James has worked for the jockey club and has 20 years sports betting experience he utilises his skills in our tipster competitions and writes sports betting content.
The difference between being a losing punter and a winning one can be narrow.
OLBG has always tried to help the punter by reiterating the need for value betting, which is betting at better odds than the true probability of the event happening.
Avoiding these 5 common mistakes when betting you can then take a step closer to being profitable and securing that value.
Bad Betting Habits
- Not keeping records of your betting
- Allowing cognitive bias into your decision making
- Letting the bookmaker influence your bets
- Not having a managed betting bank
- Chasing losses
1) Don't let Bookie Offers Influence Your Bets - Unless........
...the offer coincides with a bet you would already make.
A great example of an offer that is good and would not require you to make a bet that is out of the ordinary is the Free Bet Club from MoPlay
In this instance all you need to do is make a football acca on a Saturday, then win or lose, you get a free bet to use once it has settled.
Read the Free Bet Club Guide
Bookies are always happy to guide you into losing more money.
The first way in which they usually influence people is giving bonuses away. Many users see bonuses as great gifts by the bookies, but in reality, they are just there to force you to gamble your own money to complete the rollover when you sign up.
Free bets are a typical example of this. In many cases, you need to match the exact amount of the free bet with your own money and you need to bet them on unfavourable outcomes. This will force you to bet with a bookmaker you wouldn't even touch without a bonus offer, and you are also forced to bet on events or selections with high odds.
Another way in which the average bettor is influenced is enhanced odds offers. Typically they will be on multiples with plenty of big club favourites in their games (for example Barca, Chelsea and Bayern to win in the same gameday).
Now, if you happen to have the same selection in mind and one bookmaker is offering enhanced odds It can be a good opportunity (if you know what you are doing), but most of the times people are lured into these selections and it's more a bookie decision than theirs.
2) Keep a Record of Your Betting
This is one of the worst mistakes you can possibly make in betting.
If your goal is to win money making a bet, there is no sense in not knowing how much money you are winning or losing in a year or with a bookmaker. Do not rely on bookmakers historical data because they usually give you just the bets from the last 6 months or year.
This is usually done on purpose to avoid that you have an idea of how much money you have lost since you registered, but you should save every bet you make in a separate file on your PC.
If you make some bets at any betting shop save them as well in your file.
Many times people just throw their ticket in the bin because they have lost the bet, so they miss out on having a future reference.
Betting without saving your bets is like betting in a sort of limbo, where you don't know (or you don't want to know) how much money you are losing, or what types of bets are killing you.
This is exactly what the bookies want.
If you know that you are losing 2000 pounds or Euros a year, maybe you would think of changing habits and keeping the money for something else.
Keeping track of your bets is also very important if you want to improve your strategy, as you would be able to make an analysis of which types of bets are more successful for you than others.
3) Don't Confuse Your Passion for Your Knowledge
This is another mistake particularly liked and welcome by bookmakers all over the world.
Their ideas (and yours too), is that if you are really passionate about a sport, and you watch it constantly and every weekend you are automatically an expert, and you should, of course, bet on your great knowledge.
Millions of fans and watchers love the game of football, but just a few really understand betting on it enough to put their money on it.
Football is entertainment for people around the world and I agree that the average Joe shouldn't really understand how the game is played, but if he bets part of his salary or savings on it, he should at least study it a little bit more.
Read odds and probability
The knowledge required to make good bets is both a football (or sport) knowledge and a betting knowledge.
Being a fanatical viewer of Match of the Day, or a season ticket holder, or a fan with a past as a Sunday league football player won't make you automatically an expert on betting on football.
Research, analyze, question your knowledge for the game and try always to understand a little bit more about how to bet.
This will help your decision making immensely on bet selection and you will also appreciate the game even more.
4) Have a Separate Betting Bank and Manage It!
In this category of mistake, you can find everything related to bad money management.
People are usually betting on a selection more than what they should or they don't even have in mind how much of their capital will be devoted to betting. They just bet without thinking about it, and at the end of the season 1000£, 2000£ or more will be gone.
You always need to decide what will be the maximum amount of money you will be allowed to bet on a given year, especially if you are coming from a bad year where you have lost a lot.
Also many times people bet too much on one selection because they are 100% sure about the outcome, and this is done mostly on big games where the outcome is not so easy to predict.
5) DO NOT Chase Losses!
This mistake is more than anything that separates mugs from sharp bettors. The average punter is always chasing his losses, and he makes bad decisions based on the outcome of past bets.
The reaction that you get from mugs and sharps bettors after a bad loss is many times completely different.
The sharp takes into account that he will have losses during a certain period of time, and he doesn't let his past influence his future bets.
The average mug, on the other hand, will always try to bounce back as soon as possible after a bad one, especially if he has lost a very big amount of money.
How many times do you see people overreacting to bad losses in betting?
The moment after a bad loss should always be a quiet one, a reflective time where the bettor needs to realize what went wrong and how he can prevent it to happen again.
Many times there is not even a good value selection available after the loss, and It's probably better to keep your power dry and wait for a good one.
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