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There are two popular goals when it comes to sports betting. Bettors obviously want to turn a profit, but they also want to be entertained in the process.

A beginner's guide to betting the Super Bowl. To answer a few frequently asked questions about this year’s game and provide a quick-hitting glossary of some sports betting terms to make your. SportsBookWire’s betting and wagering 101 series is designed to give you the how-to information you need to know to make more educated bets. Before you can walk the walk, you’ll need to talk the. 2 days ago Super Bowl 2021 In-Game Betting for Beginners From the Experts. In-Game or live betting is part of the latest technology sports bettors have to add to the excitement to their. The next section of our Sports Betting for Beginners guide is about recording your bets and follows on from creating your strategies. Bet tracking lets you see how your bets play out and analyse if something could be wrong with your strategy. It’s tough to beat the bookmakers so don’t be put off if you go through a bad run.

These work together, because entertainment aside, you’re going to be enjoying yourself if you’re winning. Whether you like a certain sport or the teams/players associated with it, you’re going to be smiling at the end of the night while you watch a winning bet bring home some fat stacks.

Of course, you’re not always going to win. This is why considering the entertainment aspect is key. That sometimes means not placing wagers on genres that you normally don’t pay attention to, or aren’t going to get excited about.

This isn’t an exact science, and really, it’s just the start to formulating your personal (winning) sports betting strategy. The point is that you want to win and you want to be entertained – ideally both at the same time.

To help make that happen, we’re going to go over several basic sports betting strategies and tips that should make the process a little simpler for the casual sports bettor.

Long-winded intro aside, it is certainly important to be realistic with yourself and decide whether sports betting is purely for fun, purely for profit, or if you think you can handle both.

Making sports betting both entertaining and profitable can be tough, but it is more rewarding when you can wager that way. Regardless, the real reason you want to decide this is so you can gauge how much money you’ll be betting on a regular basis and how seriously you’re going to be taking the entire process.

Odds are that if you’re reading this right now, you care about winning, so we’ll proceed as if profiting takes precedence over being entertained.

2. Bankroll Management

The first step that you as a sports bettor looking to make a profit should follow is to know how much money you have to work with.

Whatever amount of cash you decide to bet with starts out as your base bankroll, and ideally serves as the amount of money you are willing to (and can afford to) risk over the course of any given week, month, or year.

You can even go down as far as limiting your daily spending, as well as how much cash you lay down on any one bet. A great rule of thumb is to never put more than 10% of your allotted bankroll on the line at any given time.

Adhering to these rules can be restrictive and even annoying, but there are going to be bad beats and off nights.

Another good idea beyond choosing your starting bankroll is deciding on a backup bankroll. What happens if you start with $100 and run through it in a week or a month? Do you have the money to go right back in with another $100?

Make sure you know your limits here, and think ahead enough so that you can reload safely if you initially experience a lot of losing. That, or you can go big at first (maybe double it to $200), and be very strict with the percentage you play on a daily and weekly basis.

We touched on this briefly in the bankroll section, but your betting style is going to be pretty key in deciding how you operate as a bettor.

There are several sports betting styles to consider, and also some that you simply want to avoid. Here are the three we’ll go over:

• Kamikaze
• Fixed
• Varied

Kamikaze, the big one to avoid, is simply betting thoughtlessly on any game for any amount at any time.

You want some structure in sports betting. That starts with the amount of money you’re playing with as a whole, but it also extends to each individual bet.

Make sure there is logic behind every bet you target, whether it’s a favorite at home, a player prop bet, or a steep underdog with serious upside. Never place a bet just to bet, and avoid this kamikaze mindset that can quickly ruin your betting experience.

A better angle is the fixed bet, where you know how much you are putting on the line every time out, regardless of wager type. You’re only going to get so much back if you only bet $10 on every single bet, but for each bet, you’re also only losing a maximum of $10.

This is small stakes, but this will get you going in the right direction, and once you start finding success, you can adjust things. That will open the door to fattening up your bankroll, and in turn will allow for bigger bets.

Another method is to vary your betting and bet harder on favorites or “sure things,” and bet a smaller amount of cash on underdogs or wagers that provide big payouts. This contributes to the “grind” theory, where you can keep winning (and keep playing) as long as you’re only assuming so much risk.

It’s true that you can only win (roughly) what you put in, but you can only lose that same amount, too. In reality, if you’re successful, you can turn $10 into $20 in most of your bets, and when you nail the upset picks, you’re tripling or quadrupling your money.

There are more sports betting styles to consider, but these are the three to keep in the back of your mind at all times.

Before you place a single bet, it’s going to be extremely important to know about the sport you’re placing money down on. You should know the sport front and back, whether it be the players, how the game is played, the matchups, trends – the list goes on.

Anyone can win a bet with blind luck, but to win consistently and sustain success, you need to know what you’re doing as a sports fan and as a bettor.

Perhaps you fancy yourself a sports guru and you know a lot about several sports. That may be true, but there are a lot of nuances and changes during each sport’s season. Taking breaks to bet on this sport and then shift to that sport can create unnecessary confusion with how you bet.

There is something to be said about truly having one sport down at an elite level, too. In addition, the idea of finding your betting groove cannot be overstated.

These are very real facets to sports betting, and to win on a regular basis, you should consider both every time you start betting on a specific sport.

Eventually, you can diversify your betting and branch out, but when you first get going, sticking with (and mastering) one betting genre is a great practice. In fact, as fun as betting on every sport can be, once you find the one that brings you profit, it’s not a bad idea to just ride it out with that sport until it’s out of season.

5. Find the Right Site

Before you can ever place bets, you’re going to need to find a place to wager. You have your bankroll, you know how you want to bet and which sport you’re wagering on, but you don’t have your sports betting site decided on yet.

This is actually huge for your entire process, as the right sports betting sites are going to offer a collection of criteria you won’t want to ignore. Here are a few to consider when picking a site to bet at:

• They Pay
• Safe and Reputable
• Good Wagers and Odds
• Great Bonuses and Promotions
• Good Customer Service
• Longevity

Make your personal list if you need to, but for all intents and purposes, this list will do the trick. Rule number one when picking a sports betting site to place wagers at is they need to pay you.

Read reviews, go to gambling forums, or even test the waters yourself with small amounts of money. You wouldn’t blindly put your money into a bank you don’t trust, so don’t do the same with your cash when you plan on betting with it.

Avoid this! Find a collection of sites that you love that are never catching heat for slow payments or failure to pay.

If you can find a site that pays and is also safe and has a good history, all the better. Sites that have been around for a longer period of time tend to have a good reputation and also have stout customer service – two more things you’ll want in your go-to sportsbooks.

Albeit coming in as secondary necessities, you’re also going to want upside with your books. One path to that is finding books that offer really creative and unique wagers, as well as competitive odds. There are some powerhouse sports betting sites out there that are safe and pay you your cash, but they don’t have creative wagers, or they offer weak odds.

Ideally, the perfect site(s) will have a good combination of all of these criteria. The best sports betting sites are called that for a reason.

Bovada, BetOnline, and Bookmaker are some of the best that we’ve come across, but don’t just take our word for it. Get out there and discover which sites meet all of your demands and expectations.

Value was touched on for a second, but this certainly isn’t confined to just which sites offer the most playable wagers.

Once you have picked your favorite sites to wager on, it’s then up to you to hunt out the top value bets every single day across all of your favorite sites.

The trick here is that value is fairly subjective, so you’re only going to know it when you see it. One good idea is to start your day by looking at every site’s opening lines and start gauging where the best value resides.

The easiest way to see the value is to just compare the same exact bet between sites. If Bovada is offering the Patriots as -265 favorites, but BetOnline is giving you that same favorite at -225, it’s obvious which site you should be placing your wager at that day.

Hunting for value isn’t as taxing as it sounds, and it is absolutely necessary if you want to maximize your earnings.

7. Tilt Vacation

We could probably go on and on about sports betting tips to consider, but one of the most important strategies is to not have a strategy at all.

Win or lose, sometimes the best thing you can do when betting on sports is to simply take a break. Those big losses can put you on tilt, which isn’t just a poker or gambling term, but truly an actual feeling.

When on tilt, you’re vulnerable to betting more than you’ve agreed with yourself, or you will look at value and wagers in a biased manner.

Once you get your bearings right again, you’ll be completely refreshed and ready to take on a whole new slate of bets.

This can also be something to think about after a big win. Often when you take down a huge prize, you can feel invincible, or make silly bets because you talk yourself into betting with “free money.”

That’s a dangerous game, as you start working against the betting tendencies that got you into a successful pattern, and you start making obscene bets.

This can have you tricking yourself into seeing value that doesn’t exist or betting more money than you should based on your predetermined bankroll rules. That might not always backfire, but it absolutely can, or at a minimum, it can get you off of your current path and mess up the way your process operates.

Understanding Sports Betting For Beginners

Doing so sharpens your focus and keeps everything in perspective.

Following these sports betting strategies and tips don’t guarantee a thing. However, these tips collectively should help you play at safe sites, get the most bang for your buck, and prolong your run as a sports bettor. Whether or not you’re successful at an elite level during that time is up to you.

Ever walk into a casino sports book and feel like you’re looking at the mission control of an alien spaceship? It can be an overwhelming experience as a first-time bettor, especially if you don’t know what the numbers on the digital boards mean. All you know is that you’re confident this team is going to beat that team and you’d like to lay down some money on it.

Well, that’s called betting the moneyline.

Like any hobby, sports betting is one of those activities with its own language, set of best practices, and house rules. Rookies have to learn what all of this entails, often from a friend who is already confident in their knowledge. Once you learn a handful of sports betting tips for beginners, you’ll feel confident placing a bet on a legal sports gambling app like the one from BetMGM or strolling up to a cashier to wager on a game or team you like.

Similar to our guide to NFL betting tips, we wanted to put together a little piece that explains some of the basic things you need to know about sports betting before putting your hard earned cash on a game.

How does a spread work?

In games like football and basketball you’ll see two teams listed. For example, on opening night of the NFL season this year, the Kansas City Chiefs are -9.5 vs the Houston Texans. What this means, is that if you want to bet the Chiefs, they need to beat the Texans by 10 points or more in order for you to win. If the Chiefs win by 7, then you didn’t “cover the spread” and that would be a loss. On the opposite side, you can bet the Texans +9.5, which means you would win if the Texans lose by 9 points or less, or win the game outright.

What’s a moneyline bet?

In baseball, you will see bets like this: New York Yankees -200 vs Toronto Blue Jays +175. What this means is that you are betting the moneyline, which is just betting a team to straight up win. However, the more likely a team is to win, the more expensive the bet is. In this example, you need to put up $200 to win $100 on the Yankees. But if you bet $100 on the Blue Jays in this bet, and they win, you will win $175. Betting favorites on the moneyline can be expensive!

What is the “juice”?

When you bet a game with a spread, you’ll notice that most of your bets will say -110 or -120. That means that you need to risk $110 in order to win $100. This is called the “juice” or the “vig”. This is essentially how the casinos make their money.

What’s a parlay bet?

A parlay is a bet where you group together a bunch of bets, but must win all of them in order to cash the ticket. These bets can be fun, and depending how many bets you put in, can offer a huge payoff with very little cash to risk. Below is a table that shows general odds on parlays if you are betting regular -110 spreads. This chart is based on risking $100. Remember though, while four teams may hit for you in your five team parlay, that one loss makes the entire bet a loser. So choose carefully!

Have multiple places to bet

The odds on bets are not necessarily the same from sportsbook to sportsbook. The Chiefs in the example above may be a 9.5 point favorite on one book, but only a 9 point favorite on the other. That’s a pretty important thing, as if you bet the Chiefs -9.5 and they win by 9, you lose your bet. But if you bet them at the other book at -9, then you would have pushed, and gotten your money back. Always look at multiple sites and get the best line possible!

Stay within your means

We are betting on these games to be entertained. If you go on a losing streak, it happens to everyone. Don’t get out of control and start doubling up, trying to get your losses back. Bet the games to have some extra fun, but don’t go over your head!

Where should I bet?

Sports Betting For Beginners Trading

Find reputable books to bet on, ones that are approved by your state. The great thing about these books, is they are always looking to get new customers, and offer some great promotions – like this $500 deposit match from BetMGM! Before signing up, make sure you do a quick google search on that specific site, there are usually some great deposit bonuses available that will get you some extra money to place on some bets

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