New to this whole online sports betting thing? These sports betting strategies offer a great entry for the beginner. Give ’em a try!
2023 has been a massive year for sports betting, with the total nationwide handle having passed $200 billion by March and still going up. People make (and lose) millions in sports betting, but how do the experts do it?
There are so many different ways of going about sports betting, one can get flustered as a beginner. Don’t worry, I’ve made considerable gains in sports betting and I’m going to tell you about ten different sports betting strategies and how to safely implement them. Keep reading to find out how best to structure your betting.
1. The Good Feeling Method
This is the most basic bet you could make in sports betting. This is when odds are published and a particular team or player (perhaps your favorite, perhaps not) is not favored to win at all and you bet on them anyway. If they manage to clutch victory against all the odds you stand a chance of cashing in on winnings far greater than with other popular betting strategies.
The best way to go about this is to place your money, right at the start of a season, on a low-odds team that you suspect could still have a chance at winning a championship. For instance, a team has a hundred-to-one odds at the start of a certain sports season. This means that for every $1 you wager, you’ll get $100 if you bet on them winning the entire season.
This is a very high-risk, high-reward strategy from a statistical standpoint, but there are ways in which you can minimize the overall risk. Firstly, since you end up getting a huge payout if your team wins, you don’t have to bet that much in the first place. Secondly, you can spread these tiny bets across multiple sports so that you increase the overall chances of you winning in at least one sport.
2. Getting Professional Help
This is quite an old-school method of improving your odds in betting, but you can always hire a professional gambling advisor to give your sports betting an edge. This can either be an online sports betting service or a particular person you contact for advice on who to bet on. If you take this route, know that you’ll have to place big enough bets for the possible winnings to cover the advisor’s fees, but you get unique benefits from this type of service.
Firstly, the advisor(s) will analyze you, perfect for busy sports betting enthusiasts. Secondly, you know the analysis will be good because the advisor keeps you for way longer if you win more which incentivizes top-quality advice. Lastly, a good advisor will also be able to tell you if your gambling is becoming a problem, which is an incredible failsafe in the gambling world.
3. Betting on the Machine
Similar to the previous point, you could outsource your research or decision-making to sports betting artificial intelligence. Most of these AIs run regressions based on point data of a team’s season and or history, while others look at the likely outcome based on the market’s movement. This costs less than hiring a service and still comes with the majority of the benefits.
4. Betting Against the Herd
What’s sometimes called “fading the public” is another common betting strategy. Look at the odds on sports betting sites and see which teams the majority of people are betting against and simply bet in the opposite direction. This works best if you, like in point one, spread your bets across multiple games and sports.
5. Reverse Line Betting
Reverse line betting is an evolution of fading the public, and it’s a more sophisticated use of sports betting odds. Like with fading, find a team that the majority of the public is betting against. Then you’ll want to look for reverse line movement.
Let’s say 90% of the public is betting on Metts -7 but the line moves to Metts -6, this is an indication that true aficionados have placed huge bets on a lower loss or a Metts victory. This is reverse line movement and it’s a great way to make money while letting real experts do the research or predict for you (which is great when you’re a beginner).
6. Following the Herd
When you bet against the herd or go with gut feelings on long shots, the math works like this: you lose most of the time, but when you win you win big. Betting with the market uses the polar opposite of that principle.
The more fans a particular sport has, the more accurate the crowd at large’s guess will be regarding the outcome of individual games (note, not entire seasons). If you consistently bet small amounts with the crowd, the probability is very high that you’ll make many small wins. You have to be consistent and bet a lot to make net gains because losses are more expensive when you bet against an underdog.
7. Play and Point Predictions
We now turn to look at betting approaches where you help guarantee your success by doing a lot of the calculation and educated speculation yourself. First, it must be noted that getting good at play and point predictions, generating your own data, and doing the math takes time to get decent at.
For play and point predictions, you may want to start by picking a sport to specialize in so that fitting the admin into your day is manageable. What you want to do is find a few result-generating programs or apps, such as this soccer result generator (for example). Make sure to do research within the betting community to find out which programs are the best.
Take the roster of upcoming games and let the programs and apps run predictions for each match. Then take an average score and victor for each match from your set of simulations.
If you know a lot about the sport, you can even bet on particular parts of the game, such as the number of touchdowns or passing yards, known as propositional bets. Take a look at the NFL prop bets found here for examples of the types of prop bets you might make.
8. Following Your Math
One of the best ways of gambling responsibly is by understanding the math in play behind your bet. Here you won’t be using odds from sports betting apps to view your chance of success, but you’ll instead be calculating your own implied probability of getting a payout based on the amount of money you bet on an outcome.
You can start by generating your own data and probabilities either by hand or with simulators. This will give you a much more accurate perspective on the odds of a team winning than what the sports betting sites publish.
From here, peruse the sports betting odds and find a fixture where the published odds differ the most from yours. If your calculations are correct and you win you end up taking a lot more home than if you’d followed the crowd.
9. Many Eggs, Many Baskets
This is a method that can be woven into all of the other strategies on this list, but it can also stand on its own. Betting a large amount on one game exposes you to a huge risk for a potentially huge reward. If that doesn’t sound like something you want to do, you can optimize your chances of success by betting small amounts across a vast number of games.
The more spread out your money is, the less risk you face. However, the catch is that if you have a bad streak you get punished twice as you face higher overall bookie fees.
10. Playing Both Sides
This is also known as “middling a bet” and is the least effort of the low-risk applications of sports betting odds. It works on a similar principle to the previous point in that you’re increasing your chances of winning by making multiple bets, but this time you’re going to bet twice on the same game.
First, you’ll need to bet on a position pretty soon after betting opens and then pay attention to the line movement. Once the public’s bets shift the line, you bet somewhere on the other side of its movement. For instance, you bet on a Patriots victory by 7 points, the line shifts past 7 and so you bet again but this time on a victory by 12 points.
If the Patriots win by more than 7 but less than 12, you win twice! The downsides are that you need to be able to sport this opportunity when it comes, it comes pretty rarely, and even if only one bet hits you may still lose overall.
Refine Your Sports Betting Strategies Today
Sports betting online is great fun and can make you a ton of money if you do it right. There are many sports betting strategies that people use to boost their chances of winning a bet. You can use one or more of them to make your betting more accurate.
You can follow your gut feeling and bet on an underdog, ask for professional help, or let the market guide you if you’d rather skip the work and just bet for fun. However, you can also dive into complex research, maths, and statistical tactics to boost your chances of success (and your workload). The best part is, there’s no wrong answer! If you want more of the right answers, however, check out the rest of our blog for more fun guides today.