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Basic sports betting principles necessary for success

While betting on one sports genre can be quite radically different from betting on another (soccer, football and baseball betting are indeed about as different as it gets) there are a few basic principles which are indispensable for success and which are valid for all types of sports wagers.

In this article I'll give you a brief rundown on all these principles, beginning with common-sense ones (like not getting addicted to wagering and making sure you do not spend more on your bets than you can afford), right up to more technical ones like learning to give the home court/field advantage enough credit and locating the hidden value.

Rule no.1 is: never wager more than you can afford to lose. Playing on scared money is no fun, and you should primarily venture into sports betting for the fun aspect. Sure, making money should always be your goal, but the minute it ceases to be fun, you stray into the marshes of addiction and problem gambling and that's definitely one thing you want to avoid at all cost. Always have a separate bankroll put aside for sports betting, one that doesn't overlap with your regular budget in any way. This brings us to rule no.2: bankroll management.

Bankroll management is important in poker, is roulette gambling, in slots and in just about any form of gaming where real money is involved. While for a square, sports betting is usually a negative Expected Value activity, for a savvy bettor it can be turned into a positive EV one. If you know how positive EV works in poker, you'll understand the importance of bankroll management in sports betting to. In order to let the EV reap benefits for you, you need to be around for the long-run. If you wager all your bankroll on a couple of games (which are sold to you as locks) and lose it all, even if you happen to be correct about the hidden value in the respective games, you won't be around to see your EV+ turn things around in your favor.

Rule No3: pay no attention to technical trends. If a team happens to cover the spread ten consecutive times, it doesn't mean it will do so the 11th time too. Gamblers are particularly vulnerable to the temptations that such trends represent. People in general tend to look for order in chaos and thus see mirages where there's nothing palpable. No, the likeliness of your team covering the spread is exactly that of a coin-flip resulting in heads or tails, namely 50%.

Keep your eyes on the "D". That's right, defense is what apparently wins championships, not only in basketball (where the low-rev Spurs have so many times proved it against the high octane Suns and other offensively well endowed teams) it works well in football and other sports too. Try to look at things from the bookie's perspective (reverse handicapping). Understand the vig (which is like the poker rake but not quite) and how the bookie balances match-ups. This way you'll understand how you can come across the hidden value and what you need to do to exploit it.

In sports betting, the vig works against you. In that respect it is just like the rake in poker, though while you can get rakeback in poker (see Full Tilt rakeback or cake rakeback) there is no "vigback" in sports betting. You must find other ways to beat the vig and the hidden value is just about the only way to go.

Never underestimate the value of the home court/field. The fact that the square public commits this mistake is what most often leads to hidden value.