25 Of The Most Common Beginner Sport Bettor Mistakes

Many enthusiast bettors stick to their only favorite website and do not ever check any other offers. It is okay if you want to wager on sports once a year just for the sake of fun, but when you are determined to make this hobby bring you profit, it is essential to investigate all options before you stick to one. It is easy to find various apps and betting websites that track the best odds for you, so shopping around is not a big deal nowadays and takes just several minutes.

Besides, it makes sense to check if a particular site gives any promotions for the markets you need.

Don’t spend your bankroll on the first bookie you come across!

Like every other business, sports betting requires keeping a strict balance of the bankroll. It is not enough to determine how much of your overall income you are ready to spend on wagers: experienced bettors recommend making exact calculations for each bet you will make. It means that you must know how much you will spend on each wager regarding the whole bankroll percentage. For instance, you can set limits of 5 percent of your bankroll for all stakes and 15 percent for exceptionally reliable ones. Such a system will allow you to keep an eye on your balance and avoid mindless irresponsible gambling.

Many people put too high hopes on sports betting results and lose too much money in the urge to become wealthy overnight. Let us reveal a cold truth for you: there is no bettor who won all of their bets and hardly one who has managed to make sports betting their primary source of income in a couple of months. You must be prepared to lose most of your wagers at first and count on winning the maximum 80% of all bets you make. This knowledge should not demotivate you, though: when you know an approximate margin, you can better control your bankroll and value each bet more accurately. Little by little, one travels far — this should be a golden rule of your betting experience.

Very typical tactics of many beginning bettors imply placing as many bets as possible. They either wager on the sports they know the best and choose all betting options literally they see at the bookie’s page, or distribute the bankroll around various disciplines. To be successful, you must elaborate a narrow approach and opt for the most valuable wagers instead of hoping that at least one of the hundred randomly placed bets will win.

Suppose your home team is playing and you want to place some bets on the game. The first thing you will want to do is to back your team by wagering on them, but this severely contradicts the rules of successful betting. You can bet on your team if you gamble for fun only, but to make your hobby profitable, you have to ask yourself if your team is really going to win.

Some people refuse to bet on the events involving their favorite teams at all.

This is quite a good approach, too—nothing personal, just business — another golden rule of a professional sports bettor.

Betting blind means placing a wager without knowing your choice’s value. Backing your team is a particular case of blind betting, but it can also involve placing bets on the ultimate favorite or making a choice according to intuition. Before you bet, you must know why you opt for this particular option. If you don’t know anything about a team or a player involved in your wager, take your time to collect at least the most basic information and recent updates about them.

It works like impulse purchases: you suddenly see something you do not need in the shopping mall window and buy it for the sake of buying. However, while you can return an item to a shop, you have no chance to get a refund for reckless bets. It sometimes happens when you just shop around a bookie, see some minor events and spend your bankroll on some unfamiliar teams to kill time. In most cases, it only kills your bankroll and win rate, though.

Value is not only about the odds. Obviously, it would help if you opted for the better odds, but even the best odds do not automatically mean having a positive value. Your aim should be to find competitive odds with a positive value, which means that the outcome is more likely to happen than a bookmaker supposes according to their odds. We recommend you learn how to count the implied probability using the given odds and compare it to the actual chances of the teams or players.

An example of a coupon with a good selection of bet rates

Experienced bettors always apply a specific strategy or combine several of them depending on the situation. If you are a beginner, it may seem a kind of rocket science for you, but in fact, learning some basics to bet wisely is not hurtful at all and takes about a couple of evenings. When you make wagers without any particular tactics, you will hardly reach a decent win rate.

We have already mentioned the values in this guide, and they matter in this section, too. When you make accumulator bets, it seems you increase your chances to win; however, finding several bets with the same acceptable value is hard work.

Thus, you will most likely place wagers with an average value and relatively low chances to win.

Basically, this is more like winning a jackpot in a slot machine: the opportunities are more or less the same. Besides, even if you win a fortune with Acca bets, you are not guaranteed to cash out your prize: mind the withdrawal and winning limits of your bookmaker.

Remember what we said about professional bettors’ typical win rates? They rarely exceed 80% of the whole number of placed wagers. Thus, if you have a losing streak, it is crucial to make yourself stop for a while without making effortless attempts to compensate for all losses. An important note: chasing a loss leads to problem gambling in 90% of cases.

Not all betting sites offer to cash out the wagers, but we recommend you to gamble with the ones that do. If you can cash out when it becomes more or less evident that your wager is not going to work out, do it without any doubts, no matter how tempting it is to wait till the end. Cashing out can, of course, turn out to be a mistake as many games become legendary for their final twist, but betting for profits requires minimizing the risks.

It goes without saying that making important decisions under the influence is a terrible idea. However, a sports game is usually associated with a relaxing evening with a couple of alcoholic beverages in tow — and this is when everything starts to go wrong. If you want to bet on a professional level, you will have to choose between betting and a home beer party when a football or whatever match is on.

A drunken person cannot reason soberly

Many people feel pretty comfortable when sticking to a single market, and this is not a crucial mistake, in fact. However, if you desire to develop as a bettor and find more positive values, you need to broaden your experience and research more markets. It does not mean you have to rush for wagering on everything you find lucrative, though: use a reasonable approach.

It may seem unnecessary for many punters: most of them suppose they perfectly know how much they spend and what amounts they win. However, your approximate understanding of your bankroll size is not enough to show better results with time. Keeping records of your deposits, winnings, and losses with an indication of sports you bet on is invaluable help.

The regular tracking will show you the strong and weak sides of your strategies, allowing you to change your tactics if necessary.

Thanks to modern technologies, many betting sites provide their users with comprehensive statistics automatically, but if you bet on different platforms, it is better to collect your data on your own.

Match betting involves using the profits of the bonuses given by a bookmaker. It can be everything from the first deposit bonus cash to free bets and cashback offered by a particular bookie. Many punters do not pay too much attention to this because such promotions often have too high wagering requirements, but sometimes match betting is an absolute bargain, so don’t be too categoric about it.

The Internet is crawled with cappers and betting experts who promise you the most accurate forecasts or even place the right wagers for you to guarantee you a big win. Another typical case is when your acquaintance claims to be a great expert after putting a couple of lucky wagers accidentally. Our tip is to make your own decisions without even trying to figure out if a capper is a scammer (most likely, he is) or the expert is really clued about sports betting. You risk your money, so don’t let anyone make an impact on your decisions.

This is a part for horse racing bettors or those who want to become ones. The point of this tip is to learn a lot about the contest you are going to bet on. It is helpful to see what the track is like in your own eyes and observe the horses: probably it looks tired, sick, or hurt and is not worth wagering at the moment. Experienced horse bettors claim there is no use in reading forecasts and comparing the odds without seeing the situation personally.

Making a bet is easy: just a couple of clicks. But this is not a ‘Bet’ button that will make you wealthy. Sports betting involves much dedication: monitoring the latest news of the leagues, analyzing previous games, sometimes even stalking certain players’ social networks. A wager you place is just the final action you do after hard preparational work.

You do need a bit of luck to be a successful punter or achieve good results in any other business. However, sports betting is not a roulette and involves more skills than fortune, so if you lose, the first thing you must do is to think over your failure and learn from it. Being convinced of the bad luck’s fault will not bring you far.

Professionals before betting look at statistics and assess the risks

It is easier said than done: how do you know your strategy is losing after a couple of weeks? The essential skill you require as a successful punter is to tell a sound betting system from a bad one and know exactly how much time it takes for a particular method to begin working. Keep the balance between dropping a strategy immediately when it did not work out and sticking with an evidently losing one.

Backing the favorite of the match is not the worth thing you can do: you have an excellent chance to win, after all.

However, some sports require more sophisticated strategies.

One of them implies betting against the crowd, so make sure your wager on the favorite is valuable enough and avoid mindless repeating of the majority’s choice.

It can certainly happen that one lucky wager brings a lot of money, but don’t count on it much. Remember that you are playing against a big corporation that is not interested in paying you at all, so it is safer to earn some stable income from your betting without drawing too much attention to you as a high roller. Besides, gambling addiction starts with the urge to become a millionaire overnight, so be patient to avoid severe problems.

Many inexperienced bettors tend to stick to a few betting options they find extremely profitable and invest the whole bankroll in them. It can be advantageous in some cases, but even a seemingly sure thing can fail. Thus, we recommend avoiding leading a risky strategy all the time and distributing the bankroll more reasonably.

General statistics are helpful, and we approve it when bettors check what happened during the previous games or seasons. However, successful betting involves more knowledge of the weather forecasts and personal relationships between the teammates and coaches. The outcome is still speculation, but it must be based on facts.

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