You can have all the discipline in the world, the correct staking plan and a healthy bank to back it up, but if you don’t have a winning strategy for picking games then you’re not going to win at football betting. As new bettors we come into the world of sports betting with our eyes full of wonder and naivety and the mistakes we make are hard lessons. Some people don’t learn any lessons whatsoever and continue to make bad wagers putting it down to bad luck, or bad teams, or even going as far as compiling list of teams they won’t bet on because ‘they let me down’. Such an approach is nothing short of ludicrous if you want to make long-term profits in sports betting.

We put our emotions into bets at the beginning but you need to reshape your way of thinking a little bit. Think of each bet as a live entity, it doesn’t care one iota whether you win or not, the bet just wants to be made. It’s not down to luck either, although luck is often a factor, it’s about Finding Value in the market(s) and making solid, statistically-backed wagers.

Isn’t Sports Betting Easy?

We think sports betting is, or at least should be, easy. There was a scene in the Channel 4 comedy, The I.T. Crowd where one of the characters laments about how bad she is musically ‘but I should be really good at it, I have 1000s of CDs’. As sports fans we come into sports betting thinking in the same way, we’ve watched thousands of hours of football, I can call who is going to win or how many goals are going to be scored, soon I’ll be on the pig’s back, I can tell my boss to shove his job and I’ll live the life of Reilly, making money from football,’

How many of us were there at the beginning of our journey into sports betting? We reckon it crosses the mind of all sports bettors at least a handful of times. How then do you develop a winning football strategy? Well, there are a few options.

Lay the Draw

First of all, you can rely on some of the tried, trusted and tested methods; Lay the Draw being the most popular. You can read about it here. Backing Under 2.5 goals and Cashing out after 10 minutes is another, although if a goal is scored your bet/trade is almost certainly down the swanny. There are many, many reliable strategies out there, 99% of which we cannot name here because they are the intellectual property of the people who came up with them but you can find them on google, some of which you’ll have to pay fee for, some you won’t. But suffice to say, these strategies come from people who have gotten to learn the ins and out of particular markets over a long period of time and used their experiences and knowledge to come up with these strategies.

Some punters are riskier than others, some want to double their money with ever wager, betting at odds that are over 2.0 (Evens), some however are happy to bet on shorts odds, such as Betting on Over 1.5 goals at odds of 1.40, for example, and Cashing out when a goal is scored. A tip here, if you’re going after this strategy, look for teams playing each other that both score and concede first half goals regularly. It really comes down to the type of bettor you are and only you know the answer to this and with that in mind the majority of people who do make money regularly employ their own strategy, or strategies, that they’ve learned over the years.

Winning Football Strategy Firstly you need some statistical knowledge of betting and this is where the Bet Dynamo Insights Page comes in so handy. With our Insights you can quickly see which potential games are ripe for making your wagers on or trading on, if you use a Betting Exchange.

You need to specialise in one market before taking on more of them and there’s a simple way to do this. For the first month you should ‘paper trade’ your football betting tips. If you’re not familiar with the term this means making football tips but not putting any money on them, rather you just record them in a spreadsheet for a period of time. Once that period is up, we recommend at least a month, then go back over your picks with a fine tooth comb and reexamine where they went right or wrong and see which markets you performed best in.

Maybe it was the Home/Draw/Away market, Both Teams to Score, Over 2.5 goals, Second Half Goals etc. This step is crucial, by identifying what you’re already good at you can eliminate the other markets until a later date and now just fully concentrate on that market. If nothing is sticking out then repeat the process until one, or even two, market(s) present themselves.

Only when you’re sure you’re onto something is when you should start parting with your money. We’ve written a previous article about Bank Management, there are many different staking methods you can use in your betting, but at the beginning it’s probably best to stick to level staking. You can read about it all here.

Discipline in Sports Betting

Discipline is key here too, remain objective in your bets, don’t let emotions get the better of you, if you’re on a ‘winning streak’ don’t get greedy and stick to your strict criteria, there’s no point in backing Both Teams to Score in a Jamacian second tier match if you know diddly about the teams involved. Keep learning, if you don’t know much about the Swedish top tier, then get to know it, if you can know and learn a lot about the Premier League you can do the same for other league. It’s that old adage: the more you know, the further you’ll go. But take your time, there are literally 100s if not 1000s of football matches played on most days so if you’ve missed an opportunity to make a solid bet there’ll be another match later or tomorrow or the day after. Don’t be in a rush, keep a calm head and remained disciplined in your bets.

That’s pretty much it, we could go further into each aspect but it really comes down to a few factors; find your niche, become as much of an expert as you can in it, be disciplined in your bets and don’t stop trying to learn and improve.