Many people believe that in order to win at sports bets, it is simply necessary to have a disproportionate dose of “C factor”. Although luck obviously plays its part, in reality the best bettors are not the luckiest people on Earth, but the people who study and implement the most effective strategies to adopt on betting sites like 20Bet.
Strategy no. 1: bankroll management
Proper bankroll management is the cornerstone of any sports betting strategy, a concept common to many other paid games such as poker. But what does bankroll management really mean?
We can sum it up in one simple sentence: Never gamble with money you can’t afford to lose. There is no right or wrong amount, because everyone must be aware of their economic conditions: there are those who consider a 10 euro bet an expensive investment, and there are those who believe it is normal.
The important thing is that, once the budget has been established (the advice is that it is at least 50 times the bet unit, even better if 100), the individual bets are divided. For example, you can decide that each bet is equal to 2% of your budget: this allows you to increase or decrease the amount of your bet based on how your bankroll increases or decreases.
Strategy no. 2: Keep up to date
If you really want to win at sports betting, you have to specialize in one or two sports at most. This, in fact, will allow you to easily stay updated on all the news, results, the state of form, any injuries of the protagonists of your reference sports.
This is important information to know before placing a sports bet, as sometimes a favorite team can have many difficulties against an underdog opponent, if it fails to field its best players or if it comes from a period of crisis ( of results and game).
If you don’t keep up to date and don’t study the statistics of the sports you bet on, your edge (aka the house edge) will shrink further. Because obviously the bookmaker does its part and is always informed about what happens before, during and after the matches you are referring to!
Strategy no. Tip #3: Don’t go overboard with multiples
Multiple bets are a special form of betting that allows you to enter multiple outcomes in one account. In the multiples all the odds are multiplied, returning a final odd that is the greater the greater the number of events inserted and the relative odds.
In multiples, the odds are multiplied by each other, giving a final odd in this case of 24.587712. This means that if you bet €10, you could win €245.88 (rounded up), resulting in a profit of €235.88. Sounds great, right?
The fact is that accumulators are very difficult to guess, because it’s like going all-in in poker: it’s all or nothing. All it takes is for a single event not to go as you planned to frustrate any effort. It doesn’t matter if the other 4, in our example, are correct: if one is wrong, you win nothing.
Strategy #4: Play in real time
Live betting allows you to implement a whole range of strategies that you would not be able to use if you limited yourself to pre-event sports betting. Today all bookmakers offer the match in real time, updating the odds based on the progress of the match.
Playing live is very useful and convenient because, first of all, it gives you the possibility to cover yourself in the events you have already bet on. For example, let’s say you bet on an underdog soccer team to win at odds of 4.50. There are 15 minutes left in the game and this team is really ahead, even if the opponent attacks frantically in search of an equalizer.
Being close to the end of the game, the odds of the goal being scored by the losing team will be significantly higher than at the beginning: by betting on the possibility that in the end the disadvantaged team will be able to score goals, you can take cover and, in some cases, be able to profit whether you win or lose your original bet.
Guide and strategies for sports betting: conclusions
These are just some of the most common and basic tips for winning at sports betting. But there are many strategies, both general and specific to individual sports. I advise you to always follow this page, as you will find all our strategy articles, which will help you reduce the obvious advantage of the bookmakers.
Yes, because maybe you don’t know that the bookmakers’ odds are not entirely “correct”, in the sense that in order to win them they have to apply a kind of “commission”, in the jargon called “vig”. You can’t avoid it, of course, because this is something all bookmakers apply.