It is amazing how quickly life can change when you come to terms with the fact that you can no longer play sports professionally. For me, coming to terms with this reality meant learning to adapt to my new lifestyle as a full-time student. One of the areas of my life that I had to adapt to was my passion for sports betting. It took some time before I understood the true nature of this obsession, but once I did, it became quite clear that gambling was something that I had to include in my overall game plan if I ever hoped to achieve the status of a successful sports gambler. Luckily, I’m a quick learner and a determined person who knows exactly what he wants, so I was soon able to assemble a game plan that I feel will lead me to ultimate success. Here are some of the things that I did to ensure that my love for sports betting would pay off:
Study the Game
The first and most essential step to taking your wagers seriously is to study the game. It is a common mistake for gamblers to focus on gambling and lose sight of the fact that there is a lot more to sports betting than simply placing a wager and seeing what happens. In order to be a successful sports gambler, you need to be able to place wagers on teams and players you have never heard of or seen play before. This is where a good sports book comes in handy because they keep track of all the scores and results of the games that take place each week and make them easily accessible to the public.
Join A Sports Bookie Club
One of the things that helped me adapt to my new way of life was joining a bookie club. These are basically groups of people who get together and pool their funds to make bigger bets than they could afford individually. The more people that you have betting on your side, the better chance you have of winning. If you’re serious about becoming a successful sports gambler, joining a bookie club is a great way to go about it.
Learn To Value Your Time
One of the things that helped me realize the true value of my time was making a list of all the things that I needed to do in order to be successful. I used to waste a lot of time and simply go with the flow, but after coming up with a solid game plan, I was able to establish priorities and start doing things that would put me on the right path to accomplishing my goals.
Create A Routine
Making a routine is essential if you want to be successful at anything. In order to make enough money to be able to afford all of the amenities that college life has to offer, I had to create a routine that would allow me to bet efficiently and effectively. I like to think of my routine as a sort of playbook for becoming a successful sports gambler. Every day before I started studying, I would do a bit of research into upcoming games and odds, create a list of everything I needed to memorize for the day, and then study for three to four hours. After I had finished my studies for the day, I would put all of my memorized information to use and let my betting instincts take over. It’s a great feeling when everything comes together and the results of your hard work pay off. This is exactly what happened to me and the routine that I described above had a lot to do with it.
Make Sure You Bet On Sports You Can Win Money From
It is important to bet on sports that you know you have a good chance of winning money from. The majority of sports books will not be interested in taking your wagers because they don’t see you as a potential customer. As a general rule, you should avoid betting on games where the spread is less than seven points and the over/under is 45. These are the types of bets that the vast majority of sports books won’t touch because they don’t see these games as profitable. You need to seek out sports books that have a wide variety of games, including ones that you likely have not heard of or seen played before. If they don’t have a wide variety of sports, then you should walk away because there’s no point in wasting your time with a book that does not have the games that you want to bet on. This rule applies to NFL, NBA, and MLB games because they are the games that most people are aware of and have seen played before. If you are looking to bet on a collegiate sport, then you should avoid making any bets on a game where the spread is more than five points.
Use Betting Psychology
A lot of successful sports bettors use a type of psychology that is all about analyzing odds and getting a “feeling” for whether or not a team will win. This is a great way to look at betting because most people who gamble do so irrationally. Irrational behavior often leads to poor decision making and you never know when this might lead to you losing a lot of money. If you want to be able to predict the outcomes of games with a high degree of accuracy, you need to step out of your comfort zone and use psychology to analyze odds and determine whether or not a team will win. It is a scary step to go from being an individual who enjoys a good game to someone who studies the game deeply and uses all of his acquired knowledge to place wagers. However, in doing so, you assure yourself of a better chance at winning big because you’re not making emotional decisions that could potentially end up hurting you.
Make Sure You Practice
One of the key elements to any successful endeavor is practice. It does not matter if you’re a professional sports player, an entrepreneur, or an inventor; practice makes perfect. The same goes for betting. It is always better to put in the time and effort to learn and understand a game before you put money into play. Even when you think that you have mastered a game, you can always find new ways to improve and it is a must that you continue practicing. It’s always better to practice more than necessary than to get lazy and assume that you know everything about a game already. This type of behavior can lead to serious errors in judgment and ultimately, hurt your chances of winning. Practice makes perfect and it applies here as well.
Follow The Money
Betting on sports is essentially all about following the money. It really is that simple and you can literally follow the money all the way back to its source. If you want to understand where your money is going and how the game is being put together, follow the money. You’ll see that there’s a lot of money floating around and it is usually connected to at least five or six other people’s bets. It is basically a collective action problem that is being solved by the betting community. It would not be uncommon for someone to enter a sports book with a single wager and leave with money in multiple pockets because of all of the people who were rooting for them to win. This is why it is essential to keep track of all of the money that is flowing because it makes it simpler to follow the money back to its source. It also makes it much easier to predict the outcomes of games when you know that everyone’s efforts are focused on the same goal. It takes more than one person to lose a bet, but it takes only one person to win one. This is why you must always hope for the best but prepare for the worst and make the most of any situation that you encounter. Know what is going on around you, know what your role is within the group, and do your best to bring the group together so that they can accomplish their goal of winning as much as possible.
Being a successful sports gambler is a lot of hard work, dedication, and most importantly, an obsessive desire to understand the games that you are betting on. Just remember that if you want to adapt to this new lifestyle, you absolutely have to be willing to put in the effort and make the necessary changes. Good luck out there.