Here are my top ten tips for anyone betting online for the first time. My focus is football (soccer) but the lessons here are applicable to all sorts of betting.
1 Get Organised
Every betting journey should begin with a blank sheet of paper and the formulation of your ‘to do’ list. Here are the essentials you need to do.
Set up a dedicated bank account to be used solely for betting (and nothing else). Allocate your betting fund to that account.
You can add hundreds, even thousands of Shillings to your betting bank, for free, and at no risk to your capital.
Try and familiarise yourself with the various odds comparison websites such as BettingKE, The name of the game is backing your selections at the best available prices and to do that you need to use sites like these.
Keep a spreadsheet of your bets. Whether you are following a series of tipping services or your own selections it is vital to know where you are doing well and poorly and crucially how much is in your pot so you can adjust your staking accordingly.
Make sure you have access to as many betting channels as you can. Life is lived on the hoof these days and we can’t always guarantee we’ll be in front of our PC’s when we need to place a bet. Make sure you have all your bookmakers phone numbers punched into your phone address book and spread your bets around their various web platforms, telephone betting operations and shops where appropriate. Not only will this allow you to bet while you get on with your life, it will also allow you to eke out the maximum amount of life you can get from your profitable betting accounts. Sadly, restrictions and account closures are a fact of life for successful punters but if you shop around and spread your stakes where you can between firms then you will greatly aid your chances of staying under the radar.
2 Find Your Niche
One of the biggest traps we can fall into as punters is dancing to the bookies’ tune by betting when the odds or any edge in an event is very much against us. Whether you are following tipping services or backing your own selections you should look to carve out your own expert niches. Specialise on what you know – or where your instincts tell you that you can have an advantage over the hard-pressed compilers. If you are choosing tipsters evaluate their claims using the same criteria. The subtext here is: don’t bet on games out of boredom, don’t bet just because something is on the telly and don’t get sucked into bets advertised by the bookies. The odds and the info will be very much in their favour – unless of course, you have done your research and genuinely know something different. Always bet on your terms not the bookies’ terms.
3 Stake Consistently
The most common causes for betting failure lies with basic greed, over-optimism in terms of what is achievable and punters overstaking in relation to their actual means. You will not succeed without the benefit of patience, balance and realism in your betting. Follow their lessons, keep good records and operate a sensible banking set up and you really are more than half way there to becoming one of that hallowed 2% of winning punters.
4 Only Back Selections Where You Are Happy That You Have A Better Chance Of Winning Than The Odds Imply
The name of the game is value betting that is backing bets where you have a greater chance of winning than the bookmakers odds imply. In order to evaluate bookmakers’ odds you will firstly have to re-convert either the fractions or decimals using this chart Odds Probability Table
For example, once you have a sense that the bookies believe that Blackburn have a 50% (evens, 2.0) chance of beating Wolves in The Championship, that the draw is a 28% chance (5/2, 3.50) and that the visitors are a best price 20% chance (3/1, 4.0) you are half way there to forming your own view on the relevant odds.
Only when you have broken down all your potential bets into a percentage comparison between your estimate of the prices and the bookie’s bets prices will you get a decent handle on where the value, if there is any, lies in a particular bet.
When your percentages suggest that the bookies have got it wrong and that the bet you want to back has a greater chance of winning than they think then it is time to do a bit more research (just to confirm your own view) and to consider having a bet. If you don’t do this level of due diligence prior to placing each bet then you are almost guaranteed to be a long term loser betting. Unfortunately, if you want to back your own fancies there are no short-cuts in this game. Thankfully, the rewards can be ample pay for the work you put in.
5 Be Sensibly Ambitious But Realistic In Your Expectations
When you consider that most pro punters will be looking for a return on investment of between 5%-15% on their football bets over a season then you should quickly realise that the profits you can make are all relative to the size of your betting bank, the amount of bets you have and the nature of your staking. As a beginner, you can forget those dreams of relaxing on a sun-kissed island in retirement just yet. But from small acorns big trees grow and as you keep growing your bank and turning over hundreds of bets your stakes will rise proportionately too. The trick here is to be realistic at the outset, set yourself some attainable objectives (for example, doubling your bank size over the course of a year) and not becoming disheartened by failing to attain pie in the sky dreams overnight.
6 Be Prepared For Losing Runs – There Is Nothing You Can Do To Avoid Them
It is a fact of life that even as a successful punter, a very successful punter even, you will spend your betting career backing more losers than winners. A high strike rate of say 40% in football matches still corresponds to significantly more than half your bets losing and there is certainly no guarantees that your strike rate will maintain a steady straight line on the graph. Quite the opposite in fact. It will almost certainly ebb and flow throughout the season, in both directions and often dramatically.
Unless you are prepared for this fact of life and can steel yourself to cope with it you are unlikely to stay the course. Though sound staking and money management can protect your capital to some degree the fact is that losing runs take their toll on the spirit as much as the wallet. Not everyone can cope with the rollercoaster of emotions that accompanies a volatile run of results but unfortunately you won’t know how you might respond until you are actually in that situation for yourself.
If you find then, that you can’t hack it then accept the fact with good grace. The moment betting is no longer fun – even as a profession – and starts to negatively impact on other areas of your life is the moment you should consider doing something else instead. There is no shame in discovering that betting, with all its swings and roundabouts, is ultimately not for you.
7 Treat Your Losers As An Opportunity Rather Than A Threat
Nobody likes losing but the fact is you learn relatively little from those days when everything falls into place and you record those red letter winning days. At the opposite end of the spectrum though, when the ref’s decision has cost you a winner, when the bets have been scuppered by howling gales and cut-up pitches and when everything you’ve done has fallen on stony ground then it’s not as bad as it first seems. Trust me. Dust yourself down and once your emotions are settled allow yourself a period of reflection. Did you make good bets despite the results on the day? Could you have worked harder having missed a vital piece of information before kick off? Did you overstake or repeat a mistake you’d sworn you’d never make again. Learn to be a good winner and a good loser by taking an even course at all times. Remember today’s losers are tomorrow’s passport to profits.
8 Record And Analyse Your Bets
Keep a master spreadsheet detailing all your bets and keep different sheets for all the types of bets and/or tipster services you follow. At set intervals it is a good idea to re-evaluate how things are going. Are your stakes big enough? Are there certain bets you do well and badly with that you need to take account of? Are there times of the season where you should stake more (or less) aggressively to reflect your edge over the bookies? These are all questions you can answer with a comprehensive bet record in front of you.
9 Keep Everything In Proportion
Winning and losing are simply two sides of the same coin. What goes against you today will run for you tomorrow – and vice versa. It is the end results that count and where you do exert the most control is on the path you take to achieve your objectives. Don’t beat yourself up unduly or swerve asking yourself the hard questions that are inevitable – and welcome- when things go wrong. Learn to be a good winner and a good loser and keep your winnings and losses in perspective. If you can’t do that, and betting becomes a source of anxiety and rollercoaster emotions then this game probably isn’t for you. If you can keep an even keel when all around are losing their cool then congratulations. You are well on the way to becoming a successful punter investor.
10 Don’t Follow The Herd
To make betting pay you need to know your own mind. Don’t be swayed by the write-ups you read if you think you have a valid case for backing something and don’t be put off by the know-alls online or in the media. They are probably losers anyway.
Finding your own road and incorporating it with the best, most reliable information around is the way to make betting pay. As in most things, the common consensus is overrepresented in betting and factored into prices accordingly.
Don’t be afraid to bet against the crowd and have the courage of your convictions when a bet screams value to you. On a similar note, temper general caution with bravery on those occasions where you think you have value on your side. Recognise the bad bets and cut them out yes, but don’t be afraid to have decent size bets on where the situation merits it. Over time, experience will tell you exactly when those occasions are.
