Why Track Your Bets? Part 1

If you are into casual sports betting, you may place a number of wagers before you start thinking about taking things to the next level and tracking your bets.  Many punters initially start out betting just to have some fun and get more involved with their favourite teams and sports.  So they don’t take notes, and months or years may go by before they realize, “Hey, I could be pretty good at this if I had a betting system.”

If that describes you, and you are wondering whether you should put in that extra effort, there are some of the advantages of keeping a log:

• Figure out what you’re good at.  Odds are you will excel at wagering on certain sports and taking certain types of bets, while you will not be so good with others.  You want to find out what you excel at so that you can take more of those bets and avoid the ones that do not work out.

• Filter out misconceptions you may have about betting.  A lot of punters, especially casual ones, have misconceptions about different types of wagers.  For example, you might believe that parlays and teasers are going to make you rich, and you just need to get to the point where you are advanced enough to handle them.  But those types of bets tend to make everyone poor, and sometimes the best way to learn that lesson is to see it reflected in your own betting history.  Once you see enough lost parlays, you should feel more than ready to kick the habit and move onto something more profitable.

• Track your money management.  There is often a gap between how well you think you are managing your money and how well you are actually managing it.  This all comes down again to the fact that there is also often a gap between what we think we know about betting and what we really do.  You may think those small variations in how much money you are betting on different wagers are no big deal, but they could be costing you—and may also make little or no sense.  Your betting history will reveal the truth.

All of these are great reasons to start tracking your wagers, and they are not the only ones.  Be sure to check out our upcoming Why Track Your Bets? Part 2 for even more incentives and how sports betting tracking software to help you use sound betting techniques going forward.