Betting strategies and betting systems are growing in popularity as more and more sharps disclose their methodologies for successful sports betting. This article aims to breakdown three common betting strategies and see if these highly touted systems are profitable or not.
What is a betting strategy?
A betting strategy is any methodology or systematic approach that identifies when and how much to bet. For example, only bet 1% of your bankroll when a home team is favored and coming off of a double-digit road loss. This betting system identifies how much and when bets should be placed.
You may have heard that betting systems don’t work. But if that’s true, how do professional gamblers earn a living? The answer is that while most casino games cannot be beaten with a betting strategy, casinos constantly need to set new sports betting odds, and those odds aren’t fixed – this means that at times, sports bettors can find opportunities to bet with an edge vs. the house. This leads to an obvious question: how can we find those spots?
A successful betting system must change the house edge into a player advantage – which is impossible for pure games of probability with fixed odds.
However, how can we apply a betting system to sports betting? We are simply looking for historically profitable occurrences of certain game conditions that the sportsbooks and casinos have a hard time pricing correctly. That is, when certain conditions are true, games are mispriced, and the advantage may shift to the player – us the sports bettor.
A simple example may be taking the Under on a game that involves a winning team that played poorly the week before. Why? Most bettors and the books will expect the winning team to bounce back in their next game thus they juice the points total a bit. This provides a systematic way to extract some edge.
How Much Should I bet on a Betting Strategy?
The amount you bet should depend on the odds, your likelihood of winning, and your overall risk tolerance. Many bettors size based on a percent risk basis or use a standard bet amount for each bet. Below we will discuss the most popular bet sizing methods in detail.
Unit Betting
Unit betting is a bet sizing strategy in which the bettor places the same fixeda mount on each bet. Typically, bettors will set a unit to be a fixed dollar amount such as $100. The bettor will continue to bet $100 on each bet until his total bankroll achieves a new threshold or doubles. At this point, the bettor will increase his unit size.
Important Note: This method spreads the bettor’s risk evenly across bets, so no one bet has more or less weight than any other bet.
Percentage
Percentage betting is similar to unit betting, but the bettor will determine a percentage of bankroll to bet on each bet. That is, the bettor will typically bet between 1-2% of entire bankroll on each bet. As the player’s bankroll grows so does his bet size. Alternatively, the bet size shrinks as the bankroll enters a drawdown.
Paroli
The Paroli betting system is a positive progression betting approach that increases your next wager following a winning wager. If the bettor wins his first bet his second bet may be twice as much. If the bettor loses his first bet, then the second bet may be the same amount (or less) than the first bet. This approach is more complicated and harder to execute when betting on sporting events with similar or same gametimes.
Common Betting Strategies Tested
Some of the most common betting systems we hear in our community are often quite good. However, sometimes these systems are not. We always need to test betting systems before risking hard earned money on them.
These common and popular systems are perceived to be “locks” and only “insiders” know of them. However, we want to show you how the most common strategies really fare with data and why it is always important to get an objective opinion.
Additionally, all betting strategies were analyzed using fixed bet amounts of $100 and over the past three NFL seasons.
Bet on the favorite after a double-digit loss
A favorite coming off a large loss seems like a great bet as the team should bounce back to victory more times than not. However, the data does not support this hypothesis of betting on the favorite after a double-digit loss. Betting on favorites coming after a double-digit loss has led to a loss of $2,575 on 144 bets over the past three NFL seasons.
The bankroll or money “won” over time is the type of thing to keep you up late at night.
Fade West Coast team on the Road for 1PM Kickoff
Another popular strategy is to fade or bet against west coast teams that are traveling east for an early 1:00 PM kick-off. The results from our testing show that it was actually profitable to bet on west coast teams traveling east.
These results may defy logic or make perfect sense. On one hand, it would be logical to fade west coast teams traveling to the east coast and playing what seems like an “early morning” game to them.
However, the sportsbooks account for this travel, and their lines take this into account. Therefore, it makes sense that backing (yes, backing) the west coast team has been profitable over the past three seasons.
Back Double-Digit Favorites (More than 2 TDs)
Over the past three seasons, 14+ point favorites have only covered 53.13% of the time which barely makes this a profitable betting system. This system has won $260 over 32 total bets. This one seems more random and asking a professional team to beat another professional team by 14 or more is a tall order regardless of how “bad” the dog is.
Where can I find Betting Strategies?
Betprep is the best place to find the most historically profitable betting strategies. At Betprep we set out to build a better way to find profitable picks that was actually backed by data. We wanted our bettors to be able to build a business or side income and not just pay for some guy’s lucky guesses or “hot streak”.
These betting gurus keep charging more and more money each and every season for subpar or mediocre records. We said enough. Don’t pay for touts, picks and “experts”! Searching for hot picks always ends in disaster as winning and losing streaks are just part of the game.
BetPrep calculates nearly 20,000 betting filters and finds the best betting systems for you. These filters include
- Team stats
- Opponent stats
- Matchup stats
- Player stats
- Head-to-head stats
- Injuries
- Line movement and Odds
- Weather
- Travel and Rest Scenarios
Then we go one step farther and filter the best betting systems to which ones have been winning lately. That’s right, our Hot Systems show the best betting systems that have won 7 or more of their last ten bets. Filter by league, period or bet type with BetPrep Pro.
You can even receive best odds or team alerts for these data driven picks.
Where can I build my own Betting Strategies?
If you are a go-getter and want to build your own then BetPrep is what you have been looking for. BetPrep allows you to create and test your own betting strategies on ten plus years of historical data using our built-in filters or the ability to create your own.
We have the most flexible tool and builder that you can imagine. No learning programming, crunching in excel or learning some weird database query language. You can easily point-and-click to build and test your own betting systems with no experience.
Look at this custom filter that only bets when a team’s rush yards per game divided by the point total is greater than 3. Is this profitable? Build and test to find out at our Backtester.
Takeaways
Betting based on tips, touts and gurus is a losing proposition. Betting systems and strategies provide a way to exploit historically mispriced betting opportunities and capture profits in a systematic way. Most common betting systems are losers including some of the most popular among gambling communities. However, BetPrep helps you build your own betting systems or you can sort through the hottest betting systems that our engine has found. We are lazy, but not dumb. We know that data gives us an edge over the books. It is up to you the bettor to use it or ignore it.