For avid sports betting fans, turning their most beloved pastime into a full-time profession seems like a great deal. You may have spent hours daydreaming and wondering if the dream could ever become a reality.
Understand the concept of value. If you don't have this, walk away. Sure you might be.
How To Become A Professional Bettor 1. Perform Intensive Self Analysis. To simply keep track of wins or losses, and strike rates is not enough when betting. Reign In Your Emotions. Everyone has an emotional weakness in their game. Perhaps you are susceptible to chasing. I would recommend having a minimum of three different sports books to choose from to maximize your potential profits. This comes in a variety of different ways. You have to find value in numbers to be a successful sports bettor. One of the biggest ways to find value is to fade the betting.
If you're asking how to become a sharp sports bettor, then having strong math skills is a sure quality. Sports betting involves many numbers, from bookmaker odds to historical data. A math-oriented brain can make easier sense of all these numbers. The best pro sports bettors can use their math skills to analyze sports betting data in a short time. Sports betting may not be a science, but it is a discipline and it does involve research, analysis and skill. If you want to be a successful sports bettor, here are five tips that will start you and keep you on the right track. Become a Student of the Sport Successful handicappers are experts in one or two sports.
But first, you must dedicate yourself to the craft entirely. Becoming a pro sports bettor takes more work than you can imagine, but the rewards are immense.
So, let’s look at how to become a pro sports bettor so you can start winning at online sportsbooks.
It’s No Walk in the Park
The life of a pro sports bettor isn’t a reprieve from your 40-hour workweek. But it will most certainly shake up the monotony of everyday life.
To be transparent, not everyone is cut out to be a pro sports bettor. For gamblers willing to make the sacrifices to succeed, it can be gratifying.
No pro sports bettor comes close to even a 75% winning percentage. That would be insane.
They lose plenty, but if they win close to 54%, they make a decent profit. They earn enough that the wins outweigh the losses, and they can stay afloat.
Why Be a Pro Sports Bettor?
Becoming a pro sports bettor is such an appealing career choice because there are so many distinct advantages.
To begin with, being 100% in command of your daily grind is incredibly attractive. Total control over your workweek is what I’m talking about here.
Most of the work you put in as a pro sports bettor can be done when it’s most convenient.
As with most anything, there are exceptions to the rule. Generally, life as a pro sports bettor will put you in charge of your schedule.
The freedom to make your own schedule is priceless. Take it from somebody who enjoys this perk. It’s the best feeling in the world to be where you want to be when you want to be there. Of course, my wife sometimes has other ideas.
In addition to deciding when you work, you’ll benefit from choosing how much or little you work. In the beginning, you will likely still be working another job to ease into the transition. Whenever you decide to cut the cord and go full bore, you should expect to put in tireless hours as you get started.
Once you have established yourself into a routine and are comfortable in your new career, you can choose to work more often or less often. This will depend mainly on your own goals and outside commitments.
The flexibility doesn’t end there either. You’ll also have the luxury of choosing where to work. Thanks to smartphones, tablets, and laptops, you aren’t spending long hours at the sportsbook.
Here are some other reasons to become a pro sports bettor—the dress code, earning potential, and the pure adrenaline rush.
Characteristics of a Pro Sports Bettor
There are no prerequisites to becoming a pro sports bettor. Any gambler with the necessary determination can succeed in this field.
There are, however, personality traits that lend themselves to improving your chances of success. If you plan to be a pro sports bettor and find yourself lacking in any of the following areas, you may want to work on these.
You don’t necessarily need to be a die-hard sports fanatic. You never want your emotions to interfere with making the best picks.
Being interested in sports will hedge against things getting stale. As we’ve all learned at some point in other work lines, the promise of money won’t always be the draw needed to keep you on the hook.
I already mentioned the importance of knowledge. The critical aspect is to continue learning about your craft, strategies, the sports, leagues, and teams you are betting on. Do your research.
There isn’t a professional gambler on the planet that has maintained long term success because of luck.
Having a proclivity for numbers is as vital to your success as knowledge for a pro sports bettor. You don’t need a PhD in mathematics to carry the load. Most of the sports betting math is relatively basic and easy to comprehend. Pro sports bettors will need to understand things like probabilities and odds well.
Sports betting can be rewarding and is as exciting as it sounds. Just remember to always take the good with the bad.
Be realistic. You won’t win every sports bet. In fact, just breaking even is a great start. That is going to take winning about 52% of your bets. This is a marathon, not a sprint, so don’t expect to make a million in your first month.
Set Goals
You’ll want to keep tabs on your progress and have an eye on your spending. To help with this, you need specific goals to work toward.
Don’t go down the road of many hopefuls and set goals that are simply too big too early. Set a realistic goal for your first year’s earnings and steadily work towards that number.
Some sports bettors will set monthly goals. Don’t fall into this habit. Because of the unpredictability of sports betting, a bad week can sidetrack an entire month.
Remember it’s a marathon, not a sprint.
Keep Detailed Records of Your Wins and Losses
You will be more successful at fine-tuning your approach when you have an accurate record of your best and, as importantly, your worst bets.
Look for patterns that have emerged in your wins and losses.
You should know that and leverage your strengths into more profits. Always analyze your strengths and weaknesses. You can’t stay away from weak points in your betting game if you don’t know what they are. You don’t want to arrogantly assume you don’t have any.
Manage Your Bankroll Effectively
All gamblers need to stick to a firm staking plan. This is even more important if you want to become a pro sports bettor.
Pro sports bettors do not have the luxury of taking enormous risks.
Your income depends on every bet you make. Bankroll management will make you or break you as a pro sports bettor.
Even the most analytical mind on the planet is wasted if you can’t manage your money correctly.
Check Your Emotions at the Door
Sports bettors that bet on a team because they want the team to win are doomed to failure. Always bet based on your best analysis of the matchups. Anything less than that is going to be a genuinely tragic and unnecessary setback.
This can spell disaster for some pro sports bettors. You eventually will take a string of losses. That feeling of euphoria from winning beckons you to double down and get it all back in one fail swoop. Avoid this mentality like the plague.
Become a Master of Your Discipline
Self-control and discipline are paramount to your success. It will be easy to get carried away sometimes. This is why it’s imperative that you set firm guidelines and stick to them.
A work schedule for a pro sports bettor may look different for everyone. I suggest going hard to begin, but not so hard that you burn out. After you have spent a few months as a pro sports bettor, you will then have a much better idea of how to maximize your time efficiently.
Know Your Worth
Sports betting can be anything but predictable. There are going to be times where your winning percentage will be far below what is needed.
Don’t let your confidence waver. Sports bettors can fall into the trap of making small safe bets when this happens. Stay focused on finding value and know that bad days are just that and not the end of the world.
Top Sports Bettors
Conclusion
The life of a pro sports bettor is sure to be as exciting as it is unpredictable. Taking the proper steps and putting in the research ahead of launching into your new profession will continue to pay dividends far down the road.
Although some bettors bet for fun and entertainment purposes, there are plenty out there that want to make a living from betting. During our most recent Discussion Day on Twitter, we offered our help and the expertise of various betting experts to those who wanted to know what is required to be a professional bettor. Read on to learn more about the advice that was shared.
Best Sports Bettors Ever
Anyone serious about betting knows that it takes time and dedication to become a professional bettor. Building expert knowledge of a sport and gathering enough funds to invest in betting full-time is merely the starting point of making a career out of beating the bookmakers.
Even if you have access to information that others don’t have, a refined strategy that has been rigorously tested and a carefully calculated staking method, there is still a long way to go. The most popular questions from our Discussion Day and the betting experts’ responses are below.
How important is your staking method?
When you bet for a living, it isn’t about always making money. One of the keys to success is to limit your losses when you don’t win. Even the most profitable bettors will place losing bets - the trick is to use the right staking method that will manage your money in the most efficient way possible.
You could create the perfect model with better results than anyone else but if you don’t use the right staking method, you will eliminate any edge you have. There are countless staking methods that most bettors will be aware of - our Staking: One method to improve your betting article tests several of these and answers the question; which staking method is best?
Understanding the value of information
Bookmakers will effectively buy information from bettors by offering odds and then make adjustments to the market depending on how valuable that information is. Professional bettors can make money by predicting the outcome of a match based on skill, but they can also do it by using information no one else has - the most successful bettors will obviously use a combination of both.
Whether it is a soccer player being injured, an NFL quarterback being suspended for disciplinary reasons or a sudden change in weather or playing conditions, knowing about something before anyone else and acting on it will affect how profitable a bet can be.
It's not just about predicting skill
While any edge you have requires the right staking method to maximise its profitability, it is pointless having the right staking method if you can’t predict the outcome of an event and calculate whether your potential bet has positive expected value.
Instead of trying to bet on anything and everything, you will be better off focussing your attention on one particular sport. Sometimes niche markets like corners betting offer better value because there is a lack of bookmaker knowledge, but there is still money to be made with an NFL betting strategy or by betting on the Over/Under market in soccer.
What sport should you bet on?
As mentioned above, if you want to become a professional bettor, you need to find an edge over the bookmaker in any sport or market you can. However, some sports might be easier than others when it comes to forging a career in betting.
Pinnacle’s Betting Resources can help you learn how to bet on baseball or teach you about the basic basketball bet types. It also explains how external factors can be more influential in some sports compared to others - Golf betting, for example, can be heavily influenced by luck.
How do you measure betting success?
The most efficient way to measure if your betting exploits can be deemed a success is to compare them against the closing line (the most adjusted, and therefore accurate odds available before an event takes place).
Testing the results of your strategy against a bookmaker’s closing line over a long period of time eliminates the influence luck could have. Similar to testing the credibility of a tipster, analysing your own results is essential if you want to become a professional bettor.
How to find the right bookmaker
Becoming an expert in a particular sport, developing a successful strategy and ensuring you use the correct staking method to maximise returns whilst limiting your potential risk might be the hard part, but finding the right bookmaker can be just as difficult.
If you want to make enough money from betting to earn a living, you need to use a bookmaker that consistently offers the best odds. Being able to bet as much as you want is also important, so using a bookmaker that offers the highest limits online makes sense. Finally, you need to bet somewhere that welcomes winners and won’t restrict or ban anyone that makes money from betting.
Find out how to calculate betting margins so you can work out how Pinnacle compares to other bookmakers.
In addition to the advice above about how to become a professional bettor, there are some basic rules that all bettors should try and stick to. Don’t let emotion get in the way of betting, don’t get fooled by randomness or controlled by optimism bias. Finally, as world famous bettor Lewis Deyong explained in his interview with Pinnacle; 'Never bet money you can’t afford to lose.'
Ready to test the waters as a professional bettor? Bet with the best odds online at Pinnacle. Need more advice? Follow us on Twitter for unique betting insight.