Sports Gambling For Dummies
- Start By Asking Yourself Some Personal Questions. Is Sports Betting Right For You?
- Sports betting is one of the more popular forms of gambling, because it offers a few advantages over many of the alternatives. In this article we look at its benefits when compared to playing casino games or playing poker, and also some of the other reasons why you might want to try betting on sports.
No, I don’t think you’re an idiot. But I’ve always liked the titles of the For Dummies series of books, and they’re not written for dumb people. A better title for this page is probably, “5 Sports Betting Tips for People Who Don’t Know Anything About Betting on Sports but Want to Make Wagers Anyway.”
The problem with that title is that it’s too long, so I ended up with the idiot one. These strategies probably won’t help you become a winning sports bettor, but after you read this article, you’re going to see why there’s no reason to stress over picking winners.
1 – It Doesn’t Matter
Sports betting is considered by many to be the easiest form of gambling to get started with. When betting on sports, your goal is essentially to predict the outcome of a sports event and wager money according to what you think is going to happen. Learn betting basics like how to read & understand odds, moneyline betting, betting against the spread and over / under bets. Articles cover introductory betting concepts for beginner bettors to learn the in's. Dummies has always stood for taking on complex concepts and making them easy to understand. Dummies helps everyone be more knowledgeable and confident in applying what they know. Whether it’s to pass that big test, qualify for that big promotion or even master that cooking technique; people who rely on dummies.
Here’s a fact that most sports bettors don’t want to face. It doesn’t matter how much you research teams and players, and it doesn’t matter what kind of handicapping system you use. In sports betting, it’s hard to make enough money to make a big difference in anyone’s life.
I’m going to show you an example using real money below to help you understand why the team you pick doesn’t really matter.
But before you read the example, think about what it means if this is true.
It means you don’t have to waste time handicapping games and stressing over your betting decisions. You can simply make bets on the teams you want to follow and root for and enjoy a winning bet when they win.
To show you how little it costs you to simply make bets on your favorite team or the team with the best nickname or colors or anything else, let me show you some numbers.
The way that sportsbooks work, you can basically win 50% of your bets using any method you want to pick your teams.
I’ve learned this from decades of betting experience and spending time around sports bettors, and I’ll discuss more about it in a later section below.
You can make bets with sportsbooks ranging from a few dollars up to hundreds of thousands or more. But for this example, I’m using a small bet of $11 to win $10. When you place an $11 wager and win, you get back your $11 and a win of $10. When you lose an $11 wager, you lose $11.
If you make 100 of these bets during a season, the total amount you bet is $1,100. Following the normal results, you win 50 bets and lose 50 bets. Each time you win, you get back $21, and each time you lose, you get back $0. This means you receive a total of $1,050 back on your 50 wins. This is a total loss of $50 on the 100 games you bet.
In other words, it costs you 50 cents every time you make a bet. Some weeks, you’re going to win more games than you lose and other weeks, you’re going to lose more games than you win. But the more games you bet over the course of a season, the closer you’re going to come to these results.
The point I’m trying to make here is that you can bet on four or five games every week of the NFL season and not lose much money as long as you bet a small amount.
If you’re wondering how many games you need to win out of 100 to show a profit, the answer is 53. But the profit is so low that it really doesn’t matter.
When you win 53 out of 100 games at $11, your return on your 53 wins is $1,113, for a total profit of $13 on the season. This works out to 13 cents per game in profit.
If you make bets with people you know, this gets even better. You can make bets with people you know without paying the vig on losses, so when you win 50 out of 100 bets, you break even.
2 – The Tried and True Home Underdog
Betting on a home underdog became a popular strategy in the NFL many years back. It became so popular that the sportsbooks had to start moving their opening lines to correct their potential losses.
Now, home underdogs—on average—are no better to bet on than home favorites.
But, in other sports, there’s still some value in home underdogs. As you learned in the opening section, it probably doesn’t matter what team you decide to bet on in the end, so consider all of the home underdogs on the schedule.
I always look at the games on the schedule with home underdogs first. I don’t always bet on them, but it’s easier for me to find value on these games.
3 – Moneyline Bet on the Heavy Favorite
The best way to win most of the bets you make is to bet the moneyline on big favorites. Think of a MAC school playing against Alabama in college football. A MAC school doesn’t have much of a chance to beat Alabama, so betting the moneyline on Alabama is almost a certain win.
The problem is that the return on your wager is going to be very small.
It’s difficult to make much long-term profit only betting on huge favorites on the moneyline because it only takes one upset to wipe out many games of small profit.
You can also take the opposite approach and make small wagers on heavy underdogs on the moneyline. You lose most of these bets, but when you hit a big upset, you haul in a big win.
4 – Just Guess
The title of this section could easily be “Flip a Coin” or “Throw Darts.” The truth is that, unless you’re willing to invest a great deal of time and effort into handicapping sporting events, the teams you pick might as well be random.
For example, I don’t bet on games involving my favorite teams because I personally don’t enjoy watching games I have money on. It reduces the enjoyment of watching my teams. But I have plenty of friends who always bet on their favorite teams because they get more enjoyment from having money on their team when they watch.
In reality, every sports bettor who isn’t working like a professional handicapper is just guessing.
So why waste all of your time looking for an edge just to end up with the same results as everyone else?
The point I’m trying to make is that you should either bet on whoever you want to or just give it your best guess and don’t feel guilty about it. Either way, in the long run, you’re probably going to come close to breaking even.
5 – Let It Ride
This is a strategy that you can have some fun with. The idea is to take a small amount of money and keep betting the proceeds from it until it turns into a big amount of money. You can start with a bet of $11 to win $10 and if you win, you make another wager of $21. If you win two games in a row, you roll your stake on a third game.
Most of the time, you’re going to lose before you let it ride into a large amount, but it’s fun to try a low-risk, high-reward play.
I recommend setting a goal so you can take a profit when you reach it.
Starting with an $11 wager, set a goal of cashing out when you hit $100. Put some profit in your pocket and use a little of it to start another let it ride play or two.
You can set a big goal, like turning $11 into $1,000 or more, if a challenge like this excites you. Just understand that the bigger your goal using this method, the lower the chances of actually walking away with some money.
Sports Gambling For Dummies Cheat
You can also take a larger amount of money, like $110, and start 10 different let it ride plays at $11 each. In the long run, your results are going to be the same, but it can be quite fun. Consider trying this at the start of a season to see if you enjoy it.
Conclusion
Making big profits from sports betting requires a great deal of skill and a large bankroll. For most gamblers, it’s simply not worth the risk and effort involved. But that doesn’t mean you can’t try one or more of the strategies on this page.
Sports Gambling For Dummies Games
At the end of the day, you might as well have some fun. When it’s probably not going to matter which team you bet on in the long run, you can make betting decisions based on anything you want.