I have been betting for many years and have probably made almost every mistake you can make. As a result, I have won a few supersuper combi bets with odds over 15 or 20, but I have lost many more. In addition, I had a few nice winning streaks, which I then ruined again with overconfidence. The fact that I came out almost at the same level in a few years was probably more luck than good sense. But with wettstrategie.at I will now also change my betting style and discipline it successively.
In my first post I would like to go into the first basics that should describe how to bet in the long term.
SELECTION OF SPORTS AND MATCHES
In all situations in life, it is safer to focus on things you know how to do. The great Ernst Happel once said: “In life, you should always do what you are good at. Because that is the easiest thing. If you don’t do it, then it becomes complicated.” And the same goes for sports betting. Be honest with yourself and admit which sport you really don’t know at all. If your heart is only in football, you will not make a profit in basketball in the long run. And vice versa. So limit yourself to the sports that you think you know something about and that you can observe and analyze yourself.
And in these sports it makes sense to narrow down where your strengths and weaknesses lie. If you follow every match in the German Bundesliga, know the players, understand the tactical alignment of the teams and maybe know a week before the next match who is suspended or injured, it is preferable to bet on matches in this league than on matches from leagues you never follow.
ANALYZE THE GAME, UNDERSTAND THE CREDITS
If you decide to bet on a particular football match, you should analyze it first before you rush into a bet that you will later regret. Consult the official websites of the two opposing clubs, check the sports sites for cancellations or special circumstances. And then make your decision. Try to analyze the upcoming match, not the general statistics of the two clubs. Certainly, a club’s latest results, recent head-to-head matches or the standings are factors that should not be ignored – but they should not be the only reasons to place a bet.
Also, when placing a bet, you should always think carefully about the odds. If you think a bookmaker has set the odds too high, then you should risk a bet. Always remember that you are betting against a bookmaker. Analyze the game and play the bookmaker yourself in your mind. What odds would you give on a particular bet? If you give odds of 1.7 on team XY winning at home and the bookmaker offers 2.1, you will be risking a tip.
From experience I also advise you to stay away from mini odds like 1.05, 1.10 or 1.20. Betting on such supposedly safe bets will do you more harm than good in the long run. A little dairy calculation: If you have odds of 1.15 for a home win for Barcelona against Almeria, you would have to bet around €870 to make a net profit of €100. This may go well relatively often, but at some point it doesn’t go well and then a high bet is gone, the ratio between risk and logic is simply not given here in my opinion. Even Barcelona doesn’t win every home match for which bookmakers give odds in that subtlety – the 0:2 defeat of Guardiola’s eleven in the autumn of 2010 by Heracles Alicante is a good example of this. And it happens to EVERY big club from time to time. Sure.
SINGLE BETTING GOOD, COMBINED BETTING NOT SO GOOD
If you want to make consistent profits, you should definitely play single bets for the most part. I know it’s tempting at odds of 1.85, where you’re pretty confident, to add a “sure” bet to turn that @1.85 into @2.20, for example. Smother it. Take the @1.85 and be happy when you win it, rather than be sad that it wasn’t @2.20. I’ve made that mistake quite a few times and regretted it bitterly.
An example of how almost everything can go wrong that I have described so far involved a bet I placed in late summer 2010. I had worked out a bet with great accuracy and predicted a home win for Italian second division team Grosseto. The odds on this were 2.0, but I wanted to increase those odds and added the women’s team from Brøndby Copenhagen. I got odds of 1.2 for the heavily favored Danes to win at home, which resulted in total odds of 2.4. Logically what happened: I got greedy, @2.0 became too low for me, so I grabbed the first best match I found, even though I didn’t know the teams, I didn’t even look into the match for a second and I thought that Brøndby Ladies is a little Barcelona in their league. Grosseto won confidently and Brøndby ladies lost – the bet disappeared….
Of course, this does not mean that it is completely wrong to combine bets. Also with combination bets you can achieve respectable profits with measure and purpose. But what I described earlier counts: You should always think carefully about which games you want to bet on and whether the odds actually have a certain value. However, stay away from combination bets consisting of four, five, six or even more games. To make a Bundesliga conference more exciting and entertaining, you can allow yourself to have fun – but in the long run, you will not win anything with such monster constructions.
In recent years, live betting has become increasingly popular. This offers extremely interesting opportunities for bettors, as bettors cannot always react correctly to the development of the game within a fraction of a second and recognize trends too late. With innovative tools like Overlyzer, I follow live trends from more than 800 leagues and competitions and thanks to the extensive filter functions, I have a decisive advantage when placing my bet. Live betting in combination with Overlyzer is something that every bettor should have in their arsenal, as there is currently no better betting strategy on the market.
NEVER BET IMPULATELY
You will win many bets in your betting life, but you will certainly lose some. If you win a bet, be happy about it – if you lose a bet, don’t get angry. Problems in betting bring problems. One of the biggest problems of all gamblers is impulsiveness after losing bets. If a bet is lost, it is lost. Never compulsively try to get the lost money back immediately with a new bet. In most cases this goes wrong. Consider each bet you play independently of the next. You don’t win one bet to play another and you don’t play one bet because you lost one before.
NEVER PUT IN MORE THAN YOU HAVE
Most importantly: never bet more than you have. I think this phrase should be enough, everyone will understand it. More detailed analysis on bankroll management, bet amount, etc. will come soon!