Professional Sports Gambler
Although some bettors bet for fun and entertainment purposes, there are plenty out there that want to make a living from betting. During our most recent Discussion Day on Twitter, we offered our help and the expertise of various betting experts to those who wanted to know what is required to be a professional bettor. Read on to learn more about the advice that was shared.
Becoming a professional sports gambler is probably one of the hardest things you will ever accomplish. There is a reason why 97% of all sports gamblers consistently lose money betting on sports. The whole industry is designed in a way in which making money is very hard, and losing it is very easy. Also, it can become very addictive. To most sports gamblers, a professional bettor seems to have a perfect life. They wager on sports for a living, make their own hours, and earn serious profits. That said, professional sports gambling may seem like a glorious career. However, it actually involves a long and slow climb to the top. Becoming a professional sports gambler is probably one of the hardest things you will ever accomplish. There is a reason why 97% of all sports gamblers consistently lose money betting on sports. The whole industry is designed in a way in which making money is very hard, and losing it is very easy. Also, it can become very addictive. Episode 1: Follow professional sports bettor Jonas Gjelstad's journey, as he turned $10,000 into over $1,000,000 in 12 months. Watch Episode 2 to learn more.
List Of Professional Sports
Anyone serious about betting knows that it takes time and dedication to become a professional bettor. Building expert knowledge of a sport and gathering enough funds to invest in betting full-time is merely the starting point of making a career out of beating the bookmakers.
Even if you have access to information that others don’t have, a refined strategy that has been rigorously tested and a carefully calculated staking method, there is still a long way to go. The most popular questions from our Discussion Day and the betting experts’ responses are below.
How important is your staking method?
When you bet for a living, it isn’t about always making money. One of the keys to success is to limit your losses when you don’t win. Even the most profitable bettors will place losing bets - the trick is to use the right staking method that will manage your money in the most efficient way possible.
You could create the perfect model with better results than anyone else but if you don’t use the right staking method, you will eliminate any edge you have. There are countless staking methods that most bettors will be aware of - our Staking: One method to improve your betting article tests several of these and answers the question; which staking method is best?
Understanding the value of information
Bookmakers will effectively buy information from bettors by offering odds and then make adjustments to the market depending on how valuable that information is. Professional bettors can make money by predicting the outcome of a match based on skill, but they can also do it by using information no one else has - the most successful bettors will obviously use a combination of both.
Whether it is a soccer player being injured, an NFL quarterback being suspended for disciplinary reasons or a sudden change in weather or playing conditions, knowing about something before anyone else and acting on it will affect how profitable a bet can be.
Professional Sports Psa
It's not just about predicting skill
While any edge you have requires the right staking method to maximise its profitability, it is pointless having the right staking method if you can’t predict the outcome of an event and calculate whether your potential bet has positive expected value.
Instead of trying to bet on anything and everything, you will be better off focussing your attention on one particular sport. Sometimes niche markets like corners betting offer better value because there is a lack of bookmaker knowledge, but there is still money to be made with an NFL betting strategy or by betting on the Over/Under market in soccer.
What sport should you bet on?
As mentioned above, if you want to become a professional bettor, you need to find an edge over the bookmaker in any sport or market you can. However, some sports might be easier than others when it comes to forging a career in betting.
Pinnacle’s Betting Resources can help you learn how to bet on baseball or teach you about the basic basketball bet types. It also explains how external factors can be more influential in some sports compared to others - Golf betting, for example, can be heavily influenced by luck.
How do you measure betting success?
The most efficient way to measure if your betting exploits can be deemed a success is to compare them against the closing line (the most adjusted, and therefore accurate odds available before an event takes place).
Testing the results of your strategy against a bookmaker’s closing line over a long period of time eliminates the influence luck could have. Similar to testing the credibility of a tipster, analysing your own results is essential if you want to become a professional bettor.
How to find the right bookmaker
Becoming an expert in a particular sport, developing a successful strategy and ensuring you use the correct staking method to maximise returns whilst limiting your potential risk might be the hard part, but finding the right bookmaker can be just as difficult.
If you want to make enough money from betting to earn a living, you need to use a bookmaker that consistently offers the best odds. Being able to bet as much as you want is also important, so using a bookmaker that offers the highest limits online makes sense. Finally, you need to bet somewhere that welcomes winners and won’t restrict or ban anyone that makes money from betting.
Find out how to calculate betting margins so you can work out how Pinnacle compares to other bookmakers.
In addition to the advice above about how to become a professional bettor, there are some basic rules that all bettors should try and stick to. Don’t let emotion get in the way of betting, don’t get fooled by randomness or controlled by optimism bias. Finally, as world famous bettor Lewis Deyong explained in his interview with Pinnacle; 'Never bet money you can’t afford to lose.'
Ready to test the waters as a professional bettor? Bet with the best odds online at Pinnacle. Need more advice? Follow us on Twitter for unique betting insight.
Everyone wants to know the secret to being a winning sports gambler. But there’s not a single secret that no one is telling you about.
However, there are several tricks that professional gamblers use. Here’s a list of seven tricks that sports betting professional gamblers use for long term profits.
All of these sports betting tricks work together. While you can start with one or two of them; eventually you need to learn how to use all seven of them. The good news is when you get the most important one down, about value, the rest of them fall into place easily.
1 – Know How to Get Big Money in Play
Most gamblers who bet on sports never think about what they would need to do in order to get large bets down. Yet many of these same gamblers dream of betting on sports full time and making a good living at it.
If you’re good enough to make a 1% profit on your bets over the course of a year, you have to get $10,000,000 in play over the course of the year to make $100,000. And a 1% profit margin is not something to take lightly. Many professional sports gamblers don’t do this well.
Can you get $1,000,000 down in bets every month? This is over $33,000 on average every day. And not only do you need to get this much money in play, you have to find enough games that offer value to do it on.
2 – Use Systems and Their Eyes
I’d love to have a complete sports betting system that uses statistics to produce winning bets. And I’m sure you’d like to have one as well.
While it’s possible that systems exist that can do this with no human interaction; I’ve yet to find one. I do use systems to help when I handicap sporting events, but the truth is that I still have to adjust what the systems spit out based on what I know and see from watching games.
Winning sports gamblers use a combination of systems and their eyes and brains to make winning wagers. You should build systems that use statistics and results to help you find games and lines that offer value, but you also need to watch games and use what you see to help you make more profitable decisions.
3 – Always Use the Lines for Profits
Consider two different betting lines on an NFL game offered at two different sportsbooks:
- New York Jets +2 ½
- New York Giants -2 ½
And
Professional sports bettors look for lines that are different at different sportsbooks. When they find different lines it gives them more opportunities to make a profit. One thing that they do sometimes is bet both sides of a game. I cover this in another section on this page.
You don’t really find value just because you find two different lines. But different lines do improve your chance of winning after you evaluate the game.
Using the game with the lines listed above, if you handicap the game and decide the Jets are going to win, you’re going to bet on the line where you get 3 ½ points.
On the other hand, if you handicap the game and decide the Giants should win by six, you’re going to bet on the Giants where you give 2 ½ points.
A single point difference in the lines might not look like a big difference, but it can be the difference between winning and losing. Every single time you can make a bet with a better line it increases your long term profits.
Professional sports gamblers understand the long term power of finding and exploiting the best lines. You need to start doing the same thing before you make another wager.
4 – The Only Thing Is Value
Best Professional Sports Gambler
Professional sports gamblers focus 100% on value. Nothing else matters. If you find value you make a bet. If you don’t find value you don’t place a bet. It’s as simple as that.
Yet, most sports gamblers let all kinds of other things influence how they decide to make wagers. Are you focusing 100% on value, or are you letting anything else influence your betting decisions?
Professional Sports Industry
Betting on sports as a professional gambler is a business. If you’re not treating your sports betting activities like a business, then you’re not going to be a long term winner. A business runs based on profits. Nothing else matters.
Make a decision right now to never place a sports bet if you can’t find value.
Value is a combination of effective handicapping and lines. You don’t know if a game and line offers value until you handicap the game. Once you handicap the game and predict the outcome you compare your prediction to the available lines. Only then can you see if a game offers any type of value.
5 – Manage Their Bankroll
Do you have a separate bankroll for all of your sports bets or do you use your everyday money in your pocket or bank account to place bets?
Remember in the last section you learned that if you’re not treating your sports betting like a business that you’re going to have a hard time making a long term profit? Part of running your sports betting activities like a business is using a dedicated bankroll.
And the other thing you must do is manage your bankroll effectively. You need to know how much you can bet on each game to maximize your wins while making sure you don’t bet too much so when you have a losing streak that it hurts your bankroll too much.
The best situation is to have a large enough bankroll so you can bet the maximum amount of money on every game where you have value. But this isn’t realistic for most sports gamblers, so you have to learn how to manage the bankroll you do have available for maximum profits.
6 – Have No Loyalty
This is much like the section about the only thing being value, but this is such a large hole in most sports gambler’s betting activity that I felt the need to give it a section. If you want to be a winning sports gambler you can’t have any loyalty.
I don’t mean that you can’t have any loyalty to your friends and family. What I mean is that you can’t let anything like loyalty stand between you and making profitable wagers.
You probably started betting on sports because you’re a fan of a team. It’s fine to bet on your favorite team when you’re a fan, but you can’t do it when you start treating your sports betting activities like a business.
Remember, the only thing that matters is value as a sports bettor. It doesn’t matter how much you like a team or how much you want to support them; if there’s no value you have no business betting on them.
7 – Play Both Sides When Appropriate
When you’re looking for value, sometimes you can find it on both sides of the same game. One common way that this happens is when you make an early week bet on an NFL game and then something changes during the week and you place a bet with value on the other side.
Another situation that comes up from time to time when looking at sports lines is like the example I used in an earlier section on this page. You could bet on the Giants and give 2 ½ points and bet on the Jets and get 3 ½ points and win both sides of the game if the Giants win by 3.
You can also occasionally find arbitrage opportunities where you lock in a guaranteed profit using different sportsbooks, but this is a challenging way to bet on sports.
Professional Sports Gambler Las Vegas
Conclusion
The number one thing you need to know about the tricks that professional gamblers use when they bet on sports is that value is everything and the only thing. Once you learn to focus 100% on value, every other trick on this page is easier to use and more effective.
Professional sports gamblers know where to find the best lines, how to use lines to increase their profits, how to manage their bankroll, use systems and their eyes, and know how to get as much money in action as they need to.
Nothing about becoming a winning sports gambler is easy, but when you use the tricks on this page you have a simple path to long term sports gambling profits.