A Gambling Strategy for the Average Sports Bettor

Probably the biggest mistake gamblers make in their gambling is failing to understand the risk of their betting and the consequences of over betting. Being male and exceedingly overconfident as males tend to be, it is important to understand as a sports bettor that 95% of sports gamblers will lose every cent they bet over time.

As a gambler, it is important that you accept and embrace this fact and bet accordingly. Every gambler should assume themselves to be a coin flipper and avoid over betting and consistently losing. Even if you are a good handicapper, you will inevitably lose all of your money over time if you over bet your gambling allocation because the inevitable losing spells will destroy your account in the long term.

An aspiring coin flipper should bet roughly 1% of their pot on each game they bet in their hope of beating the line. Or more simply, bet 1.1% and bet $11 to win $10 with a $1,000 betting account. Doing so, will enable you to weather the 9 out of 10 or 11 out of 12 losses you will inevitably incur from your coin flip bets. If you are not a coinflipper, this strategy allows you to conservatively compound your winnings over time and even a moderate success rate will compound into quite an impressive amount over a period of years.

Given that even the best of bettors is flipping a coin 94 times out of 100, it makes sense for an average gambler to consider their bets coin flips and perhaps bet a higher percentage on the bets which you have a really strong feeling about. A maximum bet of 5% of assets is probably most wise with a 3% allocation being a solid strategy as a 56% likelihood of success equates to a roughly 3% allocation.

As confirmation of these allocation recommendations, we can look to Doctor Bob (a statistics major at Cal) who gives out 3-star, 2-star and 1-star picks. He has a historical record of 56% winning bets and recommends a strategy of assigning 1.5% per star based on the confidence of his bets. A 3-star bet would be a 4.5% allocation, a 2-star would be a 3% allocation and a 1-star a 1.5% allocation which is appropriate for a roughly 53% likelihood of success.

A 1.1% allocation falls in line perfectly with the strategy used by Doctor Bob and betting a larger amount on a handful of bets would be appropriate as obviously you will not win if you cannot be successful with your best bets.

Betting $11 on a bet is something many gamblers will consider too wimpy to even consider but it is this kind of thinking that causes gamblers to consistently bust. Making larger bets is certainly something some can do from time to time but it is an unwise strategy for your average bet as your bets simply are not likely to be particularly good ones.

A good way of achieving this strategy is to take a large bonus with a sizable rollover. This will both allow you to pursue conservative bets in needing to meet the rollover but will also decrease your betting odds below -110 as the casino will be subsidizing a great deal of your losses. If you win, it is even better as you will have compounded the casino's free money over time.

If you are just beginning at gambling and starting with something like a $250 pot, you might still want to entertain the $11 strategy as you can simply redeposit to your account later if the money runs out until you reach $1,000 in losses at which point it would probably be wise to stop as you will have pretty much proven at this point that you will not win betting on sports. However, if you enjoy the experience, this strategy will keep you funded for longer.

If you experience some success with your gambling, do not let it go to your head and start to think you are better than you probably are. If we take 100 coin flippers and have them flip their coin 800 times, we will inevitably have three or four that will hit at a 53% rate out of pure luck alone. A look at the Prediction Tracker web site will show you that several power ratings will achieve a 54-56% success rate in a given year with 750 or so picks and may even have had a winning percentage against the line the previous year but NONE of these models have shown any ability to beat the line over the years. The most successful of the power ratings I found achieved a 51% success rate over 11 years.

I'd recommend you achieve a profitable success rate of 53% or higher for close to 1,000 bets before thinking of upping your percentages at all. David Frohardt-Lane, a two-tome Las Vegas contest winner and investment analyst, has estimated that a bettor achieving a 57% success rate over 1,000 bets will most likely have a 52% success rate over his next 1,000 bets and estimates that he personally can achieve a success rate of 53% going forward. It is never possible to know if your success has been due to skill or you have simply been lucky, therefore, it pays to be conservative.