If you want to be a successful sports bettor, you don’t necessarily need to win 100% of your bets. Even professional sports bettors aren’t able to do that.
Instead, you’ll need to do your best to win between 54 and 55% of your bets. That should help you to come out on top and earn a nice profit while betting on sports.
To accomplish this goal, you’re going to need to utilize the best sports betting strategies possible. The right sports betting strategy can take you far when you’re wagering on sports and enable you to win more often than not.
Today, we’re going to run through some sports betting strategies that work as well as some sports betting strategies that don’t work. You should focus on using the successful sports betting strategies as opposed to ones that aren’t going to yield the best results.
Continue reading to find out about the proven sports betting strategies vs. the sports betting strategies that aren’t going to work out well for you.
Table of Contents
Sports Betting Strategies That Work
First things first: There isn’t ever any guarantee that you’re going to win the sports bets that you place. Even if arm yourself with the best sports betting strategy, there will still be a chance that you’ll lose some of your sports bets.
But you can dramatically improve your chances of winning by choosing to use sports betting strategies that work. They’re going to make you feel way more confident about the sports bets that you put in.
Here are a handful of the best sports betting strategies and some sports betting tips on how to use them to your advantage.
1. Placing Sports Bets Through the Right Sportsbook
The global sports betting industry is worth a ridiculous amount of money right now. As a result, you aren’t going to have any issues finding sportsbooks that will take your bets.
But if you want to increase the odds of you winning money while betting on sports, you should make it a point to pick out the right sportsbook. You should look for one that has been around for a long time. You should also search for one that has an excellent reputation within the industry and a variety of betting options.
When you have a sportsbook like this on your side, you will automatically give yourself a better chance to win your sports bets. It’s why you should look high and low for the best sportsbook around.
2. Choosing the Right Sports to Bet On
These days, you can literally bet on just about any sports that you want. You can obviously bet on sports like football, basketball, baseball, hockey, and soccer. But you can also bet on sports like Formula 1 racing, cricket, and, yes, even table tennis.
Just because you can bet on all of these sports, though, doesn’t mean that you should go ahead and do it. Instead, you should make it your mission to only bet on the sports that you know best.
By taking this approach to betting on sports, you’ll be able to make more educated bets. You’ll also know what to research prior to putting in sports bets.
3. Putting In the Right Types of Sports Bets
Outside of the fact that there are so many different sports that you can bet on in this day and age, there are also so many types of sports bets that you can put in. Some examples include:
Moneyline bets
Point spread bets
Prop bets
Parlay bets
Round robin bets
Teaser bets
You’re more than welcome to put in any types of bets that you would like. But you should know that some types of sports bets will be harder to hit than others.
Parlay bets, for instance, will require you to correctly guess the winners of multiple sporting events. This will make it more challenging for you to hit parlay bets as opposed to moneyline bets, which will only call for you to correctly guess the winner of one sporting event.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ever bet parlays. But it does mean that you should put some real thought into which types of sports bets you’re placing as part of your sports betting strategy.
4. Relying on Sports Betting Experts for Help
As the sports betting industry has grown in recent years, a lot of so-called sports betting experts have popped up on the scene. They’ve offered to provide sports bettors with sports picks that are rooted in research for a small fee.
You shouldn’t trust just any old sports betting expert to provide you with sports picks like this. But it wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world to occasionally turn to trusted sports betting experts for picks, especially when you don’t have a clue as to which teams to bet on.
5. Betting a Small Percentage of Your Bankroll on Sporting Events
Prior to placing a single bet on sports, you should always come up with a sports betting bankroll. You should also decide how much of your bankroll you’re going to bet on individual sporting events.
Your bets should only represent a small percentage of your total bankroll. Otherwise, you’re likely going to run out of money much faster than you would like.
If you have, say, a $1,000 bankroll, you may want to limit your bet size to about $50. It’ll ensure that your money will last much longer, and it’ll put you in a much better position to win money over the long run.
Sports Betting Strategies That Don’t Work
If you want to win money while betting on sports, you should put all of the different sports betting strategies that we just laid out to the test. They’re going to give you a better chance to win money on all of your sports bets.
You should also avoid using sports betting strategies that aren’t going to work at all. We’ve compiled a list of some of these losing sports betting strategies so that you’re aware of them and can steer clear of them at all costs.
Here are a few of the sports betting strategies that you won’t want to get caught using.
1. Betting on Sports Through the First Sportsbook You Can Find
Far too often, those who are interested in betting on sports online will Google “online sportsbooks” and sign up for an account with the first sportsbook they can find. This is just about the worst sports betting strategy that you can use!
You might get very lucky and wind up with a wonderful sportsbook on your side when you do this. But you might also end up with a terrible sportsbook in your corner that isn’t going to give you the best sports betting odds.
You should put some real time and effort into tracking down the best online sportsbook possible. It’ll be well worth it in the end.
2. Placing Bets on Sports You’re Not Familiar With
As we alluded to earlier, you’re going to be able to wager on almost any sport that you want. Online sportsbooks go above and beyond to provide people with betting lines on just about every sport imaginable.
But just because you can bet on a sport doesn’t mean that you should do it. You shouldn’t ever bet on any sports that you’re not familiar with in the slightest.
If you do this, you’re essentially going to be guessing who will win sports bets when you put them in. And this is not going to be a good position to be in!
You’ll want to stick to betting on the sports that you know best at all times. By doing this, you should be able to place smarter bets that are based on something.
3. Putting In Bets on Sporting Events Without Doing Any Research
Before you bet on a particular sporting event, you should do some digging around to see what you can find out about it. You should look at how two teams have fared against one another in the past and find out if there are any injuries that could affect the outcome of a game.
You should also look at something as simple as the weather if a game is going to be played outside. If there is inclement weather expected in the forecast, it could have an impact on the outcome of a game and affect which sports bets you want to put in.
A lot of sports bettors will just blindly put in sports bets without doing any homework on them at all. This is almost always a bad idea as they’ll often miss key details that could have swayed their sports bets in a different direction.
4. Waiting Until the Last Minute to Place Sports Bets
Most online sportsbooks will release the betting lines for sporting events long before they’re actually scheduled to take place. It’s not uncommon at all for sportsbooks to put out the betting lines for these sporting events days and sometimes even weeks in advance.
But despite this, there are still some sports bettors who will wait until the last second to put in their bets. They’ll be sitting there at 12:55 p.m. on a Sunday scrambling to place bets on NFL games that are scheduled to start at 1:00 p.m.
This is not the way that you should conduct yourself if you want to use a winning sports betting strategy. If you’re constantly placing last-minute sports bets, it’s going to come back to bite you eventually.
You should get yourself into the habit of placing sports bets long before sporting events are scheduled to start. It’ll allow you to lock in the best possible betting lines.
5. Chasing Your Losses While Betting on Sports
Even if you utilize the best sports betting strategies in the world, there will be times when you’ll go ice-cold and struggle to hit sports bets. It comes with the territory when you’re a sports bettor.
When this happens, you might be tempted to “chase your losses.” Chasing your losses refers to increasing the size of your sports bets in an attempt to break even when you’re losing money. Sports bettors will do this because they feel like they’re “due” to hit a bet.
The problem with this sports betting strategy is that just because you lose ten sports bets in a row does not necessarily mean you’re going to win your eleventh bet. So you could end up putting your sports betting bankroll in jeopardy if you pound a sports bet by putting up a lot of money on it.
It’s very important for you to be disciplined as a sports bettor. You’ll need to ride out both the hot streaks and the cold streaks without switching up your approach to sports betting.
This might be the most valuable sports betting advice that we can give you. The more disciplined you are while betting on sports, the better things should turn out for you.
Always Use the Best Sports Betting Strategy
If you routinely bet on sports without employing a sports betting strategy, you’ll be asking for trouble. It won’t be long before you’re losing money and wondering how you can turn things around.
We’ve provided you with a bunch of the best sports betting strategies here. You should put as many of them as you can to good use so that you’re able to maximize your profits while betting on sports.
Browse through our other sports betting blog articles to get more great advice on developing a winning sports betting strategy.
