How To Bet On Sports And Win

Sports betting is one of a few forms of gambling at which people make a living – sometimes, an extremely good living. It’s comparable to being a stock trader or an investment analyst, and with the right mindset and work ethic, anyone can do it.

Here’s how you can bet on sports like the pros.

Stop thinking big

We’ve all read about the likely lads who spun £1 into £2.5 million on some ridiculous accumulator, or punted a tenner on Leicester to win the premiership at 5,000:1. It’s a nice daydream, isn’t it?

Let’s be clear: this isn’t going to happen. There’s a good reason accumulators have such insane odds, and it’s because the chances of them happening are insane. If you want to turn a consistent profit betting on sports, you need to be satisfied with turning £25 into £43, not £5 into £10,000.

Consistent, smaller wins are the way to build your bankroll. By all means, keep an eye out for the long odds that you think you can best, but remember you won’t catch any professional sports bettors putting any money on accumulators.

Manage your bankroll

Even the very best sports betting experts can’t be right every single time. That’s why they never put all their eggs in one basket, even if a bet seems like outstanding value.

Common wisdom suggests that one shouldn’t wager more than 2% of one’s bankroll on any given single bet, though for amazing value bets increasing this to 5% or even 10% can be recommended.

That means that even the multi-millionaire sports bettor who has a £100,000 bankroll will rarely ever bet more than a few grand at a time – even if he’s certain he’s onto a winner. It might seem cautious, but that’s how he built that six-figure bankroll in the first place.

Find and own a niche

The bookies have huge teams of staff and complex algorithms to determine their odds, so it’s safe to say they know a fair bit about sport.

If you want to bet on all sports, you’re going to be at a distinct disadvantage – especially in sports like football and horse racing where the bookies have huge expertise. You know what they say: jack of all trades…

Far better that you have a particular niche and exploit it. Even if football is your main passion, perhaps betting on lower-ranked teams or even more obscure foreign leagues is a better bet than trying to take on the bookies in Premier League expertise.

The favourite sometimes isn’t favoured

Part of having your own niche and knowing your sport is finding those rare, but not impossible, spots where the bookies have got it very wrong. These are the sort of bets where you can really make a healthy profit.

For example, at the Barcelona Open in 2015, Rafael Nadal was a huge favourite to beat Fabio Fognini. Few were surprised, as Nadal is at his best on clay courts; he had won this very tournament eight times and was playing in his home country.

However, savvy bettors and tennis experts knew that Nadal had been defeated on clay by Fognini less than six months earlier. Fognini has a record of giant-killing in tennis tournaments, and his 8/1 price suddenly looked very profitable.

He beat Nadal 6-4, 7-6 (8-6) and made a tidy profit for those with their finger on the pulse.

Take advantage of bonuses

If you take the above points into consideration and:

• Manage your bankroll
• Make sensible bets
• Know your sport

Then you’d be insane not to take advantage of the bonuses offered by sportsbooks online.

For example, bet365 offer a welcome bonus worth 100% of your first deposit. As you bet via bet365, your bonus is released into your account. That means that you’ll have insurance against any losing bets you make, plus you’ll increase your bankroll even faster when you win.