today is over, you will have a much better understanding of what it takes to be a winning sports bettor.
By the way, if you rather have someone do all the hard work for you, check out our sports passes to get all our daily picks and parlays emailed to you.
- Playing to Win
Before looking at how to pick the best teams to bet on, we need to know our aims. We're talking about preparing you to make picks with a higher statistical chance of winning than logging into your account and picking your favorite teams or randomly.
Betting solely for fun and excitement is acceptable, but betting to win takes more effort and might be more fun. To find a winning sports pick takes well-thought-out plans and keeping up with teams' stats.
If you want to go into online sports betting for the thrill and rush, go for it. It's fast, and it doesn't wait. You've come to the perfect location if you want to win and get from novice to expert quickly.
- Educate Yourself
More knowledge increases your chances of finding a winning approach and picking. While you may be a sports enthusiast and know everything about your favorite club, you should also know everything about all the teams in all leagues. Knowing when a terrible underdog squad beats a favorite team can help you place bets. Here's where a lot of effort goes into winning. You can discover patterns and potential upsets by studying players' and teams' match histories. To find winning sports picks, absorb everything you can and stay current on sports news.
Personnel moves and roster changes are important for identifying the top clubs. Off-season, preseason, and in-season changes are covered. Keeping up with this knowledge will help your online betting. A new coach was hired. If so, what's his coaching record? Free agency took a team's star player. How does that affect a roster? A critical injury could affect a team's future games. The more you know about each team and its players, the more assured you may be while betting on your favorite sport.
Next, befriend winners. Great sports bettors who play frequently have made all the mistakes you might make and learned from them - they were beginners once. Brainstorm with them. They won't share their secrets or tactics, but they may offer guidance if you ask.
- Specializing in One Sport
To find winning sports pick, specialize in one particular sport. Those who are just getting started with online gambling can benefit greatly from this. Focusing on a single sport can provide you an advantage in the betting process because you won't have to learn as much about other teams and their previous match records.
Keeping track of all the news regarding cricket and football teams at the professional level, much alone the hundreds of club or amateur teams, maybe a daunting task. Not even the oddsmakers think it's possible to win at everything, so stick to what you're good at and learn as much as you can about every player on every team so you can be as confident as possible with your picks.
- Pick Value Over Winners
This obviously doesn't make sense, yet it's vital to online betting success. New online bettors often mistake a high win-to-loss ratio for a guarantee of profit. You can have more wins than losses, gamble the same amount, and still lose money. You can have a losing record with fewer wins than losses and still make money. All bets don't offer the same payouts or risk the same losses.
Example: If you make four $100 bets on a (-500) favorite and win three, you win $20 for each winning bet but lose $100 for the last. You've lost $40 despite a winning betting record. Betting on favorites can give you a nice win/loss ratio, but to earn money, focus on your ROI. Remember that profit or loss is more significant than record while betting.
The goal is to bet on favorites so that you have the maximum statistical chance of winning.
- Shop around for the best price
Buying a car without shopping around is crazy, and neither should betting on sports be. This is more difficult to do at traditional sportsbooks, especially in countries that restrict access to mobile betting, but as long as you have various shops, you are losing money if you don't shop around. To find winning sports pick, its best to search the market first.
This technique, which is also known as line shopping, is often overlooked despite being seen by savvy gamblers as vital to their success.
- Moneylines
Bets on the Moneyline provide a second option for backing a favorite or underdog. Moneyline wagers are those in which the bettor just chooses the victor and is paid out according to the odds set by the bookmaker, which in this case are American.
In the United States, the chances of winning $100 are usually discussed.
To win $100 when wagering on a -200 favorite, you must lay down $200. To win $10, you must risk $20; to win $1, $2 is needed.
An underdog with a +200 betting line is a two-to-one underdog, meaning that a $100 bet will return $200, a $10 bet will return $20, a $1 bet will return $2, etc.
Let's go back to the Colts and Texans. The oddsmakers had Indianapolis as the favorite. If you want to wager on the Colts only to win the game, you'll have to lay down a large sum.
- Over/Unders (Totals)
Oddsmakers will determine not only a point spread between the favorite and underdog but also a combined total for points scored by both sides. The term for this is "total" or "over/under."
The over/under total thus becomes a betting option for those interested in the outcome of the game. You're not attempting a perfect score prediction (though that bet is available, too).
There will be 46 points scored in Eagles vs. Lions, which is around par for an NFL game.
- Avoid parlays, especially single-game parlays.
To find winning sports picks, avoid parleys. In the event of a winning parlay, the house receives a substantial payout. Over 48% of Louisiana's total profit in May came from parlays, which generated $12.4 million. Parlays bring in an average of 32.1 cents for Nevada's oddsmakers, whereas straight bets bring in only 5 cents. This data comes from the UNLV Center for Gaming Research. Parlays are like high-interest credit cards in that your bottom line will see an immediate lift if you can find a way to avoid using them.
- Place your bets early in the week, not at the last minute.
Each market has what's called an "opening line," or the very first line on which bets can be placed. These have lower limitations in an effort to reduce the house's risk before the start of the game. Remember that the opening lines are just a rough estimate of where the market should start. Players are traded, starting lineups are adjusted, injury reports are reviewed, and limits are increased as new information is uncovered. By the start of the game, the market has matured thanks to conventional wisdom and betting action, although the prices are usually lower than they were previously.
- Focus on closing line value
Although it's always nice to come out on top in a bet, that's not the only or even the best way to gauge achievement. In the game of poker, if you have a pair of aces and you go all-in against a pair of threes, and you lose, that doesn't indicate your wager was foolish.
A similar concept in sports betting is closing line value, which is the value of your wager in relation to where the line closes at a sharp book after the vig has been deducted. A number of no-vig calculators are available online; just make sure you're comparing your wager with a reputable sportsbook that doesn't have a reputation for sloppy play.
Conclusion
You now have some great tools to find winning sports picks. Remember to always do your homework and pay close attention to as many details as possible. The more you prepare, the higher your chances of winning more often. Best of luck!
Don't forget to check out our website Plays That Pay to get all our picks and parlays.
Your friend,
Alex Parlay
CEO, Plays That Pay