Building a profitable strategy is crucial in sports-betting or trading. This article will be more betting-related, but the psychology behind it can be used in trading as well. Bottom line it is a combination of finding value, calculating the winning chances in %, discipline, patience and putting it all together in a final recipe that gives money. So simple right?
Making a profit long term on sports-betting can be very difficult to say the least and where should you even begin when you try to crack the code? I know, I feel you. I have been there too and know how hopeless it can feel, so allow me to take you on a small journey. How I think you should approach the markets step by step in order to have the winning odds on your side. You have to reset most of what you know about betting and starting reading this with an open mind. Let me help you build up a different view on sports-betting and not the view you already know.
I will cut it down step by step and go in depth with what you really need to focus on and how to put it all together. First of all, why do you bet? If it is for the excitement and if you don't have any plans of staying in profit long term or have any plans of try to make betting something that can pay your bills, you really have come to the wrong place. If this was for the excitement only I would have called this blog: howtoloseallyourmoneyonsportsbetting.com. Or maybe something similar. That one doesn't look good at all.
Anyway, I am writing this in a mix of Swedish/English and sorry for the terrible jokes that comes up, but as I wrote on the front page, I don't want anyone to copy anything I write on this page. I will find you and I will sue you if you do.
I have written some articles on most of the subjects I will mention in this post, so look around on the site and read more in to depth on what is needed to profit and how you can change your mindset.
So let us begin.
Controlling your emotions:
The absolute bottom line in everything we do in sports-betting or sports-trading, is that you can control yourself and your emotions. If you at least cant do this, forget everything about staying in profit long term. Sports-betting will test you so many times and I mean really test you! You will experience losses on a daily basis. If you make 1 bet a day, you might have 100% winning days, but if you have more bets during the day, I assure you that your month will be filled with losing bets. This is just a part of the game. If you are paying for bets, you will notice that even this guys that are selling bets, including myself, have losing bets/days. You cant have one without the other, so losing bets is something that you have to accept immediately before we continue to anything else.
I have written an article about greed and discipline, think you should take time to read those articles too. They are my words on how I managed to control these nasty things.
If you take a loss and you catch yourself hunting that loss over the next few games, you have already lost. That is not the approach we want to have. The approach we want to have is that we want to stay in profit long term. Not from day to day, but long term. Most professional bettors have many losing days in a row, but since they are doing the right thing, basing their bets on percentage calculations and odds, they know that long term they will profit from it. Numbers don't lie.
A quick example, if you calculate that a team has a winning chance of 60% and that teams odds are 2 (50%), then by betting on the same team again and again, you will be in profit long term. You might hit a few losses in a row, but that extra 10% will give you an edge long term. That is pretty much the same way a roulette in a casino works with that one green spot (0) that wipes it all out. Casinos will never die. A few ones here and there maybe yes, but not the overall idea behind a casino. They will always have the percentage of wins on their side. Its simple math.
They might have losing days, but they know people will come back, and long term they will profit from them. Imagine if you had the same mentality and discipline as a casino. Imagine how strong your strategy could be. Casinos optimize their winning chances by adding a minimum bet and a maximum limit so people cant use some kind of a martingale strategy and double up all the time. They know what they are doing. Optimizing their winning % and staying to strict rules. Discipline is everything in this game. So take control. If you find yourself tilting or getting away from your strategy, you have failed already. Man up.
Finding value in the odds:
A crucial thing when betting on sports is being able to set your own percentage of a winning outcome. That means that you have to learn how to use a number of criteria to try and “predict” the outcome. I say predict the outcome, but it would be more suitable to say: To predict what is most likely going to happen. Predicting something is close to impossible unless the match is fixed. And even those fixed matches go wrong once in a while. So whatever we are doing, we are predicting the most likely scenario of a match. Not predicting the match itself. So if you ever stumble across someone giving predictions on sports events or sell short term profitable tips, you have to tell yourself immediately that this is bulls***. Because it is. Don t fall for that. We are looking for long term profit. Something you can rely a house mortgage on and not just a single winner here and there.
When trying to predict what is most likely going to happen, you can use a number of different things to optimize the likelihood of your prediction. You can look at stats, previous games between the teams/players, current form, the weather on the day, how much a team has traveled to play the game, if a player has slept with an opposite players wife and so on. And I mean that last one a bit serious actually. Remember you can bet on yellow and red cards. The players on the field usually have some connection to some other player playing in an other club. When an attacker meets a defender with personal issues, there will be drama. Or if a midfielder meets another midfielder who he has some kind of personal issues with there will also be a lot of hard tackles and battles on the midfield. See if you can find a scenario or two like these. You can use the media. Next time the meet each other on the pitch, bet on a yellow or red card on one of the players. The chances are usually much bigger than when two normal players with no former relations meet each other. Its a small tip from me to you.
Anyway, back to predicting the outcome. When you have taken all these into consideration. You can start and value the game as you like. Remember, there is no right or wrong. You have to make your own prediction based on whatever you want to include in the match. And then based on that you have to come up with a percentage on how big the chance is for that single team or player to win the game. Lets make an example so it is easier to understand.
Lets say Barcelona meets Real Madrid. And based on everything that you have gone through. Table, previous meetings, injuries, lineup etc, you ask yourself. How many times would Barcelona beat Madrid under these circumstances. That means, on this exact day where Barcelona plays at home, the pitch looks amazing, the crowd is going crazy and so on. Lets say you decide, that Barcelona would beat Madrid 6 out of 10 games. 1 of them would end draw and Madrid would win 2. You now have a 6/10 or 60% chance of Barcelona winning. Based on your criteria and what you think will most likely happen in the match.
The next step is to use this percentage to compare to the actual odds that the bookmaker is setting. A quick tip: Do not look at the odds before you make your own prediction. It might influence you.
You now find out that the bookmaker is giving back odds 2 on a Barcelona victory. Great!
The situation is now that you believe that Barcelona has a 60% winning chance of a 50% odds. That is 10% more than it should be and that is great value! You decide to put a bet on this. Doing this long term will make you stay in profit. Its that simple. But there is a catch of course. Like with everything else that sounds to good to be true. You have to actually be good at predicting the odds. Right. Thats a tough one. But the basic math in staying in plus really is simple, the rest is up to you. You have to practice your calculation of the percentage that you give each outcome. The better you get at it, the more in profit you will be. And don't be afraid of getting a whole different picture than the bookmaker gets. I have tried that a million times, just to find out that I was right and the bookie wasn't So if you calculate your way to that a team should give back odds 2, and the bookie is actually giving back odds 3, don't be afraid. Bet on it. You are right more than you think. The odds that the bookie put on the match should never scare you away or make you lose confidence in your prediction. This will happen from time to time and you will notice that you actually get it right even though the bookie didn't make the same calculation as you did. Believe in yourself and don't be afraid of betting on big odds.
Money management:
This step is as crucial as the others. They all go together in the final package of creating a strategy and this is the last step. How to manage your money the correct way. You can be good at all the others things, but if you don't know how much you should put on each game, you will not stay in profit for very long. It is a very important topic that you need to master. You can be very good at picking winning games and calculating the percentage, but if you bet 100£ on the wrong games and 10£ on the right games, you will not stay in profit. So even though you are good at everything else, this is the one that needs most mastering. Some people are not great at picking the right winners, but they are masters of money management and that is why they stay in profit long term.
I will not complicate this one too much even though it is important. Because it should be fairly simple and I will illustrate it with an example. If you decide that you want to make 10£ per bet you make. In order to make this, you will have to bet 100£ on odds 1.10 and only 1£ on odds 10. If you do it the otherwise, it wouldn't add up in the long term. If you continue putting 50£ on odds 1.10, then you will only win 5£ each time it wins. Which will give you 5 tries only hitting odds 10 as a winner. But odds 10 “should” win 1 out of 10 times, yet you are only giving it a go of 5 times this way. So the puzzle have to add up in the end. There should be a red line through your money management and some strict rules on how much you bet on each outcome.
It is OK to bet 110£ on a 1.10 odds match, if your calculation of the percentage shows that the chance of this 1.10 shot to win is much bigger than 90%. Lets say your calculation shows that Barcelona would beat some 3. division team from Spain 99/100 times and the bookmaker gives you odds 1.10 (90/100) for a Barcelona win. Then it is OK to bet more than just 100£ because the value in the odds is so much bigger.
And here is the disciplined part. Be sure to stick to your rules. No matter what, if your discipline cracks on this one, you wont be in profit. It all fits together into building your strategy.
Putting together the pieces:
When you learn to master the steps written above, then you have to finish it all up by figuring out what is important in your strategy and what kind of matches you want to focus on. I personally never bet on huge favorites giving odds 1.10, 1.20 and so on. Its rare that I find any value in them. One of my strategies is betting on outsiders giving back huge odds. This way I can afford to bet on a lot of games with a small bank. And the greatest value actually is on the outsiders. Its just rare that people have the guts to bet on these large prices. It is important that you have patience when you bet, and of course discipline as I have mentioned many times now. If you don't stick to your rules, I guarantee you that you wont stay in profit. Human emotions is a sin when it comes to betting. You shouldn't base any selections on how you feel or how dear a team is to you. Every single selection you bet on should be based on math. Nothing else. Set up a set of rules and test it for a longer period. And stick to it. While you are testing it, try and analyze every bet that you made. Why did you get it so wrong, what should you do better next time and so on. By doing so you will notice that your way of calculating the percentage of a win will increase over time. Don t worry. It is difficult in the beginning but as you gain experience, you will be better at your calculations because you will know how much influence bad weather, the lineup, injuries and so on will have on a particular match.
This is why I don't like when people say the have a winning “system”. I don't like the word system in sports-betting Yes, you can add systems to it. Like the martingale system with a stop loss and something similar. But a system on its own is worth absolutely nothing. There are so many things that needs to add up before you can stay in profit over a long period of time. So next time you see an add selling the winning system or a winning tip for today or tomorrow, call bullshit immediately. I don't know who these people sell this to, but I promise you not a single one of them are in profit long term. Predictions based on stats, league table and similar wont make you stay in profit either. So don't buy these tips. Its a waste of money. You have to approach sports-betting in a completely different way.
I will be selling tips on a weekly and monthly basis soon. Those tips are based on market analysis done by me. The most supported games combined with my analysis of the game each day. So I will give you tips that has a higher percentage of winning than the odds set by the bookie. You can follow my tips on Instagram. My account name on Instagram is: Investinginsports
I will give away free tips a few more months so I can show you how it should be done. Do your own math. Over a longer period you will stay in profit with my tips but I strongly suggest that you add your own strategy to them and your own money management to make it even more profitable. Adding a system such as the martingale system to my tips could actually also work. But remember to add a stop loss just in case. I recommend buying a whole month at a time when I begin to offer and I dont recommend any of you buying if you just want a quick win here and there, that is not what it is for. The packages will be a bit expensive for some, but I give my support to anyone who buys. I can help you setting up your own strategy and I will gladly help you with the psychological aspect of it and how to manage your money. For me a good customer would be a happy and profitable customer, so contact me before buying if you have any questions.
