The world of sports betting is full of winners and unfortunately, losers. Sometimes the very same bettor can be both, powering into winning weeks or months and then flipping straight back to a losing week or worse. Not only is this rollercoaster of emotions a test of any bettor’s resilience, it can also make managing the bankroll extremely difficult.
Despite the treacherous nature of sports betting, some punters manage to consistently win. Not every bet and not every week, but over time they trend upwards and turn sporting knowledge into cold hard currency.
How do they do it? What is it that separates them from the regular bettor who, despite best intentions, gets bled dry by the books? Well, it’s all in their approach to the great game, their mentality towards wagering and their desire to constantly improve. The best part is anyone can adopt this approach. Read on to find out about the 10 attributes that make a winning sports bettor.
The Attributes
Passion for Betting
There is no doubt about it, if you are going to invest large amounts of time, effort and money into a venture you need to have some level of love for the day in day out, the bread and butter actions that make it work. You may be able to manufacture some passion for a while, particularly while things are new, but if there is no natural love for what you do the grind will get you. Make no mistake successful sports betting, is more grind than it is anything else.
Successful sports bettor generally have an intrinsic love for sports. At least for a few particular sports that allow them to specialize in those areas. The knowledge of the nuances of a game allow a bettor to see and seize betting opportunities quickly. A general love for sport allows a sports bettor to expand their horizons to other sports as they become more adept at the betting game.
To be a winning bettor the passion needs to extend beyond a love for the sport and include a love for the art of betting. It is one thing to love a sport and be a student of the game, but it is a whole other thing to deeply understand how to bet on that sport. Many a long term diehard football fan has turned their efforts to betting and despite knowing plenty about the game simply go bust. This is because they don’t yet have a passion for the ins and out of wagering and make mistakes that even their vast knowledge of football cannot overcome. Successful sports bettors are passionate about the art of the wager.
33 Strategies to win more often! Become a sports betting star. Read more here.
Patience
The road to profitability in sports betting is a long and winding one. The break even point for sports betting is a win rate of 52.3%, that is allowing for the sportsbook’s vig or juice. Winning at a rate much higher than that is exceedingly difficult but even a small percentage higher is very lucrative. This is not a commonly known fact outside the world of betting. It would seem many recreational gamblers think the entire profit needs to be made quickly and hence their bet sizing decisions are beyond ridiculous and the result is invariably going bust.
In order to develop a profitable record, where winning above the magical 52.3% happens, bettors need to be betting regularly but not impatiently. It is ok to look at a market, not see a likely target and reduce the bet size or simply look on. Patience is a complete virtue. Wait until the opportunity is seemingly in your favor and pounce. If that means waiting till next time then so be it.
Successful sports bettors wait for great betting opportunities and pounce hard. Avoiding a loss is in most cases just like a win. The bankroll is available to use at another time. In poker parlance it is ok to fold and protect the stack to fight another day.
Self Discipline
Betting on sports, like so many other walks of life, requires a level of discipline in order to achieve some success. Sure a bettor may get lucky for a while, but over the long term, it’s the good habits formed and the systems followed that allow a bettor to grind out wins.
The issue with sports betting is that it can be a solitary game. There is no boss standing over your shoulder forcing you to put in the effort. You can devote as much or little effort to your betting as you see fit. This is where the self discipline, by putting in the hard yards when nobody is watching, becomes the foundation upon which success is built.
Over time you may develop some systems which inform your to betting. This might relate to bet sizing eg. betting the same amount each time or a percentage of your bankroll, or it could be that you have become a specialist in certain sports and only wish to bet on those. Sports bettors the world over follow countless different systems. The point is, it doesn’t matter how good your system is, if you don’t possess the self discipline to stick to it then you will compromise its effectiveness and then your profit.
Self discipline also relates to things like, only betting when you are sober, or avoiding thrill betting by completing your due diligence on a market before investing your hard earned cash on it. It also can mean spending an extra few minutes shopping around bookmakers to ensure you have found the best odds available.
Self discipline is a controllable factor. This is the part of betting that is not left up to luck. Control your own temptations and you may just be giving yourself the best chance to succeed.
Bankroll management tips for sports betting beginners! Read them here.
Intuition
Intuition is the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning. In sports betting that may mean you are able to see the unmeasurable or intangible factor that could decide or change a game. Many sports bettors focus on statistics and numbers. These same statistics are available to much of the public and the sportsbooks. Often they are already factored into the price and therefore that edge is lost. Intuition is NEVER factored into a sportsbooks price.
An example of a bettors intuition in a pregame market may be when the bettor feels a certain team, following a big win, will suffer a let down. Perhaps it is because the coaches struggle to reign in a team’s complacency or that the team may struggle to find the energy to ‘get up’ for another big game in just a weeks time. Whatever it may be this is essentially immeasurable but could be detected by a bettor with the intuition for seeing this intangible play out. Something that may not be seen by many other punters. As a result the bettor hits the market hard by fading the team coming off the win.
Live betting markets are fertile ground for bettors with an intuition that is dialled in. An example may be that during an NFL game where a team has gone behind by two scores early in a match. The bettor feels that despite the obvious scoreline issues and perhaps lopsided stats, the trailing team is very much in the game. Again no level of quantitative reasoning would point to this but intuition may say different.At that point a live betting opportunity has opened up.
What makes for good intuition? Well it’s had to say. What can be said is that poorly thought through decisions can be written off as intuition and lead to a world of hurt.
Some Math Skills
You don’t need to be a genius to realise sports betting is about numbers. Certainly reading odds and identifying value requires some level of mathematical ability, but many profitable sports bettors also access quantitative analysis, a deep dive into the statistics of the game to get an edge over the books.
Reading and understanding this deep level of forensic research, pouring over individual player and team performance statistics in an effort to find some predictive metrics, trends or patterns needs an interest and flair for numbers.
Many successful bettors will not only use quantitative analysis but over time will adjust and modify this analysis to better suit their needs. Developing these types of systems, testing and refining them, are part and parcel of sophisticated sports betting. Without doubt a better than average mathematical ability is useful.
School Of Bets has taken an indepth look at how to read sports betting odds. Check it out here.
Appetite for Risk
We as humans all have varying levels of risk taking desire. Some are ultra conservative, focussing on safety first at all times. Others actively seek out risk, sometimes without any thought for self preservation.
I mean what possesses someone to jump out of a perfectly good plane? The adrenaline rush of the free fall and the ability to stare danger in the face instead of avoiding it. An experienced skydiver would say the risk is low, all safety precautions have been taken. A rookie would say the risk is high, gravity is an undeniable force and despite all precautions, inherent risk is ever present..
Successful sports bettors think along much the same lines as the pro skydiver. While they recognise the risk they are taking by staking a large amount of money on a market, they also believe they have mitigated the risk through research, experience and intuition. The risk mitigation process has the mindset of the bettor such that missing the betting opportunity would be more risky than staking a wager on it.
Professional sports bettors recognise the inherent risk with gambling but feel they are stacking the odds in their favor. Their appetite for risk seems large but is completely justifiable. A recreational bettor may see all bets as a risk and therefore couldn’t ever bring themselves to have large amounts of money riding on the result of a sporting event.
Part of the appetite for risk is knowing from time to time a bad run of luck or a downswing will come your way. A recreational bettor may give up on the game at this point. Accepting the downswing and continuing to focus on the next market are hallmarks of an increased appetite for risk.
Each to their own. One thing is for sure, winning sports bettors do not shy away from venturing some capital on a ‘risky’ market. Nothing ventured, nothing gained as they say!
Strength of Conviction
Strength of conviction is useful in so many walks of life. In sports betting it is almost essential. This game of betting is full of contradictory opinions, after all that’s what it is built upon. Back your judgement against that of the bookmaker and/or other bettors. The more correct your judgement is, the more you potentially win. Simple concept, excruciatingly difficult to pull off consistently.
Successful sports bettors have amazing rubbish filters. They are able to filter out the information and opinions that are irrelevant to the pricing of the market. It is a special kind of focus that results in confidence in your own opinion, even if it is vastly different to the general public. This is strength of conviction in its purest form. Fading popular public opinion is never easy and is the breeding ground of self doubt. Overcoming this is something that sets apart the best from the rest.
In the investing world, holding a different opinion to the mainstream has been referred to as being a contrarian. It’s not quite that. Strength of conviction is forming a strong stance based on your own findings and sticking true to it. If that viewpoint happens to be different to the public so be it. If it is the same, no problems. The pro trust their own judgement, back themselves, and generally succeed.
Emotional Stability
A losing run betting on sport is an emotional thing. A few bad picks followed by some horrendous bad beats is enough to send most bettors over the edge. During a bad downswing it is incredible how well researched picks can find seemingly impossible ways to lose. Phrases like, ‘it’s a miracle’ and ‘this has never happened’ usually accompany that sinking feeling when the unbeatable position has become a stone cold bad beat. Its at this point where emotions can reach their most heightened.
Interestingly emotions that come with a big win can be equally as detrimental to betting habits. A surge in confidence can cause a bettor to give winnings back just as quickly as they were won, maybe quicker.
Losing control of your emotions is a recipe for disaster pretty much anywhere in life. It muddles the brain and causes decisions to be loose and irrational. The bettors who make a living from gambling on sport find ways to keep their emotions in check. It may be by looking again at the math, it may be by working harder, it simply may be by taking a break and clearing the head through a work out or some other form of entertainment. Regardless of the method those who find long term success in this game do not let emotions control them.
This level of control doesn’t mean zero emotions are experienced, it simply means the pros find an outlet to release the negative emotions in a way that doesn’t affect their betting. Perhaps this is a skill learned in another walk of life and brought to the betting game or maybe it has been learned at the betting school of hard knocks. Either way until emotions are controlled they will affect betting success.
Resourcefulness
Effectively using time is an attribute that the profitable bettors have adopted and mastered. Betting volume is essential to turning over large bankrolls and yielding sizeable profits. The research behind each bet can be tedious and time consuming. The best bettor’s have found ways to pool information in tight knit networks where workload is shared. Perhaps its is linking together betting experts from different sports or for the likes of college basketball and football it may experts from specific conferences.
Social media has played a huge role in allowing bettors to find each other across the globe and form these information sharing syndicates. Being active in these communities has seen a pooling of resources that has kept sportsbooks on their toes. This networking capability is a sign of incredible resourcefulness on the part of the successful bettors.
Profitable bettors are also resourceful with technology, whether it be data analysis tools, or developing coded algorithms which streamline processes and assist in evaluating match ups. They are able to stay up to date with the tools that help them complete tasks quickly and efficiently. Of course if the punters have access to this technology then so do the sportsbooks. Staying one step ahead of them is half the battle.
The resourcefulness extends to using as many sportsbooks as possible. This may be local corporate bookmakers or offshore accounts (which we don’t recommend). The greater access to bookmakers allows for better prices to be attained on selected games and more opportunities to get set by avoiding being limited. In order to use multiple books the pros have to be able to move large amounts of cash around from account to account and often outside of currency jurisdictions quickly and cost effectively.
Being resourceful is a given.
The advantages of holding accounts at multiple sportsbooks are huge! Read about them here.
Experience
As the saying goes, you can’t buy experience. That is certainly true in the sports betting world. Some actually attempt to buy experience through touts and paying for picks but this inefficient and costly. Nothing substitutes real time and skin in the game. Certainly the process to gaining experience can be sped up through mentoring and using forums etc. The pros use networks heavily, even if they are keeping some of their cards close to their chest. In many ways they are still learning even though they have vast experience.
Experience doesn’t just come from time in the game it also comes from true and honest reflection on betting record and how the bettor came to make the decisions that lead to that record. Refining the process is the benefit of experience. A track record does not guarantee winning but it can inform systems going forward which in turn can equal profitability.
Do you have to be a veteren to succeed at sports betting? Of course not! Experience is not the be all and end all of success. The thing is, if you find some success, you will find longevity in the game and build a wealth of experience. The only way to truly gain experience is to begin. It always helps to remember, even the most storied sports bettors in the world were rookies once!
The Game Starts Now!
Thankfully these attributes can be adopted or learned.
While we are all predispositioned to be better at some of these aspects than others, we can all improve across the board. The first step, being aware of what makes a successful sports bettor. The second step, find out more about yourself and your personality type. Making a conscious decision to improve is where it all begins.
The game starts now!