• Is Betting A Good Way To Make Money Work
• Is Matched Betting A Good Way To Make Money
• How To Make Money By Betting

Most people who want to place bets on sports are fans to begin with. It isn’t unheard of for a gambler to place some sports bets, especially during big games like the Super Bowl or the NCAA basketball Final Four, but for the most part, sports bettors are sports fans looking to use their knowledge of a game or of a game’s players to earn a little extra cash. Being a fan of a particular sport, a team, a college or professional squad—these are all precursors to placing sports bet. Sports betting is also a way for a fan to get in on the action of the game, with something more than self-respect at stake.

All gambling is mathematics, even games of chance. If you understand the math behind the game, you understand the game and can give yourself an advantage. For many games, like penny slots or poorly placed roulette bets, are so bad that smart bettors earn their advantage by avoiding them altogether. In sports betting, the math is more complicated. Depending on your favorite sport, you may need to think about things like bye weeks, underdogs, quarterback ratings, and injuries with the same fervor other connoisseurs reserve for fancy winces.

Dividing your balance in units. If you want your betting career to have a long-term future, you need.

So how difficult is sports betting math? The math behind placing a winning bet is fairly complicated, but the way to stay ahead of the bookmaker is rather straightforward. If you collect on 52.4% of your bets, you’ll break even. We’ll have more details on that number later, including why it takes more than 50% wins to break even, but first some general knowledge about sports gambling and the numbers behind it.

• Bookmakers make money; sports analysts make a living from gambling by compiling odds for bookies; some of my own income derives from sports bettors using this website. Programmers earn a living from gambling by developing various betting applications. Manufacturers of gaming machines make money from people’s gambling habits.
• I did matched betting to make extra income on top of my 9-5 job, but it’s also a great job for stay at home mums, students, freelancers and pretty much anyone who can use a computer and can spare a few hours a week! It is also a relatively fast way to make extra money. Yes, you do need to have a small amount of money on hand to place your first bets (around £60-£75 is ideal) and it could take a few days for that.
• Poker has long been one of the top ways to make money with gambling. This reputation has.
• In short, the main advantage of bet exchange for sports arbitrage is that the odds at a betting exchange are on average 10 – 20% better than they would be at a traditional bookmaker (see the next section). Means, even deducting the commission, their odds could be still better.

Sports Betting Basics

The easiest way to demonstrate the math behind a sports bet is to make up an example. Let’s say you and your buddy walk into a casino, each with $200 burning a hole in your pocket. There’s a big game on tonight, the Cowboys and the Redskins, so you wander into the sportsbook to check up on the latest news about the game. While you’re sitting there, you see the wagering board, with some funny numbers on it. It looks like this:

• 428 Cowboys +175
• 429 Redskins -4 -200 38

Some of this is easy enough to read. The Redskins -4 means the Redskins are favored to win and must do so by at least 5 points for a bet on the ‘Skins to pay out. The next number (-200) is the moneyline, in this case the Redskins are a 2/1 favorite. The last number (38) is the total, the over/under of the expected number of points scored in the game.

More on Placing Sports Bets

Look at that over/under number, in this case 38. If you or your buddy thinks this is going to be a particularly high or low scoring game, based on your knowledge of the team’s offenses and defenses, or information about a hurt player or bad playing conditions, you can place a wager on the total of points scored.

So how is a guy supposed to know how to literally lay down a sports bet? You need to know three things:

#1 – the type of bet you want to make
#2 – the number of the corresponding team you have chosen and
#3 – the amount you wish to wager

Knowing all that beforehand gives the ticket writer the details he needs to write the ticket without having to bend over backwards to process your bet.

Tipping and Sports Betting

We haven’t even gotten to the meat of the sports math yet, and we’re already talking about tipping the staff behind the window? Yep. Here’s why.

If you place two $100 bets, and you win, you’ll collect $440. You should consider leaving a tip around five percent of your winnings. Yes, that’s a $22 tip, but you just made a huge win, and surely you can spring for a twenty-spot for the guy who helped you win it. If you tip around the five percent mark regularly, when you win, you’re way more likely to get free drinks, which is about all you’re going to get comp-wise at the sportsbook.

So, back to the basic math of sports betting. You and your buddy, after much deliberation, decide to each place a $100 bet on your favorite team. What now?

To bet on the Redskins using the point spread, your bet is called “laying the points.” For your bet to pay off, the ‘Skins have to win by five or more to cover the spread. Remember, if the ‘Skins win by exactly four, the game is a push, and both sides recoup their bet. Another alternative is called “taking the points” with the Cowboys. That means the Cowboys have to lose by three or less for your bet to win, or if the Cowboys win outright. So you and your buddy go up to place your $100 bet, and you find out that the standard straight bet at any bookie pays 11/10. That means you have to bet $110 if you want to win $100. You and your buddy pay the bookie $110 and sit down with drinks to watch your bets come in.

These are deceptively simple bets. Deceptively because they make it look like the outcome of the football game is like the outcome of picking marbles out of a bag. Put one black marble and two white marbles in a bag, pull one out at random, and there’s your football game. After all, the odds are the same: 2/1 for white.

But we, as sports fans, know that the mathematics of a sporting event is much more complex. Sports bettors deeply involved in their hobby will subscribe to weather bulletins from major cities that take part in their sport, making huge wagering decisions based on a few mph of wind in one direction or another. Then there’s the unknown—does a player get hurt in the first quarter? Does weather become a factor? Is a particular player “in the zone?”

How Do Bookies Make a Profit?

Just as we finish ruminating on the concept of the difficult math at play in the background of major sporting events, we’re going to turn right back towards the simpler side of sports betting. Bookies make a profit because of vigorish. What’s vigorish?

Look at the above example again. You and your buddy each paid $10 to the bookie to place your bet. That’s what the standard 11/10 odds in sports betting are all about. You bet the Cowboys and your buddy bet the Redskins, a total of $220 bet. The sportsbook has to pay back $210 to the winner, leaving a nice $10 profit no matter what happens on the football field. That $10 built-in profit is called the vigorish, and it’s the final monkey wrench in the gears of sports betting.

Obviously, sportsbooks are going to take more than two bets on any game, but this example is for simplicity’s sake. Looking at the total number of bets on different games over the course of a week and adjusting the moneyline and other numbers is another way the bookie makes a profit. Adjusting the odds a tiny percentage point in either direction will affect the balance of beats and make the book more likely to turn a profit no matter what.

Essentially, a bookie is a person who holds on to money from bettors then pays them if they win and keeps their money if they don’t. That’s what the job is boiled down to its essence.

When a bookie sets odds for games, he will build what bookies call an “over round” into his set of odds. Another slang term used for this formula is “the juice.” For the sake of simplicity, let’s look at a boxing match where both contenders are equally talented, of equal stature, etc. Since they both have an equal chance of winning, a casual bet may be even money. You put $20 on one guy; your friend puts $20 on the other. Whichever fighter wins awards the bettor with the total of $40.

Bookies don’t offer even money like friends in a casual betting situation. In the above example, with two evenly matched boxers, a smart bookie will offer 5/6 odds for each. That way, a $10 winning bet would only return $8.30 plus your stake. What does this do for the bookmaker? He can float an equal amount of money on both fighters, winning no matter which fighter actually wins. If they take $1,000 worth of bets on one boxer and $1,000 on the other, the bookie would take in $1,000 but only have to pay out $830, for a guaranteed $170 profit regardless of the outcome.

Bookies look at the weight of their books all the time and adjust odds and other factors to make sure their books balance. Though it isn’t possible to completely balance a book, bookies that go too far out on one side run the risk of losing money, and losing money in gambling is the fastest way to find yourself in another industry. All of these factors are why bookies generally root for the underdog—too many favorites winning in a sport with a short season (such as the NFL) can cause a bookmaker to lose money, while a bunch of upsets (like you generally see in college football) is a guaranteed profit for the bookmaker.

The short answer here is that bookies making money has nothing at all to do with your betting. It is almost unheard of for a single customer to be allowed to place enough bets to sink a single book all on his own. High rollers in sports betting get special privileges in terms of their maximum bet size, but these privileges often change with the bettor’s luck—maximums get raised after the bettor sees big losses and decreased (sharply) when the bettor starts to get lucky.

In short, a sportsbook’s profits aren’t necessarily impacted directly by the way an individual bet is called. Unlike casino games or slot machines, where it’s you against the house, sports bettors fuel the bookmaker’s business and only rarely is an individual bettor betting against the bookie.

Sports Betting Odds

Remember at the beginning when we talked about the magic number necessary to guarantee a break-even week in sports betting? If you read enough about sports betting, you’ll hear this number repeated often: 52.4%. If a bettor can win 52.4% of his bets, he’ll break even. Where does that number come from?

When betting the spread, you get odds of -110. Sometimes, sportsbooks will offer a -105 line as a promotion or to welcome new business. But for the most part, if you’re betting the spread, you’re getting -110.

We draw that 52.4% break even number right out of the odds. -110 is equivalent to 11/10. That means if you bet 21 games, you’d have to win eleven of them and lose ten of them to break completely even. Even at -105, you’d still have to win an astounding 51.2% of the time just to break even.

If you don’t trust the basic math behind this break-even principle, look at another real-world example. Let’s say you get really into sports betting after your Cowboys cream the Redskins and you go home with a nice fat wallet. You then bet on the next 10 Cowboys games, winning six times and losing four times.

That 60% betting record (with the odds of -110 that is traditional for against the spread bets in football) will leave you with a profit of $160. Think about it—your $600 profit from your 6 winning bets minus the $440 you lost on losing bets leaves $160. It took you $1,100 to win $160, meaning you have to bet $6.87 to win $1 on average. So you see the small differences between a 52.4% winning rate and a 60% winning rate—inside those 7.3 percentage points lies hundreds of dollars in profit.

Now imagine instead that you lost one of those six winning bets, leaving you with a 50% betting record. You spent a total of $1,100, won $500, and lost $550. That means overall your 50% record drained your wallet by $50. That’s where the vigorish will get you. Not even winning half the time is good enough to break even in sports betting.

Professional Sports Bettors

Believe it or not, some people really do bet on sports for a living. Maybe they work part time at a sportsbook or in some other marginal job in the casino industry, but there is a group of gamblers who bet on sports for their life’s work. With all the math swirling around in our heads after the last bit of the article, it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to do this for a living.

If you know that a 52.4% record will mean you break even, the simplest way to turn sports betting into a career is to bet enough so that a 53% winning record will bring in the kind of money you want to make.

Another example. After your successful Cowboys experiment, you decide to invest $10,000 in sports gambling over the first four months of the following football season. That $10,000 is set aside to win or lose in sportsbooks.

You plan on betting on 160 games during your investment period. You dream of a 55% winning record because your win-loss with a 55% winning record would give you an 88-72 record. That’s an expected profit of +8.8 units. How did we get to that number? To calculate your units, subtract the total of your losses (multiplied by 1.1 to include the vig) from your wins and you’ll get your unit profit.

Placing $460 bets on each of these games, a number pulled from some quick and dirty math about how much you could afford to bet in a single week’s NFL play without blowing your bankroll, would result in a $4,048 profit if you maintain that 55% winning record. Turning $10,000 into $14,048 in just four months is an investment return of 40.48%. I dare you to ask your bank for that kind of return on your savings account.

But that’s all assuming you can pick the winner 55% of the time. Do your research, look into the records of professional sports gamblers. 55%, while not impossible, would place you among the elite sports bettors in the country, if not the world.

Professional sports bettors have to worry about variance more than any other type of gambler. Working against the forces of variance means managing your bankroll over the course of the season to avoid the negative possibilities that could totally empty your wagering account. Professional sports bettors have the time and resources necessary to calculate these variances, and there are even a few pieces of software out there that can help you figure out your ideal bet in the face of negative variance. But the bottom line is that professional sports bettors would dream of having a 55% winning record, simply because it guarantees you’re beating the house.

Pro bettors make their money on bets that sportsbooks offer that give them even the slightest betting advantage. The key to becoming a profitable sports bettor is being able to find advantages, opportunities where the line a book is offering is vulnerable.

This is why many long-term sports bettors are math freaks. Good sports bettors understand statistics, particularly what are called inferential statistics, though any higher math will help when it comes time to place a bet.

Here is what a professional baseball bettor might do in his head. After looking over statistics from MLB (kept religiously by all sorts of bloggers, data archives, and magazines) between the years 2000-2010, he notices a particular statistic pop out. For example: when the home team starts a left-handed pitcher the day after a loss, that team wins 59% of the time. Good sports bettors can do this sort of math in their head or very quickly on paper. From that bit of information comes a new betting theory—look for game situations that mirror the above example and bet on them. That means he’ll only bet games where the home team starts a left-handed pitcher the day after a loss. Does he just jump in and start betting based on this back of the napkin math? No way. More statistical analysis is required—he may find that this was a fluke for that particular decade and isn’t a trustworthy statistics, or he may find an even more advantageous bet based on his original theory.

Pro sports bettors also keep near-obsessive records of their bets. Obviously, no edge in sports betting lasts longer than a single game. Taking proper records will also help you test theories, like the above one about left-handed pitchers and losses. Without taking good records, no sports bettor’s bankroll will last very long.

What Is a Good Record for Sports Bettors

So, at the end of the day, what could you call a “good” record for a sports bettor? Most casual gamblers looking into sports betting see a pro advertising his 1100-900 record and shake their head a little. How could such an abysmal record be something to be proud of? That’s a 55% winning percentage, and it indicates to those in the know that this bettor is actually turning a profit placing bets on sports.

A good record for a sports bettor is any record equal to or larger than 52.4%, because that number or anything higher means you’re not losing money. A 53% winning record, while not impressive on paper, means you’re actually beating the sportsbook and putting money back in your pocket. Ask your friends that play the slots or play online poker how often they end up putting money back in their pocket.

A -110 wager, standard for spread bets in the NFL, gives the house a built-in advantage of 10%. It means that even if you do win, and you line up to collect your $100, some sucker behind you just spent $10 to hand the casino $100.

A good record for sports bettors is any record that ensures they at least break-even. If you bet 16 games this NFL season and you won 9 and lost 7, you probably made money. And taking money away from a casino is always something to be proud of.

Other Advanced Sports Betting Strategy Articles:
» Future Betting Strategy
» NFL Bye Week Betting Strategy
» Parlay Betting Strategy

Sports Betting Break Even Video:

In the video above I go over the break even % for sports betting, and we take a look at the difference between hitting 52% and 53%. I also quickly show the amounts of profits you can expect if you can hit 55% consistently.

With each new NBA season, sports bettors get to take a whole new approach to betting on the NBA. Free agency, the draft, and trades have this league constantly changing more than any other, which starts up top with betting on the NBA Finals and trickles all the way down to the actual player transactions.

You honestly have the ability to bet on virtually anything involving the NBA these days. Once NBA trade rumors pop up, you can wager where star players will get traded to or what their next team could be the following year.

During the season, your betting options are at their greatest height, as there are a litany of player and team bets to choose from.

While the list is rather long as far as NBA betting opportunities go, there’s a small group of NBA wagers you should focus most of your time and energy on. With that, here are the seven best ways to make money betting on the NBA.

Talk about an edge. Normally, the top NBA betting sites set NBA odds with confidence, but even the most reputable sites have to admit they aren’t always sure how things will unfold.

They’re obviously setting the price they think bettors will respond to, but as things first get going, nobody has a clue what will happen. Why? Because these games don’t matter.

Teams will limit or rest their marquee players without hesitation, so your usual NBA betting strategy may not work here. However, if you research how coaches and players operate during preseason play and keep tabs on NBA news (follow NBA team beat writers), you can gain a serious advantage in this type of basketball betting.

Bet on Who Will Win the NBA Finals

This is a tried and true season-long prop bet that bettors can attack before the current season ends, and that’s often talking about the next season’s Finals.

NBA Finals odds are made available extremely early at the top NBA betting websites, and they’re constantly updated throughout the year. Regardless of when you feel like betting on the NBA Finals champion, you will usually have the ability to do so.

Bettors may want to pick their timing wisely for this wager, of course. The NBA can be fluid prior to the league’s NBA trade deadline each year, while placing bets before the summer’s free agency period ends is rarely suggested.

That being said, the NBA’s offseason usually paints a fairly accurate picture of who the top teams are and which NBA Finals sleepers could be worth backing.

Whatever your stance, you can bet on this wager virtually 365 days a year. You’ll just have to wait until the end of the NBA playoffs to find out if you won or not.

The art of NBA player prop betting should be mixed into your season-long NBA wagers. As noted, you can bet on where players will be traded or play down the road, but the list of NBA player props doesn’t end there.

Individual awards like the coveted NBA MVP, Most Improved Player, Defensive Player of the Year, 6^th Man of the Year, and even NBA Coach of the Year are among the best NBA player prop bets for you to target.

The nice thing is that like NBA Finals betting, most of these props are hosted at the most respected NBA sportsbooks for a good portion of the season. You can take advantage of early NBA odds by placing bets prior to the season, but as more information trickles out, you can still hedge your bets (or double down) with additional wagers.

Sometimes, the NBA can be predictable to the point where division winners or title favorites offer little to no value. When that’s the case, NBA bettors can aim a little higher with NBA player props.

Exploit NBA Point Spreads

You can bet on the NBA all year long, but the most action admittedly comes during the regular season. Props and futures are still out there to be targeted, but the grind refers to trying to figure out how to bet on individual games.

One of the most popular types of sports wagers is the point spread, as bettors try to find sustainable profit through picking teams to cover or beat spreads.

Whether you’re betting on an NBA team to cover a 5-point spread (win by six or more points) or beat a 10-point spread (lose by 10 or fewer points), this is a common bet due to the ability to win without being right about the actual winner.

There isn’t much value in backing favorites in pro sports, so spread betting allows you to take a look at how games are priced and see if there’s an advantageous approach.

How you bet on NBA spreads will always depend on a multitude of circumstances, but this checklist is a good one to abide by.

• Injuries/starting lineups
• Recent series history
• Fatigue/schedule
• ATS data
• Home/away splits
• Eye test
• Find the best value

This is a good list of criteria to check off as you prepare to bet. If any star players for either side are out, that needs to be noted. Of course, this is especially important for the favorites, and it becomes a bigger deal the larger the spread is.

If the Golden State Warriors are favored by 10 points and Stephen Curry is ruled out, the Warriors covering suddenly gets a little dicey.

Leaning too much on past results can get you in trouble, but rivalries and “mental holds” can be real things in a sport like basketball. If a team has won six straight in a series or 10 of the last 12, that isn’t something to ignore.

Is Betting A Good Way To Make Money Work

Perhaps more important than anything when betting on NBA spreads is assessing team fatigue and how each team’s schedule impacts them. Teams on long road trips, playing back-to-backs, or hitting the floor for the third time in four or five days can suffer immensely from mental and physical fatigue.

Is Matched Betting A Good Way To Make Money

On top of that, it’s always useful to take a look at a team’s against the spread data, as well as straight-up results and home vs. away splits.

Lastly, don’t overlook the eye test.

This applies to the matchup at hand, in addition to the pricing by whatever NBA sportsbook you’re betting at. If you can quickly assess a matchup and a team is favored by -10 and shouldn’t be, the bet could be as simple as that.

Of course, before putting any of this into play, be sure to go NBA lines shopping at your most trustworthy NBA betting websites. The more sites you can look at, the better prices you’ll find.

This should lead to maximum value and an easier, safer bet.

Everything we just touched on can and should be applied to your search for that huge NBA upset pick. Betting strictly on NBA underdogs probably isn’t the best idea just because it can backfire horribly, but sometimes there are very sneaky spots to target insane value.

When looking to bet on NBA upsets, there are five huge factors to consider.

• Price
• Matchup
• Schedule
• Fatigue
• Injuries

NBA betting odds are always going to dictate what you do to some extent. Be sure to shop around just like with any wager and work your way down from there.

Of course, be sure to dissect the matchup at hand so that you know how to view the prices for the game. Consider what major injuries are expected to have an impact, how tired players can be, and what their schedule has been like.

There is information online as far as which games are most likely to be “trap” games for every franchise, but you can do the digging pretty easily yourself. Basically, if a team has played numerous games in a short amount of time — and/or if they’re coming off of a huge game or looking ahead to one — they could be physically or mentally ill-prepared.

Betting on NBA underdogs can be highly profitable, but it’s not guaranteed to always be sustainable. It’s best to pick your spots and try to refrain from always betting only on the major underdogs (+145 is a nice win, too).

Another popular way to bet on NBA games is to pick a side on game totals. The top NBA betting sites assign an overall total for points scored in the game, and bettors need to decide if it’s too high or too low.

There are absolutely going to be instances where you’ll just want to leave it alone and bet on something else, but totals can be fairly easy to exploit.

Here are some things to consider before betting on NBA totals.

• Injuries/fatigue/schedule
• Pace of play
• Offensive efficiency
• Defensive efficiency

Just like with most NBA wagers, be sure to do your research and know what big injuries to account for, as well as anything pertaining to player fatigue or schedule impact.

The next big thing to look for is team pace. Some teams rely on a slow, methodical offense, simply aren’t great at scoring, and/or try to beat teams defensively. The slower the pace, the fewer possessions you have to work with.

If one team plays fast and the other doesn’t, these offensive philosophies could cancel each other out. Teams can also change the way they play depending on matchups and whether they’re at home or on the road.

If in search of a tiebreaker, home teams tend to dictate the pace — at least initially.

Offensive and defensive efficiency are also very important to note, and you can add in shooting percentages, both inside and from long range. The point is to build a strong case that one or both teams are going to struggle to score or dramatically slow the game down, or both teams can contribute to a very explosive shootout.

The point spread is often used to figure this out, too. If the total is high but the spread is also high, there is a risk of a blowout. The over would then be at risk of not delivering.

Ideally, betting on the over has both teams offering average or above average paces and capable, efficient offenses. If you can have one or both teams playing average-to-poor defense, that only helps.

It works the other way for the under, while pricing can be crucial no matter what the case is for either team. That’s where the eye test and hunting for elite NBA betting value once again come into play.

Lastly, consider trying live sports betting. This isn’t just about hedging previous bets, either (although it’s okay to do that a little bit).

Rather, betting on the NBA live is more about taking advantage of game momentum and line movement. If the Warriors open a game as 10-point favorites but are down by five at the break, their game line will almost certainly dip.

Perhaps now they’re no longer favored to win the game, or at a minimum, that 10-point spread shrinks drastically. In-game injuries, team adjustments, and player performance can play into things swinging back the other way, while anyone who watches the NBA knows how much basketball can go back and forth.

How To Make Money By Betting

Betting on the NBA is a roller coaster ride in general. Live NBA betting simply allows bettors to exploit it.

One great NBA betting strategy to use with live NBA betting is noting how teams perform in the third and fourth quarters. Whether it be coaching adjustments, lineup changes, or just an overall team philosophy, some teams come out red hot to start second halves, and others tend to cave.

That’s just one sliver of information you can use to bet live on the NBA and hopefully do so successfully. More than anything, though, NBA live betting allows you to keep the game exciting (and potentially profitable) from start to finish.

Just be sure to research the very best live sports betting websites before placing your bet.

Where to Bet on the NBA

As you can see, there is a lot to soak up in the NBA betting world. Your options for betting on the NBA know no bounds, as you can wager on players and teams all year long or even bet on the games as they go.

Of course, this all circles back to what I opened with, and that’s first finding the best value at the most reputable basketball betting websites.

Finding which site is the best for you as an individual is a process you personally need to take on because every site can be different as far as bonuses, promotions, customer service, and payment methods go.

Ideally, though, you can find a handful of NBA sportsbooks that package most of that criteria and are also safe to play at.

For a short list you can trust, here are some great NBA betting sites to consider.

I won’t waste your time running through these websites to tell you where to bet, but all of these NBA betting sites check off the major boxes. Those would be safe, reputable, and elite in terms of pricing and promotions being offered.

I don’t think the point is to ever pick just one site to bet on the NBA, though. NBA betting is so volatile by nature that you will always want to keep your options open. That applies to wagers offered but also to pricing.

Hopefully, this post helps point you in the right direction in terms of where to bet on basketball and which wagers to attack. For more NBA betting odds, insight, and advice, hit up our NBA betting guide.