If you make the decision to invest in sports betting with the hope of turning a profit, there are a few key elements that you will need to consider. While everyone has their own way of handicapping games, there are certain fundamentals that are crucial if you want to make money betting on sports.
Fundamentals Are the Same for Everyone
There are certain things about sports betting that apply to everyone and in order to turn a profit, you will have to adhere to these fundamental principles. Most sportsbooks that you will use, charge a 10% juice on every wager you make. That means for every dollar you bet, there is a $0.10 charge from the sportsbook for taking your bet. In other words, it costs you $110 to win $100, $11 to win $10 or $1100 to win $1000. Once you understand juice then clearly you would need to win better than 50% of your bets since you are risking more than you win almost every time. We say almost because if you do wager on an underdog, this is the one instance where you will not be risking more than you win.
Armed with the knowledge that you will need to win more bets that you lose to break even, the question then becomes; how much more? The answer to that is 52.4% of your bets have to be won for you to break even. A winning percentage above that number and you will turn a profit. Now that you've got that down, the next question inevitably becomes; how much do I bet?
Bankroll Management is Crucial to Success
Bankroll management is a technique that professional sports bettors use to make sure they can turn a profit. The first step in managing your bankroll is deciding how much it should be. As a rule of thumb, your bankroll should be a little bit less with the most amount of money you're comfortable without other aspects of your life being affected. Once you've decided on how big your bankroll will be, you need to understand unit betting.
A unit is just the amount of money you bet. The reason that professionals bet in units instead of random numbers is because it makes it easier to manage their bankroll. By betting the same amount on each unit, it makes it so much easier to calculate how profitable your bets were. It also helps you avoid putting too much money on one game. In terms of how to decide the unit size and how many units to bet per game, that is also a very simple equation. One unit should be equal to 1% of your bankroll. In terms of how many units you can make per bet, the maximum amount of units would be 5. Every player is free to bet whatever amount they like but if you're trying to figure out how to make money with sports betting, these figures are the standard for most professionals around the globe.
More Advanced Knowledge to Help You Make Money
There is so much more that one has to learn in order to make money sports betting but once you understand the math and you are disciplined enough to manage your bankroll, you're on the right path. There are a few advanced techniques and pieces of knowledge that you will need to learn along your journey that we will discuss briefly.
Understanding how the odds work in your sport of choice is crucial. While sports that involve point spreads are usually the most popular, the ones that involve the Moneyline tend to be more profitable in the long run. Spreads have an implied probability of 50% for both sides of a wager. That is the reason they are so popular. If sports like football or basketball did not have spreads, they would not be as popular to sports bettors due to the incredibly high money lines. That is mostly due to the nature of the scoring (Moneyline sports line baseball, soccer and hockey having scoring systems that go one point at a time whereas basketball is mainly 2's and 3's while football is 7's and 3's) in basketball and football.
While point spreads make the implied probability 50%, that is not the same as saying “this team has a 50% probability of winning based on the point spread” which is talking about implied odds. We won't get into implied here because it is an entire subject onto itself and is mainly for advanced sports bettors. We bring it up because betting lingo is part of the learning curve. You will need to know what “juice”, “laying the points” and “chasing steam” all mean. Eventually, that will lead you down the road of learning about things like implied odds. While none of these is required to get you started, we do recommend that you take the time to learn the terminology so that you can open the door to more fundamental sports betting knowledge. The most important advice that you can get as a sports bettor is that you are never done learning. In order to turn a profit, you must always continue expanding your knowledge of the sports as well as betting landscapes.
