No one bets on sport with the intention of losing but sadly, if you bet for any decent length of time, you will run into a period where losing seems like the only sure bet. This happens to all bettors, but what if you feel like it happens to you more than most?
Why Do I Keep Losing Sports Bets? Losing is part and parcel of betting on sports, but consistently losing your bankroll is more likely down to bad habits than just bad luck. Bad betting habits are fixable. Removing bad betting habits from your game will realise an immediate upswing in your profitability.
Common Reasons Losing Bettors Keep Losing
Too Impulsive
Sports betting attracts many kinds of personality types. While winners can be found in all groups, one particular personality trait is usually terminal to a betting bankroll. That is ultra impulsivity.
Acting on impulse doesn’t mean a bet will always lose but it prevents the bettor from weighing up all variables and pinpointing areas of edge.
Too often losing bettors take just a few minutes (or less!) to assess a market and plonk the money down. In the betting post mortem (if there is one) the bettor often can’t really articulate why they bet the way they did. In my opinion this is gambling and not betting. A tell tale sign of too much betting impulsivity.
Impulsivity is a necessary skill when live betting as markets move quickly in-game and hesitation can mean you miss the price you wanted. But even then most successful live bettors have run through different scenarios pre-game and are watching for the set ups they like. It’s less impulsive than it appears!
Lack of Research
This goes hand in hand with impulsivity. A lack of research can be attributed to impulsiveness but much of the time it’s poor research skills, that hold bettors back.
Anyone who has been to school at any point probably breaks into cold sweats with the thought of doing research. The difference here is that researching trends within a sport is applied immediately to the betting process and positive results can flow quickly.
Proper research allows the bettors to take info account changes to team lineups, environmental factors, recent record, game style match ups and intangibles that can be difficult to spot.
Research allows a bettor to immerse themselves in a sport or a team and over time spot trends on a macro level which may not be spotted by other bettors or Sportsbooks.
If you fail to do any research you will be relying on gut feeling and hearsay. While from time to time this can pay handsomely it will let you down in the end.
Emotive Betting
Emotions tend to cloud decision making in all aspects of life. Sports betting is no different, in fact it may even be magnified. Betting conjures the whole gamut of emotions, at times ecstasy and other times despair, perhaps even anger. Attempting to bet through these emotions is a challenge for all bettors, even those who have years of experience. Often the profitable bettors point to the ability to compartmentalise their emotions and remain calm as a key to success.
A bad beat or an inexplicable play which causes a bet to lose can have steam coming out of the ears in no time. Logging on to your mobile app to place another bet at this time is fraught with danger. It often leads to the desire to regain the loss by betting big on the very next bet instead of sticking to a staking plan and continuing the grind. Sometimes this is coupled with an impulse bet which lacks any kind of researched backing. A bad beat on one bet does not guarantee a change of fortune on the next.
Poker players refer to betting under a cloud of anger as being on tilt. Its a real thing in sports betting too.
Emotive betting also plays a part for bettors who were originally pure sports fans and now have converted to betting sport fans. When it comes to games involving your team, it is often hard to seperate the betting thought process from the sport fan thinking. Sometimes beginning bettors will bet on something they hope will happen (eg your team crushes your rival) instead of what the research or better judgement suggests is going to happen.
Recency Bias
A term less talked about in sports betting. It is most likely to occur when a bettor relies on impulse to make wagering decisions. Recency Bias is when a bettor has a habit of remembering something that happened more recently compared to something that happened further back.
A classic example from the NFL is when a bettor remembers that a team was demolished in last week’s game and assumes that the same will occur this week.
The memory is fresh in their mind and they are unable to move past that poor result. In reality the team may have performed quite well over the 5 weeks prior to that hammering and it was merely an outlier. A bunch of other factors may have caused the result like turnovers, missed field goals and bad calls. These factors probably won’t be as prevalent this week.
Recency Bias tends to overlook the bigger picture to the detriment of the bettors performance.
Lack of Focus
A strong indicator of a bettors lack of focus is them betting too often. This seems counter-intuitive as it would seem if they place a ton of wagers they are heavily focused on their betting.
The focus being referred to here can be illustrated by the magnifying glass and sunlight. As a little child I learned early that a magnifying glass can focus sunlight onto a small area and the intensity of the heat energy would be enough to ignite a dry leaf. Without the focus of the magnifying glass the sunlight would be spread evenly across an area and the energy would be diluted so nothing would ignite.
The same goes for betting on sports. If you bet on every market you see, your intensity towards those markets will be weak. This lack of focus means that no real effect is had. For example imagine a day when there is 14 MLB games on the schedule. Betting on each and every one is possible and makes for a ton of fun, but this is spreading your focus too thin.
Narrowing your focus by choosing, say four games (maybe through some predetermined criteria), and fully researching those is far more effective. You are giving yourself the best chance of clear thinking and making smart wagering decisions.
A lack of focus also rears its head in spreading yourself too thin across multiple sports. When starting out it’s important to stay zoned in on one or two sports of strength instead of taking shots at any random event just because your favorite book offers the market. Of course over time add more sports to your repertoire but begin slow.
As you feel more comfortable adding more sports to your betting arsenal, schoolofbets.com will have you covered with all you need to know to get started!
Missing the Best Promotions
Promotions seem like an unsustainable way to become a winning sports bettor. Does that mean you don’t leverage them to the max? Of course not!
If you find yourself constantly taking a beating from the sport betting game, good promotions are a way to mitigate some losses and punch on with your betting.
Always remember your business is big business in the world of sports betting. Who you place your bets with matters to the sportsbooks. Make no mistake they want you! What is the kick back for bringing your business?
Its juicy promotions, deposit and sign up bonuses, cash back offers, bonus bets, loyalty rewards points and of course an awesome user experience. There are plenty of these opportunities in the marketplace and it’s in your best interests to get into them.
To make the most of the promotions in the market place it makes sense to own accounts at more than one sportsbook. That way when a promotion arises at any particular book, you are able to grab it with both hands.
Zero Reflection
We have all watched the scene from a movie where the hero is walking away while behind him everything is exploding in a ball of flame and debris. The hero beaten, but alive, does not even look back at the carnage left in his wake. Think every Fast and Furious movie ever made. In the movies this is a triumphant moment. In sports betting a scene of devastation behind you is not a good thing.
If you have had a day, week or month of sports betting kaos the last thing you may want to do is reflect on what went wrong. As much as it hurts its a complete MUST. If it doesn’t happen, sadly the same mistakes will be repeated and your betting career will be short and painful.
Your mobile or online sportsbook is able to provide you with a complete betting history. Download this, preferably in spreadsheet form (.xls) so you can do a full analysis of where you went wrong. This kind of self reflection can sometimes pinpoint areas where you are actually succeeding that you may not have noticed. This provides you with a great starting point to improve your betting style.
Like all things in life, some decent self reflection will inevitably improve performance.
Poor Money Management
Poor bet sizing decisions aren’t the cause of any particular losing run, but they do prevent you weathering a bad run and living to fight another day.
There is no problem going a little harder on a particular bet if you feel extra confident or have seen value that is too good to refuse. That being said going too hard too often will see you blow your account up.
Betting any more than 1%-2% of your existing bankroll becomes a little reckless. When a profitable bettor consistently wins they may only actually be winning bets something like 55% of the time. On -110 odds markets a 52.38% winning percentage is the break even point. Why is that important?
On coin flip (50/50) markets in any sample 100 bets there is an over 80% chance that you will have at least one sequence of 6 losing bets. That’s right, 80%. There is a 12% chance you will lose 9 in a row. Imagine now that you are staking 10% or more of your bankroll per bet. A run like that will bust you in no time.
Extended that sample out to 1000 bets and you now have a 62.5% chance that you will hit a 10 in a row losing streak. Factor in now that you are not actually receiving ‘double your money’ odds on 50/50 markets, it is clear you need a good bankroll cushion. Bet size matters!
Check out this table for some more data on 50/50 market losing streaks
| Consecutive Losses: | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| Bet Sample Size | |||||
| 100 | 81% | 54% | 32% | 16% | |
| 100 | 99.5% | 99% | 98% | 82% | 62% |
5 Actions to Start Winning
Learn From the Best
A way to speed up your learning and move to the winners circle more quickly is to find successful bettors and learn from them. Now I don’t mean go and knock on their door, find them on social media or through podcasts. There is an ever increasing amount of good free content relating to sports betting that is delivered by some of the best in the business.
In fact often the sportsbooks themselves offer some decent content and even some free tips or picks to help you grab a few winners. We all should consider ourselves lifelong learners and the often forgotten fact is most things in life can be learned as opposed to just being a natural god given talent.
Sports betting can be learned and through practice, constant reflection and refinement you will win more often.
Specialize
Cut the waste from your betting. After reflection on your betting history find sports where you are having some success and develop your strategies there first. Specializing allows you to focus intently and dwell more on repeating good habits. As you gain success then broaden your horizons to other leagues or other sports.
Plan a Time to Research
Whenever you wish to implement a change or develop a new habit in your life, the first step is to set aside some time to devote to the task. With mobile sports betting the act of placing a bet is actually very time efficient. This promotes impulsivity. The harder part of the process is finding the time to complete some research into markets.
We are all busy and as a recreational bettor you won’t have endless time to commit to research. Initially set aside a small portion of time, perhaps it’s an hour one evening during the week, or on a Saturday morning. Use this time to research just one or two markets. The act of doing this will help you streamline your approach. Over time you will know what to look for when researching and efficiencies will happen.
Use More Than One Sportsbook
You are not a gambing addict if you have an account at more than one sportsbook. Instead you are a savvy sports bettor who knows how to leverage their business. Get a handle on the best promotions and the best odds by having access to everything on offer in the marketplace.
As a bettor if you are struggling to find regular wins one way to improve you output is to ensure when you do win you are paid well. The importance of finding the best odds can’t be overstated. On top of this you may find better over/under points total or more enticing point spread numbers.
Do yourself a favor and start diversifying your sportsbook portfolio.
Develop Patience
Patience can be learned and nurtured. As a long term sports bettor you will need patience in truck loads. Patience allow you to wait for good setups that represent good bets. It helps you too ride out a tough losing streak and live to fight on till things turn around. Most importantly patience gives you the confidence to know that if you persevere you will see results that at this point you can only dream about.
Patience is not simply the ability to wait – its how we behave while we are waiting.
Joyce Meyer
The Game Starts Now!
Losing more than you should as a sports bettor is not a destiny, it is just a phase. You have started the turn around by investigating ways to improve. Dig deep, implement some of these strategies and constantly reflect. Improvement will come and when it does the sense of achievement will be fulfilling and so will the extra spending money!