The main purpose of sports betting is to make money. While there are a variety of ways to make money from sports betting, the most successful sports bettors follow a set of methods that allow them to consistently place profitable wagers. In general, the key to profitable sports betting is to use proven methods to determine the likelihood that a certain event will occur based on the statistics associated with that event. To this end, the following article will walk you through the steps to take in order to accurately determine your win percentage based on the events you participate in.
Steps to Calculate Your Win Percentage
As a bettor, it’s your responsibility to determine your win percentage by analyzing the results of your wagers. In order to do this, you will need to keep track of the outcomes of your wagers and the betting lines associated with each wager. You should keep a running total of your earnings and expenses throughout the year, along with a record of the bets you placed. There are a variety of online tools that can be used to keep track of these numbers and provide you with an easily accessible report at the end of the year.
Create A Spreadsheet
The first step in calculating your win percentage is to create a spreadsheet where you can track all of your income and expenses. Ideally, you want to track your finances for a full year, starting from the date you first started betting. This will help you determine how profitable or unprofitable your activity has been. You can use a simple spreadsheet program like Excel to keep track of your betting activity. Entering your bets manually into a spreadsheet is the simplest way to keep track of your results and update your win percentage as the year progresses.
Determine Your Profits And Losses
After you’ve entered your bets into a spreadsheet, you should review the total amount of profit and loss for each event. These numbers will determine your profitability for each event and can be used to calculate your win percentage. For example, if you placed $10,000 on the Indianapolis Colts – New England Patriots game and the Patriots beat the Colts 29-27, your profit would be $7,000. This would give you an overall profit of $12,000 from bets on that game. If you’d lost money, your profit for the day would be $2,000 ($10,000 loss – $7,000 profit = $2,000). To determine your win percentage for an event, you’ll want to look at the win probability of the event and multiply it by your winning percentage for the day:
- Probability: This is the likelihood that the event will occur based on the statistics associated with that event. For example, the Jacksonville Jaguars are 15-1 against the Tennessee Titans over the past three seasons. That’s a 60% chance of winning for each game. If you’d wagered $100 on each of those games, and the Jags beat the Titans 37-6, your winnings would be $6,500.
- Winning Percentage: This is the probability that you’ll win at least $1 from a single wager. If you’d won $1,000 from 12 different wagers, your winning percentage for the day would be 12/12 (100%).
- Expected Profit: The total amount of profit you expect to earn based on the probabilities and the amounts you’ve wagered. In our example, you’d earn a $1,000 profit based on the 60% winning probability for the Jags against the Titans and $100 wagered.
When evaluating your results for a particular day, you should calculate your win percentage for both the event and the sport. In our example, you would have a 60% winning percentage for the Jags against the Titans, and a 50% winning percentage for American football. Since the event was a tie, your overall win percentage for that day would be 60%. Breaking it down further, you would have a 40% win percentage for the Jaguars against the Tennessee Titans, and a 50% win percentage for American football.
Looking at your results for a single day, you may notice that some events are more profitable than others. If you notice that a certain event usually results in a profit, but this year it’s costing you money, you should switch to placing your bets on that event from here on out. There’s no need to take up space in your spreadsheet with numbers that don’t add up, so periodically deleting losers from your lineups (if you had any) will help you keep your numbers accurate and your win percentage high. You should also consider looking into automated sports betting software that can assist you in placing wagers quickly and accurately, removing the need to manually enter your bets.
Determining your win percentage is an important step in the process of successfully placing profitable wagers on sports events. In addition to keeping track of your results, you should also look at the events you participate in and the amounts you bet on those events. If a certain event has resulted in low profits thus far, but you believe it will start bringing in the big bucks from here on out, you may want to consider placing bigger bets on that event. Otherwise, if the opposite is true, then it may be a good idea to decrease your bets on that event or remove it from your lineups completely.
Review Your Overall Activity
Once you’ve calculated your win percentage for the day, it’s a good idea to look back at your entire activity for the year in order to get a clearer picture of how effective it was. To this end, you can use the same spreadsheet tool to track your earnings and expenses, as well as the bets you placed throughout the year. You should track all of your bets from the start of the year to the end in order to get an accurate picture of your results. It’s important to keep in mind that if you start a betting account with a bank or credit card, you have to report all of your winnings from the start of the year to the end. This is required by law in order to maintain your anonymity should you choose to do so. Reviewing your activity across the entire year will allow you to see how consistent your results have been and whether or not you should continue doing this sport. It’s also a good idea to look at your overall results over a longer period of time in order to get a better sense of how effective your activity has been. It can be difficult to know what to show for a long time without any results to compare it to. Entering your results for multiple months in a row can help give you a clearer picture of what to expect from your activity.
Determining Your Results In Other Sports
While American football and basketball are the most popular sports to bet on, there are countless others that you can become interested in. If you’ve never placed a bet on a baseball game or a horse race before, then it may be difficult to know how effective your activity has been up until this point. In these instances, it’s often best to look at other sports in order to get a sense of what to make of your betting results. For example, if you’re a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals, you may want to place a large wager on them this year. Since 2012 is the first season the Cardinals have had Josh Hamilton in the lineup, it may be a good idea to bet on them this year. Looking at other sports in addition to your regular line of play may be the key to unlocking the potential for higher win percentages in your own game. If nothing else seems to be working, then it’s often a good idea to switch to a different sport entirely.
Final Takeaway
The purpose of sports betting is to make money. In order to do this, you must have a plan and use proven methods to calculate your win percentage. Entering your results for multiple months in a row can help give you a clear picture of what to expect from your activity, while also keeping track of your numbers a bit easier. If a certain event has resulted in low profits thus far, but you believe it will start bringing in the big bucks from here on out, you may want to consider placing bigger bets on that event or removing it from your lineups completely. Otherwise, if the opposite is true, then it may be a good idea to decrease your bets on that event or take up a different sport entirely.