Smart Sports Betting. Welcome to Smart Sports Betting. Sports are a great source of entertainment for all age groups. Whichever sport happens to be your favourite, the anxiety. Sports Betting Is a Smart Investment. Posted by Ian Dyer Nov 1, 2017 Investment Opportunities. 2 minute, 47 second read. Just about everybody watches sports. Multiple Sports Stats for 8 most popular team sports for betting. Including Football, Basketball, Handball, Volleyball, Tennis, American Football, Hockey and Baseball. In addition to being fun, sports betting is a legitimate way to profit, even to treat as a profession. A The Smart Money Institute, we DO NOT sell individual picks. We want to educate you and give you the knowledge of professional sports bettors. Best Sports Betting Strategy. The discussion of how to win sports bets is probably the most talked-about topic among punters. And it only makes sense – making wagers on our favourite sporting events is what this hobby is all about.
- Sports Authority
- Sports Betting Smart Money
- Smart Sports Betting Tips
- Smart Sports Betting Book
- 10 Top Sports Betting Sites
Bob Dylan said it back in the 60’s…“The times they are a changin’”. Well, the same can be said for sports betting in the year 2018. If you haven’t heard, back in May, the Supreme Court cleared the way for states to legalize sports betting. With that in mind, let’s get more familiar with this huge industry and look at three different sides of the sports betting world.
According to Statista.com, the global gambling market, which also includes lotteries, casinos, poker and other gaming, grosses more than 400 billion US dollars per year. Of that $400B, sports betting makes up anywhere from 30-40% of it. The same site conducted a survey, and came up with the fact that almost 50% of people in the Unites States 18 years and older have placed a bet on a sporting event at least once in their life. So it is evident that sports betting is a HUGE business.
While you may know the basics of this global industry, what do you know about Pay Per Head services? How about pick services? What about if you are new to betting, but want to place a wager, do you know what to look for when choosing the right online sportsbook? Read on, and I will help educate you on these three topics.
Pay Per Head Services
You might ask, what the heck is a Pay Per Head service? Let me explain it for you. PPH is an online service for someone who takes bets, better known as a bookie, or an “agent” as they are called in the biz. This service will help an agent run their business in a coordinated manner, at the same time giving their clients a vast array of betting options.
Gone are the days when a bookie writes everything on paper and has to do his own accounting. A PPH service takes care of all that. The bookie will get the security, technology and software, including lines and odds without having to open up their own sportsbook, which obviously is a huge in devour.
The Pay Per Head comes into play because the agent is charged a set fee for every bettor that places a bet that week; they are charged a “per head” fee for the service.
There is a lot to know about these services, as there are a lot of them available, but I won’t go into the in’s and out’s and/or the pro’s and con’s in this article. However, a while back I wrote a piece titled, Taking Your Bookie Business Offshore | PPH Pros and Cons. Go take a look.
Sports Betting Pick Services
For one reason or another you may consider using a sports betting pick service. Bettors use these services to gain an edge, in turn putting more W’s in the win/loss column. You may choose to use these because you’re a beginner or because you’re sick of losing. Whatever the case, you have to be very careful when choosing one.
A pick service is a handicapper or a group of handicappers that sell their picks, and let me tell you, there are A LOT of them. I put them in the same category as a stockbroker, except they aid you in betting on a sporting event rather than providing information where you should put your money in the stock market.
Like stockbrokers, some of these guys are scammers. I went deeper into this when I wrote about how to find a trustworthy pick service, but to summarize, some handicappers don’t know their head from their a$$, while others will try to move a line to benefit themselves.
Sports Authority
Some things to watch out for is a site that verifies their winning percentage, large marketing budgets and cost, but you can read more about those in the aforementioned article.
Choosing an Online Sportsbook
If you do want to start wagering on sports or simply want a different avenue to place bets, the first step is to find the right sportsbook for you. Like PPH and pick services, the options are a plenty. While most are legit, there are also a lot that are not, and you have to be very careful before sending money their way.
There is a lot of information to be found on this subject around the web, including multiple sportsbook review sites, but be aware that some of these sites are run by actual sportsbooks, and can have a biased opinion. For me, the best way to choose a sportsbook is to talk to people that have actually used them, and get first-hand information.
Of course, one of the most important things to consider when choosing a book is do they pay. We all want to get paid when we win, and when you struggle to get paid, it’s not something you want to be a part of.
A couple other considerations include the betting options available. For example, do they offer teasers, first and second half lines and live betting? Do they have an online casino and racebook? How about a great mobile interface? All these things must be considered. Like the other two topics, I also went in-depth on Things to Look For When Choosing an Online Sportsbook that you might want to take a look at.
So that does it for today. I hope this was a good introduction into a few different facets of the sports betting industry. There is a lot more to know and learn, and be sure to watch out for more interesting articles on these topics and more in the near future. Good luck with your bets!
Making money betting on sports can be tough, but there are a lot of sports bettors who consistently win, and there are even a lot of professional bettors who make a good living off of sports betting. On this page you will find sports betting strategy and tips to help you become one of the winning bettors.
Below I talk about the basic sports betting strategies for beginner bettors, but if you are more experienced you can check out the advanced sports betting strategy articles towards the bottom of this page.
The Basics To Sports Betting Strategy
In order to help yourself make money or a profit from sports betting there are a couple of basic strategies or tips you will want to understand and follow. None of these sports betting strategies are secrets by any means, but following them will help you win money betting on sports.
The bettors who don’t follow any of these strategies are often referred to as “squares” and those are the type of bettors that the sportsbooks will make their profits from.
#1 Money Management/Bankroll Management
When you are betting on sports you should always set aside a certain amount of money, which we refer to as your “bankroll”, in which you can afford to lose. Like with any type of gambling, you never want to bet betting on sports with money you cannot afford to lose. Set aside a certain amount of money that you can use for your bankroll for the week, the month, or the season. A general sports betting strategy for money management is to only make bets with 1%-5% of your bankroll. For example, if your bankroll for the NFL season was $1,000 you would be making $10-$50 bets on each NFL game you wanted to bet on. It is also very important that you do not chase your loses with bigger bets. It is common for some sports bettors to be down money and feel in order to win it back they need to increase the size of their bets. This is putting yourself in the wrong mindset and will often lead to you losing even more money. Work with the size of your bankroll, and look to slowly increase it over the length of the season.
Here’s a video going over Bankroll Management strategies for sports betting:
#2 Bet Sober and Don’t Go on Tilt
Sports Betting Smart Money
Smart Sports Betting Tips
Although betting while sober seems like common sense, you’d be surprised how many people bet on sports under the influence. Is it a coincidence that the Las Vegas casinos offer free alcoholic drinks while you are gambling? I don’t think so. I don’t want to sound like your mother here, but betting while under the influence will impair your judgement and should definitely be avoided if you want to become a winning sports bettor.
The second part of this tips is “Don’t Go on Tilt”. Going on tilt or “tilting” is a commonly referred to term with poker players and basically means letting your emotions take over, which often leads to bad decisions. If you are angry or upset at something, such as a couple bad beats with your sports bets, you shouldn’t be placing any more bets. Take a break, go for a walk, get your mind clear before you start making anymore sports betting picks.
#3 Do Your Homework
This is maybe the most important sports betting strategy. You will always want to do your research before placing your bets. Although going with your hunch when betting your favorite sport may work some of the time, in the long run it will not lead to you winning money betting on sports. In order to profit from sports betting you will need to research, study, and do your homework for each pick you make. Look at stats, find trends, create sports betting systems, analyze past games – basically do everything you could possibly do to ensure you have value in your pick before you place your wager.
#4 Line Shopping
A very big step to becoming a winning sports bettor is to make sure you are shopping for the best lines. What this means is that you will have to have an account at a couple of different online sportsbooks and when you are ready to make a bet on a certain team or outcome you check the different sportsbooks and find which book is offering the best line for you (this ties in with our advanced how to find max value article). For example, if you are looking to bet on the New England Patriots on a 7 point spread, you would want to check a couple different sportsbooks to see if any of them are offering the Patriots at 6.5 points, or at the very least find the best price you can get them at 7 points at. Over the course of a sport betting season you can win yourself a lot of money from shopping the lines that would otherwise would not be one. Line shopping is definitely one of the best sports betting strategies used by winning sports bettors. To see a list of sportsbooks we recommend signing up for visit our Online Betting Sites section.
I’ve created a line shopping video and posted it on YouTube (seen below):
Smart Sports Betting Book
#5 Avoid Buying Points
Avoid falling into “square” tendencies such as buying favorites down or underdogs up. For example, some bettors always feel the need to buy an NFL favorite of -3.5 down to -2.5. The sportsbooks are smart enough to charge more juice to do this, mathematically making it a bad strategy. The same goes with buying an NFL underdog from +2.5 to +3.5 for example. In 99% of cases I would advise against it. Check out the video I made below about buying points on NFL underdogs.
Other Sports Betting Strategies and Myths
Above are the four main basic strategies you will want to follow in order to become a winning sports bettor, but there are a couple of other tips you can use to help you win money.
For one, you can try following a sports handicapper who is using a proven sports betting system. Be careful of scammers out there though. If they don’t show their past records long term plus proof I would pass, and in most cases I wouldn’t be paying for picks at all.
An old sports betting strategy is to bet on home underdogs. The theory is that teams are usually more inspired to play at home, and they will often not fold if they are down like they may when on the road. Betting home dogs in the past could have made you money, but this isn’t true as much anymore. You can read the current betting market article to learn why.
10 Top Sports Betting Sites
The last tip I have for you is to try and place your bets at the right time. With lines shifting from the time they are posted to the time the game starts, you will want to get your bet in at the time when you are getting the best price. Predicting line movements is extremely hard but it is worth looking into. Check out the video below that I made titled “When To Place Your Bets”.
Advanced Sports Betting Strategy Articles
» How to Place a Bet
» How to Win at Sports Betting
» Sports Betting Math
» Teaser Betting Strategy
» Prop Betting Strategy
» How to Get Max Value When Betting
» Future Betting Strategy
» NFL Bye Week Betting Strategy
» Parlay Betting Strategy
» Pleaser Betting Strategy
» Sweetheart Teaser Betting Strategy
» Current Betting Market
» How to Research Your Bet
» Mistakes You Need to Avoid
» Things Beginners Need to Know
» Win/Loss vs Value