In this article we want to write about some of the common mistakes made by people who are new to betting and why you need to avoid them if you want to become a profitable bettor in the long term.

Betting With Your Heart, Not Your Head

Yes Lee, we know you love West Brom, yes Lee, we’ve seen both of your West Brom tattoos, one is on the back of your neck after all. Yes, we’ve also seen your commemorative gold watch for their Championship winning year, you love West Brom Lee and that’s cute, but look mate, if you were to bet on West Brom every Saturday you wouldn’t be able to afford those tattoos and watches and plush West Brom cushion on your sofa. OK, we’re having a bit of a laugh here but don’t follow your heart when betting, follow your head and be analytical in your approach to betting. Learn as much as you can about value betting and how to identify it. Leave your heart for other purposes, like love, or running your circulatory system, y’know, it’s primary function.

Managing Expectations

When it comes to betting you’ll find that the successful, professional bettors take a pretty conservative view of their expectations, preferring to have a consistent Return of Investment (ROI) in the low numbers rather than aiming to make a few high-risk, high-reward bets that might, but probably won’t, allow them to retire and live on easy street for the rest of their days. Learn about odds and learn that betting on odds that are low (1.01-1.99) will mean that while these bets are statistically more likely to happen, in the long run betting on favoured results will eventually lead to losses.

Predominantly Betting Favorites and Overs

We’ve written before on these pages about why people prefer to bet on Overs in sports matches; people want to watch entertaining matches. But, many times, the value is on the Under’s side of the market and it can be hard to bring yourself to bet on, for example, Under 2.5 goals in the upcoming Real Madrid vs Barcelona match especially since you’re going to a mate’s house for a few beers to watch it and want it to be entertaining. You’re going to have to fall in with that troupe of the modern football hipster; goals are overrated. OK, we’re joking here again, goals aren’t overrated and even the football writers who claim they are, are being ironic, but saying that, value is value and value is the key to long term profitability in betting.

The same goes for betting on favourites, we wrote recently about home advantage in football matches equating to about +0.6 of a goal. So for every match this weekend where the away team is the favourite, they are, on average, facing off against a team who have an advantage of more than half a goal thanks to home advantage. That can be a difficult thing to get your head around but knowledge like this will help you get a better handle on predicting football matches.

Try to avoid these mistakes and you’ll become a better sports bettor. Arm yourself with as much knowledge as you can and continue searching for value.

You’ll need to tailor your stakes to the risk you’re taking, there are a few options, you can lower your stakes for higher risk bets or do the complete opposite, or you can use level stakes or you can try to win the same amount with each bet. Learn about different staking options and decide which one(s) suits your method of betting the best. Learn and accept that if you want to be a profitable bettor in the long term, then you need to think in the long term; instead of thinking I need to win £100 today, maybe you should want to win £20 this week and £30 the following week and slowly, and steadily, build up your bankroll.

Getting Carried Away Seeking Higher Payouts From Accumulators

Accas are great, we love accas. It’s great fun to put a quid on 10 different results for the Saturday afternoon action across England, but really, accas should be looked at as fun bets. You see with accas a bookie makes a commission on all of the different bets involved, so for every acca you make you’re making extra money for them. If you stick to singles instead of going for longshots then you will have far more success as a long term bettor. Of course you can be smart about it and mix in some shorter odds bets with your singles to give a little price boost in a double or treble, but for long term profitability in football betting then you need to keep your feet on the ground and approach every bet analytically, armed with as much information as you can find so that you can be confident in your choices.

There’s nothing wrong with accas, we do them ourselves every weekend and we see loads of Bet Dynamo users doing them, and sharing them on our Facebook page,click here , thanks to finding stats on our website, but that’s the thing, they are looking up stats and are looking for value in their selections. So keep your feet on the ground and become better at betting by betting smarter.