While many gamblers play for fun, some people are career gamblers. These professionals spend their days inside casinos playing for a living. Some take the profession so serious they have university degrees in betting.
If you have ever considered becoming a professional bettor, your dream is not farfetched. The following guide digs deep into what you need to kick-start a career in sports betting.
Who is a Professional Bettor?
A profession bettor is someone who considers sports gambling an occupation. They are not addicts. A professional bettor relies on scientific knowledge, statistics, and math to place bets.
Although they may be professionals, these types of gamblers are aware of the risks involved. They make losses at times but more are the times they earn profits.
Professional bettors shouldn’t be confused from:
- Antisocial players—they have antisocial behaviors such as aggressiveness and bet compulsively, including illegal bets
- Casual social players—they play for fun as most gamblers do
- Serious Social players—Gambling is their primary source of entertainment. Some can control betting, others become addicts
- Escape gamblers—bet to escape hidden feelings such as depression and loneliness
- Pathological players-they have no control over their gambling habits and could bet all their wealth
Why Should You Become a Professional Bettor?
Successful professional bettors are insanely rich. The average sports jackpot in Western countries starts at $1,000,000 and can go as high as $100 million. So, if you want a career that could make you rich, sports betting is one of them.
While there is a lot of money in gambling, there is no fixed income. Many professional gamblers are used to financial instability. In one month, you earn double your annual average. In another, you will make losses.
Apart from money, professional gambling is a flexible job. Work 9-5 at your pleasure. Work at night or the weekends only. No one pressures you to make money. According to seasoned gamblers, the main goal is to make profits from at least 55% of your bets every month. A 50% win rate is not good enough as gambling sites occasionally deduct fees. If you can profit from 60% or more of your bets, you will easily become a millionaire in the industry.
If money is not motivation enough, there is the entertainment factor. How many jobs pay you to play? Not only do you make money betting on sports, but you can also have fun watching the games as they happen. Occasionally, you can play slots games and video games. You can bet on eSports or even take part in some of the competitions.
Other benefits of sports gambling include the freedom to travel the world. You develop mental resilience as you weather losses and financial uncertainty. You can make new connections and become a celebrity.
A Course in Professional Betting: What Do You gain?
Many sports bettors admit their careers are not based on luck. Sports betting is a game of strategy. It takes hours of research and calmness to spot the best bets. Gamblers who take courses in betting scientific studies learn several skills casual players ignore.
The Research Process
Every sport has a scientific side. Unlike slots or card games, professional bettors rely more on research than luck. The playing ground, injuries among top players and performance histories are all factors that can determine a winner.
A team on a winning streak is probably motivated and will continue to win until it’s challenged by a stronger opponent. Games between rivals are harder to predict than matches between non-rivals. Individual players’ quality, their stats and type of coaches managing them also tend to influence win rates.
Lucky for beginners, there are dozens of research tools that can help you compare team statistics. soccerway.com is a free tool for soccer punters that provides pre-game analyses for major teams around the world. From England to Vietnam, the Middle East to Brazil, the website is a platform both casual bettors and professionals can use during the research process.
Research tools aside, bettors also understand that not all games are won fairly. Sometimes the better team loses. Professionals must anticipate games where luck is more likely to determine the winner than skills. A last-minute penalty can spoil your jackpot win. A leg injury to a top scorer or a red card can sway the outcome of the game.
Due to the many uncertainties, betting professors teach their students to spread their odds or pick wagers less likely to be determined by luck.
Picking Odds
After researching on the best teams, the second step is to pick odds. While it looks simple, professionals can spend hours analyzing odds. Career bettors look for value in odds rather than pick just about any bet. They don’t rush to wager on teams most likely to win. They look for ways to maximize profits, even if that means picking the least popular odd.
As an illustration, think of a coin. Tossing any coins has a 50% chance of land on tails or heads. If a bookie offers odds 2.5 for heads and 1.7 for tails, the former offers better value for your wager. In essence, tossing a coin is a 50% win-loss chance. But if one bet has more value than the other, it’s the safer of bets.
Picking a sports bet is largely determined by the decisions you make at the research process. Always do due diligence on performance histories, ranking, players’ fitness statuses, rivalries and the competitions in question.
With the knowledge in mind, pick odds after going through each wager offered by bookies. That includes:
- Win/loss/draw odds
- Handicaps
- Win or draw bet
- Over and under
- Both teams to score
- Number of goals scored
- Point spreads
- Prop Bets—e.g. which player scores first?
- Future bets
There are numerous wagers in sports betting. Professionals don’t concentrate on all of them. Rarely will serious punters place bets on props and futures, for example. The bets are based on luck and offer little value.
Instead, many professionals find odds for win games, over and under bets or goal-goal bets. These kinds of bets have their outcome based on scientific knowledge, which is how they provide value. The best tool for comparing odds is www.wincomparator.com. Free for life and designed for beginners, the platforms unravel games with the best odds and bookies offering free bonuses.
Finding Betting Tips
How successful you become as a bettor will be determined by your win/loss rates. If you can consistently make profits, you will never face financial instability in your life. One way to ensure you are always making profits is to do your research using multiple tools.
Sign up on free stats’ sites. Pay for a tool like www.footballformlabs.com and use betting tips whenever you can. Your individual knowledge of teams is not enough to help you identify value bets. Reading the tips offered by other people expands your knowledge and exposes you to tips for finding more valuable bets.
One of the best tools for finding betting tips is www.sportytrader.com. In addition to finding tips, the website reviews bookies with the best bonuses and offer a wide list of tournaments to research on. The website explains in details about each team’s previous games, injury statistics, and the final verdict.
Bankroll Management
Bookies are in the process of making profits. If you don’t manage your bankroll for bets, you could lose all your funds. But in as much as betting firms are experts at setting odds, you can beat them. Wagering on value bets and winning highly will offset the losses you make along your career.
So, how do you manage your betting funds? Create a budget. Set a specific amount to be within a specific week and only use that amount. Of course, you must also establish a criterion for determining how much you stake for each bet. Follow your rules steadfastly and make adjustments only when it is necessary.
Your staking plan can make or break your career in professional betting. If you overspend, you risk losing everything. Spending less than you planned lowers your profit potential, which can undermine your earnings per month.
Why is bankroll management necessary?
- Prevents you from chasing losses
Chasing your losses means wagering continuously even while on a losing streak. Most gamblers chase their losses hoping for a win at some point. Nothing is guaranteed in betting. Even the best professionals lose at times.
They will increase their stakes in the hope they can win and recoup earlier losses. Discipline is key for professional bettors. Whether you are winning or losing, stick to your playing rules. You will learn to re-evaluate your research skills and stop making decisions based on profits alone.
- Protects you from going broke
A story is told of Stu Ungar, one of the greatest poker players of all time. He won the world Poker series thrice, once at the age of 27. During his lifetime, ‘Stuey the kid’ earned and blew off $30 million in his lifetime. He ended up dead at the age of 45 in a low-league motel in Las Vegas.
Stuey is used as a cautionary tale all around the world. From being the world’s best and a genius by all standards, his poor bankroll management cost him everything. Stu may have been a poker player, but his story applies to sports bettors as well. Failure to manage your funds can be a career-ending mistake. Irrespective of how skilled you might be, learn to manage your cash flow.
To Conclude
Professional sports betting is so popular that universities have integrated it into their courses. Not every bettor goes to college for a degree but learning the scientific aspects of it is important for everyone.
Researching matches can be painfully tiresome. Losing can make you get emotional and impatience can end your career before you make any profits. But none of that will help your career. Learn from the experts. Always research, compare odds and use betting tips to expand your knowledge. Manage your bankrolls and be persistent.