Do You Treat Betting Like Roulette?

Nobody questions whether sports betting is a form of gambling.  There is definitely significant risk involved, and there is the strong possibility of losing, even when you have a pretty good idea what you are doing.  Nonetheless, there are people who make a living as sports bettors, which seems to indicate that sports betting isn’t a total gamble.  In that sense, sports betting can be more like poker than roulette.  A lot of sports betting sites offer online casino games as well. 

The casino games you like probably say a lot about your personality as a sports bettor.  If you bet unthinkingly without any strategy in place, casting your fate to the winds, there is a pretty good chance that you like playing roulette.  Like playing poker?  If so, we’re guessing you put a lot more thought into your sports bets too.  You have a much better shot at winning your bets consistently. 

If you did want to bet on sports like you play roulette, here is what you could do to ensure that you lose a lot of bets:

• Don’t bother shopping the lines. 
• Don’t use a smart betting strategy which you have tested and which has a basis in logic and past performance.
• Don’t use a money management plan and bet relatively small percentages of your account only.
• Don’t keep a betting journal.
• Do bet when you are feeling wildly emotional.  Be sure to chase your losses.  When you win, keep throwing more money into your bets to see if you can ride out all that good luck.  And when all of that money is lost again, be sure to get angry and chase your losses once more. 

The above advice is of course terrible.  But that is how sports bettors behave when they treat sports betting entirely like a form of gambling.  These bettors act like they are spinning the roulette wheel, and simply hope that they come out on top.  They don’t invest time and thought and hard work into coming up with strategies.  They don’t worry about money management, and they don’t keep track of their own past performance.  They bet emotionally and ignore the consequences.  When things don’t work out like they hoped, they get even more emotional and bet even more erratically.  They lose more and more money.

You can avoid this cycle by betting like a poker player and not like a roulette player.  Do bet with a sound strategy in place, use money management to mitigate your risk, keep a betting journal, and shop the lines.  Only bet when you are emotionally stable and in the right frame of mind to do so.  Over time, use your betting journal to track your progress and start making improvements to your techniques.  Do this with diligence, and you should start seeing more and more profits.  You might even be able to bet for a living one day.  But it will never happen if you do not start betting intelligently!