Most of us started betting on the sports we love because we found out by trial and error that our knowledge led to predicting the outcome of games. Our analytical thinking proved that we have a sense of how things would unfold during matches. For example, if you like football (Soccer) you know that a team doesn’t need to have a higher ball possession on a particular game to win or if you like baseball, you know that if the batter is righty and the pitcher is lefty, that batter has an advantage, right? Well the answer is, it depends. This is one of the main reasons why live betting is so popular and we will go through the topic later in another article, but addressing the issue of making profit and staying in positive numbers, we call this “analysis”, false thinking and it’s one of many reasons why people lose their bank roll easily.

We list some causes we have encountered on our own experience along the years and also by observing other players fail. These reasons are ordered randomly, we have not kept record that could show us which is the number one and so forth. We also mention in some cases how to approach them and bring you to profit.

 

False thinking (or basing your decisions on paradigms)  

The definition is very simple: You think that something is going to happen just because it has happened before. I mean, are you kidding me? It’s like saying that Chicago Cubs won’t make it to the world series this year just because they haven’t done it since 1945 and they have and 0-4 record in the National League Championship Series. An example in football soccer would be that Iceland won’t make it to Russia 2018 just because they have never made it to the World Cup. Maybe this examples might sound exaggerated, but believe me, many punters I know base their decision on paradigms like this.

Be aware of the changes! Use that knowledge of past experiences to challenge the counter result. Those facts may be good information to challenge current data. For example, Iceland has never made it to a World cup, but they played the Euro Cup this summer, a tournament that they had never qualified to either. Challenge the paradigm “Iceland has never qualified to a world cup” with the current info and you may find out that it could be an opportunity to profit in big units. I have many examples under my belt, one that I remember the most is the Confederations Cup 2009 in South Africa where the US team beat Spain on the semi-finals. Spain being the Euro Champions against the north and central American Champion USA, the US barely made it to the elimination round and Spain made it through without a sweat, making nine out of nine points. The US had nothing to lose and Spain seemed to be over confident with the situation they were facing. As you may have imagined, if you don’t know or you don’t remember how things came out, The US beat Spain 0-2 and made it to the final against Brazil. It would had been false thinking to say that the US has never made it to a confederations cup final, or the US has never beaten Spain, let me back Spain on this one.

 

Urge to recover

If you don’t know how to lose, don’t bet. Being in this game or in any game, you must know how to understand the loss and learn from it. I have seen people with very deep knowledge on the game that it impresses me so much I say “damn, if I had all that knowledge I would be making more money out of this, but when I see them lose, it’s like they know nothing or that they start relying on false thinking and loose more and more. The most common behavior is to bet on the next possible game, without having the necessary information to make a supported decision. The urge to recover leads to uncontrolled wagering, a one-way ticket to losing all your betting money.

Knowing how to lose does not mean it’s good to lose, it means you need to be prepared for it, you need to plan for it. A good betting plan is the best way to avoid this pitfall. You need to analyze the opportunities you have in advance (ex. One-week plan) and stick to it, don’t try to recover on any others game that is outside of your plan.

 

Hunches 

To think that a team that has lost their last three game has to win their next game, that’s a hunch. I don’t like to jump to conclusion without seeing the numbers, but I can almost assure that this is the number one reason people bet on sports. If they are lucky, and betting on 2 outcome markets, plain statistics gives us a 50-50 chance to win. The difference with false thinking is that a hunch is just a gut feeling and false thinking involves un supported or outdated facts.

Deciding what to back based on hunches can easily get biased by the favorite (smaller) odd. People that start betting normally have fear on choosing the underdog, even though their hunch is on them. Once you discipline yourself to follow a betting system that works, you easily stop betting by hunch.

 

Making decisions without important facts

It’s important that the information we use for deciding what to back is relevant, this means that the statistics used correlate to what makes a team score point or what enables them to stop the other team from scoring. An example would be to bet on a team that will not play with their star players.

If you make a pre-game analysis with affirmations of what is going to happen and check with the facts of the game afterwards, you can easily learn things you need to consider checking next time in your pre game analysis. My recommendation is to build a check list with your pregame analysis routine, so you can take into account all the important facts next time.

 

Making decisions based on the bookmaker’s odds

This one is kind of funny. I’ve heard some people say “I know how to read the odds”. The first time I thought, well that is basic. Every one of us in this understand the meaning of the odds… maybe he means that he can work with all the odd formats, decimal, fractional and American. Asking: what do you mean? there are different replies:

1. By seeing the numbers on the sportsbooks, my sporting knowledge tells me what to choose.
2. By following the shift in the odd for 2 or 3 days before the event, I can read the tendencies and decide on what to back.
3. By seeing the favorite odd, I know if it’s really the favorite odd or if the odd maker is trying to trick us. Based on that, I know what to choose.

Only answer number two can be a good idea, the other two answers are not. The second can help because many markets change their odd based on the amount backed, but be careful, the bookmaker knows this and many times they make these moves intentionally to trick the punters, so answer number three has some truth in it. At the end it all falls down to luck, and many punters feel they have this 6th sense reading the odds.

With time, using a reliable betting system you get comfortable betting to +250 odds (3.50 decimal, 5/2 fractional) and will totally forget about “reading” the odds.

 

Failing to manage risk

This one is simple, you know that you have a 60-40 chance and you go all in… It’s awesome to see the world series of poker when someone has their chances against, they go all in and pull it off. If you like the adrenaline of betting and you do if for fun, careless of losing your entertainment budget, it’s all right, but if you’re doing this to profit, this is not a smart move. It’s the same with parleys or accumulators, we will go into depth in this topic on further articles, they’re fun and I bet many of you have pulled it of some times, but in the long run, you’ll lose your money.

There are many risk management techniques. An example is the doubling system, which is used to recover from a losing bet by doubling your next wager. We will take about some more ways to manage risk in further articles.

 

Failing to develop a strategy

It’s like the sports teams, they prepare their game strategy during the week to face their weekend game. If you don’t have a strategy to beat the books, the books will beat you.

 

No objectives

Objectives is related to your betting budget; it is important to have in mind how much you can bet so you can survive a bad day or streak.

 

Lack of planning 

This is bringing all together, risk management, strategy and objectives is what makes a betting system. Once you plan for all this it’s very important you follow it and improve it over time based on the feedback of previous results. This is what we do at Futbeisbet, we developed a betting system that has been working for use to make profit and I would like to thank everyone that has been trusting us with the information we supply. They are the reason I am writing this right know and I hope many others get on board and beat the books together!