There isn’t much as beguiling as the prospect of easy money. If you’re considering trying your luck, you ought to know it’s not as simple as flipping a coin. Without a little strategy, it’s just as easy to lose as to win.
Did you know that 1 in 5 Americans placed a sports bet in one form or another last year? Playing the odds is becoming more common than ever with the advent of online betting. You can even place bets through applications on your phone, so it’s no wonder!
The key to not making rookie mistakes in sports betting is to do a little research beforehand. This way you can learn from other people’s mistakes to increase your chances. Read on to find out more!
1. Avoid Artificial Intelligence
For the most part AI is capable of helping us with a great number of things. From writing job applications to diagnosing illnesses, this burgeoning technology has our back. The issue novice betters often fall afoul of here is a feeling of misplaced confidence.
Sure, these ridiculously complicated algorithms have access to practically all of humanity’s condensed information to hand and can make excellent use of it. But that doesn’t mean it can predict the future. Putting your faith in AI to pick a winning team is a huge mistake.
Think about it, if it was that easy, everyone would be doing it. People getting rich off of putting money down on teams an AI favors would be headline news. Betting would become a thing of the past more or less overnight.
Do your own research. The allure is understandable, but things just don’t work that way!
2. Don’t Play Favorites
When it comes to sports betting, your favorite team is sure to make an appearance. Just because you love your team and want them to win doesn’t make it any more likely that they will. This type of bias is a trap many first-time betters run into.
Thoughts of how great it would feel for them to win must be ignored. The betting game has to be played with cold blood. Don’t let your emotions get the better of you.
After your impartial analysis is concluded, if it seems like your favorite team is the better bet, then go for it. Just be especially wary that you’re not deluding yourself into losing money.
3. Never Bet Money You Don’t Have
We’ve all seen films where loan sharks come to collect. While this is somewhat dramatic, it’s not far from the truth. Even if you don’t borrow money from someone shady, using credit cards to bet can ruin your life in the span of an evening.
Ruined credit scores and not having enough money to pay rent are outcomes as real as you are. Under no circumstances bet with money you don’t have.
Losing a twenty here or there isn’t going to cripple you financially. Losing a couple of thousand after maxing out a credit card, now that’s a different story.
4. Don’t Play on a Whim
The backbone of secure sports betting is to have some kind of strategy. It might feel good to place a bet without putting any thought into it and to hope for the best, but where’s the sense in that?
Sure, there’s a chance you’ll win, but leaving things completely up to fate is foolish. You’ve got a brain, so use it! Even if you only spend five minutes giving it some thought, that’s infinitely preferable to throwing money down and praying.
To avoid whims altogether it’s also a good idea to avoid betting under the influence of alcohol. If ever there was a bad idea, it was drinking and gambling. This might seem obvious, but let us remind you that Vegas exists for a reason!
5. Don’t Bet Big to Recoup Losses
If you’ve lost a few types of wagers in a row, you might be tempted to put some big money down in the hopes of winning it all back. You’ve lost up until now, so the odds are in your favor, right?
Wrong. This type of bias has no grounding in reality and will rip the shirt right off your back. Play it safe, or even better, give up for a while until you’re feeling lucky again. Placing bets is only fun until you can’t afford to put food on the table.
6. Never Go All In
The idea of going all in has been romanticized by popular media. When your back’s against the wall, a final Hail Mary is never the answer. The reality of the situation is that while you’ve still got money to go all in, you’ve got money to walk away with.
Never put everything on the line, no matter the potential payoff. If someone asked you if you’d like to double your money or lose it all while you were on a walk in the street, what would you say? Just because you’re in the safety of your home on a sports betting website doesn’t change the scenario.
If the risk is too great, forget it.
7. Quit While You’re Ahead
If you’ve won a shiny penny or two, it’s time to make out like a bandit. Quit while you’re ahead, or your luck is sure to turn. There’s no such thing as a hot hand or a winning streak, you can’t rely on your luck to hold.
One of the hardest lessons is to learn to stop and walk away with your winnings. This lesson is often learned the hard way, by watching everything you won disappear before your eyes. In retrospect, it’s always obvious you should have stopped while you were up, but hindsight is 20/20.
This particular skill is possibly the most beneficial and hardest to master. If you can manage to learn this trick without having to experience loss beforehand, you’re in a blessed minority.
8. Taking Advice
Taking advice is a terrible sports betting strategy, as a lot of people believe they know it all. Don’t mistake someone’s confidence in their strategy as competency. Placing bets is a game without any certainty, so whoever prides themselves in a sure thing is a fool.
Don’t believe anyone’s assurances. The odds for bets are stringently put in place by the website or bookmaker that offers them. These numbers aren’t pulled out of the air.
It’s vitally important to understand that betting websites exist to make a profit. That’s something worth considering while you decide where to place your bet.
9. Not Learning From Mistakes in Sports Betting
Many people lose a fortune by repeating the same mistakes over and over again. The definition of insanity is repeating an action and expecting a different result. You’ve no doubt heard of people who have ruined their lives from a gambling addiction.
Making mistakes while placing bets isn’t something you can just shrug off unless you bet well within your means. Before dipping your toe into the world of placing bets, the clever move is to learn from the mistakes of others, rather than your own.
Being cautious to the extreme will serve you well. At the very least you can save yourself some unnecessary drama and strife. The whole idea is to have fun, not ruin your life!
10. Using Shady Sites
The internet is still a dangerous place when it comes to money and personal information. Unscrupulous websites exist with the sole purpose of luring in the unsuspecting and stealing their money. It’s a simple scam, websites are constructed to look genuine when they’re designed from top to bottom to have you send them money and harvest your data.
This kind of trap is easily avoided by sticking to reputable websites only. If you’re looking for a site for NFL prop bets you can trust, be sure to do your due diligence.
Play It Safe
It’s perfectly possible to have a great time placing bets with friends and family. If anything, doing so can make watching sports even more entertaining. Keeping it light-hearted is what’s most important.
We only caution you not to bet the farm, no matter how good your information is.
If you feel like this article has helped you to navigate some of the more common mistakes in sports betting, you’re in luck! We’ve got many more great articles where this came from, so go take a look!
