Table of Contents
Every sports bettor makes mistakes. The best sports bettors learn from every mistake and use the experience to improve. If you can avoid making mistakes, even better.
Here Xgtiger Casino reveals 9 of the most common sports betting mistakes:
1 – Placing Bets Without Adequate Research
The foundation of every successful sports betting operation is research. You can’t do too much research.
You must know how to use research to make educated sports betting choices.
Make sure you understand how much information you need. Learn the best ways to get it, then use the research to develop statistical models and systems that will help you gain an advantage.
2 – Forgetting to Check Injury Reports Before Every Game
Injuries can change the expected outcome of a game faster than anything else. Bettors lose only because they need more information or, in other words, a lack of research.
You need to know about the health of the players for both teams in any game you bet on.
It’s easier than ever to keep up with injuries due to the Internet, cell phones, and tablets. You can check damage reports and live news feeds on your cell phone almost anywhere.
But if you can, you should also build your network of contacts and sources for injury information. Any information you can get before the sports books can help you improve your overall profitability.
At the professional level this can be almost impossible.
But if you use some creative thinking you can get college-level indoor health information.
Think of all the players, coaches, trainers, media, and students involved with college teams every day. I even know bettors who claim to get information from girlfriends of college level players.
3 – Sports Betting You Are Not Familiar With
Some winning sports bettors can bet on more than one sport profitably, but most of them master one sport before adding a second. Beginning sports bettors need to focus on a single sport.
The percentage of long-term winning sports bets compared to people who bet every year is small. Don’t make the odds against you worse by dividing your research time and attention in more than one sport.
Placing bets on sports you are unfamiliar with is often an indication of what I call an action junkie. Some people can’t do anything without trying to put a bet on it. If they’re watching a cricket match they want to bet on it – even if they’ve never seen one.
Even if you fall under the description of action junkie, stay focused on your most important areas of knowledge. Bet only small amounts on everything else.
4 – Getting “Insider” Advice From Strangers
Every sports bettor hopes to find sources of inside information to help them beat the sports books. This reliance can cloud your judgment by making you accept possible inside information without considering or investigating the source.
Some people claim to have inside information because they think it makes them more valuable.
Take a minute. Think about why they would share this information with you.
Why not monetize the information themselves instead of sharing it with you?
Or do they sell the information instead of using it to place a bet?
If you have to pay for inside information, it’s a wild guess dressed up as something special to get your money.
I am not referring to the sources of internal information that you have developed and cultivated yourself. You can pay for the information with cash or other considerations depending on the amount of your sports bet and your arrangement. Some may consider things like this bribery or unethical.
I don’t judge.
5 – Ignoring Travel Distances
How far teams have to travel to play is one of the things that matters in every sport. People, including athletes, do not get enough rest away from home and suffer from jet lag, which makes their performance worse than normal.
The more they are forced to travel, the more difficult their performance becomes.
Some teams play better after traveling than others, but you won’t know if you don’t know the odds and don’t track them.
6 – Get Too Busy with Shop Point Spreads
Numbers 6 and 7 on the list of sports betting mistakes are unforgivable. They both boil down to either laziness or an inability to sort out your priorities. They also both directly cost you money consistently.
When you shop for spread points, you can often find an extra point or half point on spread games or an extra $10 or $20 on a money line bet. Extra points in spread games can and will win you games over a year that you would otherwise lose. They will also make several losing ties throughout the season.
If you find 10 money line games in a year that offer $10 more than normal, that adds $100 to your bottom line. Find 10 opportunities to add $100 to your bottom line, and you’ve found an additional $1,000.
Being a winning sports bettor is all about finding (and exploiting) every advantage possible. Take advantage of the extra income because you didn’t shop around for the best point spreads.
7 – Be Too Busy to Find Discounted Vig Opportunities
Just like ignoring opportunities to find better point spreads, taking the opportunity to place bets with a reduced vig will cost you money. Every dollar in reduced vig per 100 bets is worth measurable additional income. The exact amount depends on your overall winning percentage and the amount of your average bet.
Sports bettors make the mistake of focusing too much on certain things and miss opportunities because of the “blinders” they seem to be wearing. Finding discounted vig opportunities is one of these areas.
Is the sports book or bookie the only place you can bet?
Do you know any other sports bets?
If you can find one game each month you can bet straight on someone, it will save you money over the course of a year.
If your average bet is $1,000 and you typically have to bet 110 to win 100, you’ll save about $600 a year making one no-vig bet a month. If you can bet every week without a vig, you will quickly get to the point where you can accumulate serious money.
In sports betting, as in other areas of life, saving money is as good as making it.
8 – Focus Too Much on Skill Positions in Football
Football skill positions are important when handicapping upcoming games, but they are far from the areas you need to consider. Most sports bettors focus on quarterbacks, receivers, and running backs. They ignore defenses, special teams, kickers, and offensive lines.
Even when considering all of these additional areas, you’re still missing important disability considerations.
Have you considered the weather forecast for the game, how far the visiting team has traveled, attitudes of head coaches, coordinators, etc.?
Considering skill positions is a good place to start, but compared to everything else you need to research, they only represent a small percentage of your overall disability details.
9 – Be Lazy
The number 9 is closely related to the number 1.
But you need to put in the time and effort to become a winning sports bettor to win.
You can’t get past this point. Even if you have short-term success, there are no short cuts.
Sports bet winners work harder than sports bet losers.
Even if you build winning systems, you can’t start being lazy. Even the best systems can stop working from time to time. You need to create new systems and improve your old ones as often as possible.
Another thing you may need to reach for if you’re feeling lazy is new ways to gather information. 20 years ago most sports betting information came from newspapers and television. Now you can find a lot of information online. Most newspapers are worthless for sports betting information.
You must adjust to the advancement of technology and learn to integrate it into your research and systems. Take advantage of something that can improve your bottom line.
Summary
Use the 9 online sports betting mistakes above to help you avoid many of the pitfalls others make. Even if you do your best to avoid everything listed in this post, you’ll still make the occasional mistake.
Learn from your mistakes.
Add them to your internal list of mistakes to avoid in the future.
Conclusion
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