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Football Gambling Tips

Last update: April, 2024

Written by:
Lisa Cheban

Content writer

Football Gambling Tips

Football betting is a really exciting activity, especially for those gamblers that love sports and the National Football League. If you want to start or have already started in the world of football gambling, we have compiled a guide for you to read about many of the nuances that come with betting, where you will find plenty of useful tips to help you during your journey.

Even professional sport bettors fail from time to time, and this is always something to keep in mind. Success is not linear and failure can occur, especially at the beginning. Focus on not beating yourself up for the small mistakes; instead, try to learn from them and embrace the fact that they are part of the process.

When betting, mistakes cost you money, so trying to commit the minimum amount of errors is an essential exercise. The biggest mistakes that beginners make most often is overcomplicating things. When you are starting, you should aim to keep things as straightforward as possible and avoid making everything more confusing by trying to execute overly elaborate strategies when you lack abilities and experience. At the beginning, try to put all your effort into picking up as much information as possible; this will help you in your gaming, and you will be able to slowly build up from there, eventually showing off your honed skills.

Once you have set a solid ground filled with the basics, you can start using more complex tactics and try to evolve your routine to get a big edge over the bookmarkers. This is exactly the purpose of this article, to guide you through the first stages with proven tips that are of great value for beginners. Some of these valuable suggestions might seem obvious to you, but they will serve as a good reminder; others will become inspirational and take you closer to your desired betting results.

Set a Budget

Since you are not going to be successful with every football bet that you place, and will probably start amassing more losses than wins, setting a budget at the beginning will help you balance out this ordeal. After properly learning the strategy and gaining more experience, you will be able to get lots of earnings, but until then, stay calm before the fact that you will probably be defeated often during the start of the journey.

All these losses, however, are an actual investment. You are putting your time and money towards improving your activity, which will eventually result in better outcomes. Time and hard work are the other two elements that, along with money, will take you where you want to be. Money, however, needs to be carefully spent, so you don’t end up wasting everything by spending more than you have. Think about it this way: all the money that you set aside for football betting should be funds that you are willing to lose if things go wrong; in other words, never try to cover the betting with money that you don’t have.

Creating a budget for a particular time frame is always a good idea. As an example, you could set £1,000 for the whole length of the NBA season and stick to that budget, separating it from the remainder of your finances. If you were to lose all the money before the season finishes, the wise option would be to stop then and try again during the next season. Having a bankroll that is exclusive for gambling and won’t interfere with the other areas of your life is key.

Normally, if you play well, you would not lose a whole bankroll during a season, and managing it properly will prevent you from going bust. There are three good rules of thumb to follow in order to become a successful football bettor:

  • Establish weekly or monthly budgets for your overall betting expenses.
  • Limit the amount you use on every individual wager.
  • Never try to chase your losses.

Discipline, setting the proper barriers, and sticking to your plans are the main elements to manage your bankroll. Reducing the stakes at the right moment is also a helpful suggestion. If all of this fails, you should revise whether or not your skills are ready to take in the world of football betting.

Benefit from Bonus Offers

The betting industry these days has to face many competitors. Therefore, companies launch many campaigns and promotions to try to attract customers to their specific sites and move them away from the opposition. Most major betting sites give you a welcome bonus if you sign up with them, normally in the shape of free bets, and keep you encouraged with many other bonuses and events.

Try to always take advantage of these offers and sign up with different online bookies. They will always try to keep your loyalty with great value promotions like daily specials or specific bonuses around big events like the World Cup and the Premier League season. Usually, the risk involved in these promotions is so low that it is worth taking the chance. Simultaneously, be aware of the value, since the bookies might try to lure you in with a free bet for the wrong reasons.

Never Blindly Bet on Favorites

Don’t follow your heart when betting on football betting, because it is well known that bookies are aware of the favorites before a game and said favorites will receive the load of the money in the 1×2 market. Whether your choice wins or loses, if it is a favorite among bettors, you will barely earn anything from your wager.

If you bet on your favorite team out of pure passion and without any reason to back up your choice, the chances of winning will diminish. In a similar way, making an accumulator bet with all your favorites before having gone through the specifics of each game first is also another unreasonable betting behavior that will not bring the profit that you expected or wished for.

Follow a Tipster

In gambling, a tipster is a third party that can give advice based on their knowledge of a subject matter. Although following one is not a set guarantee, it definitely increases your odds of winning your bets, especially when it comes to a very good professional tipster.

Matched Betting

Another thing to look at is matched betting, a famous betting strategy used by bettors with many years of experience behind them. The idea is to use the free bets offered by bookies and a betting exchange to lay off your bet in order to secure a lucrative return. This way, your bet will cover one outcome while your lay will cover the remaining ones. This is a very used strategy for a good reason.

Arbitrage Opportunities

Something that will guarantee you some profit is an arbitrage bet, since they tend to bring on profit in the sub 5% scope, that is, you would make £5 for every £100 staked. The amount you put down is not at risk with an arbitrage bet, which means that even if the return might seem small, it is a positive one because you are not risking any money but earning some instead. It is very important to know how to appreciate the smaller advances and winnings, and this is an outlook that we are going to analyze next.

Relish the Smaller Profits

Chasing a big bet slip is not a great way of spending your gambling time because large odds probably won’t come in. This is why it is always important to remember that profit is profit no matter how small, and that you should never take for granted the smaller bets that can bring you even the slightest of benefits. You should study to find out which bets are more likely to win and go for them.

All in all, regularly take into account the significance of the small prizes, since they will probably bring the best consistency to your bankroll without you having to risk lots of money.

Take Action to Reduce Your Loses

Keeping track of the daily and weekly bets you have made and their outcomes, the stakes, the betting market, and the odds will help you become a better football gambler. Afterwards, you can study your own data and results and try to figure out where things are being more profitable.

As time goes by, you can hone your instincts by observing the results through trial and error, especially your winning choices. When it comes to football betting, the more you study percentages and previous statistics, the more you will become a bettor that knows how to efficiently anticipate the end result of a football game.

Believe in Your Instincts

Although making informed decisions and a thorough analysis before choosing to act, there is a small space for instincts as well. Many factors need to be taken into account when football betting, although instincts aren’t a visible thing or something that can be analyzed into a real betting result. However, it is completely fine to fully trust your instincts if your guts are telling you to. Seriously studying the team’s performances and listening to your ideas and experience will be a great mix that can bring you all the earnings that you dreamed of.

It Is Fine to Bet on a Hunch

Do not worry if you feel the need to act on a hunch. Doing so might not always bring the best benefits, but from time to time, it might be your only tool and overanalyzing the situation will not help, so betting on a hunch and following your instincts will be the best course of action.

This isn’t a foolproof method at all, but sometimes even clever tactics fail. There is never a way to forecast what will be the outcome of a bet, which makes the game even more thrilling, and using your own feelings to make a choice is valid when doing so under the right mindset. Those same instincts can be perfected over time and they will turn into a more reliable source of information. You will be able to see how various elements are decisive in certain scenarios and then your decision making will become more innate, turning that intuition into a great asset.

Studying the football game and plays will also serve as an edge when betting, because you will be able to understand the dynamics of the game and how the teams react against each other based on previous encounters and statistics. This is crucial when one is placing sport bets that depend upon the output of the players on the field.

Learn about All Betting Markets

It is very important to know about all the different betting markets available if you want to achieve good profits. Learning about them will allow you to seize many opportunities to earn money and avoid failure or silly mistakes.

The most popular market in football betting is ‘match result’ bets, where you make a prediction about the final stats of a match, such as a draw, a home win, or an away win. There are so many other types of bets, but we have collected a few for you to start familiarizing yourself with this world:

  • Double Chance: You can make this bet on the ‘match result’ and cover two different outcomes. It is easy to make but the odds will be shorter.
  • BTTS Result: Meaning ‘Both Teams to Score’, you have to properfly predict that result. In this case, odds are longer but it is also harder to win such a bet.
  • Over and Under Goals: Here you don’t need to choose a winning team. Instead, the amount of goals of a game is what matters the most to the better.

Online Betting

Online betting is probably one of the most widespread and popular forms of betting nowadays. It brings many advantages to the players and it normally tends to be the best option for them. It is a very fast and convenient way of placing your bets, from the comfort of your home, filled with bonuses and promotions, and with many competitive odds and lines. All these good characteristics will not have a negative impact on your earnings and, instead, this way of betting brings many benefits. It is very easy to use these sites and place your wagers on them, and this tends to be one of the public’s favorite aspects about online betting.

One thing to have in mind is to always use the right site, that is, one with the proper licenses and easy deposit and withdrawals methods that will not turn into a hassle.

Find Different Bookmarkers

Odds do differ among bookmarkers, making the field an even more interesting one and opening the door for arbitrage bets. Bookies set the prices for different events depending on the way they perceive their value. If you start to bet often, you will realize that taking the best odds for every placed wager will highly impact your profits.

As an example, the Carabao Cup semi-final between Tottenham and Brentford. Betting on the Spurs ranged between 1/5 and 3/13, meaning that if you bet £25 on that result, it would be the difference between a £5 or a £5.77 profit. If you were to bet in favor of Brentford qualifying, then the odds will give you a profit between £80 and £87.50.

How to Find Value

Being a beginner, you might not really know what the word value means within these circumstances, as a lot of longtime bettors have failed to understand it as well. It is a very important concept in order to thrive in football betting and the key to making good money, since finding value is the method to achieve steady profits

You can find value by taking the probability and multiplying it by its decimal odds, then taking the result and subtracting one. Putting this information into practice will not be hard for you, and as you keep developing this knowledge, you will see good results.

Fine-Tune Your Prediction Skills

As previously mentioned, even though making accurate bets based solely on intuition is not always the best decision, working on your prediction skills in order to supplement your tactics is a good idea. You need to know all the information available to make correct football predictions like learning all the statistics of players, their teams, and their gaming patterns. Afterwards, you will have to analyze how those factors relate to each other and change the outcome of games and their results. Understanding how to competently use all this information can help you make more accurate wagers and predict future scores.

Keep Track of Your Bets

We have already mentioned the utility of using diverse betting markets and switching up your bookmakers, but another constructive idea is to collect information in order to create a log of your bets.

Tracking your bets will allow you to realize your improvement but also your weak points, and the written facts will help you keep a realistic mindset that will be of great aid when making a wager. The amount of data that you collect will also serve as a register to compare and study which bets tend to be more successful and why, which is a very powerful attribute for football bettors. Being able to take a glance at all your tracked information and quickly see patterns of big or low profits will be a helping hand when deciding which markets to tackle next. Put your money wherever you notice the best results over time and avoid wasting time on losing bets.

Quality Is Better Than Quantity

When it comes to wagers, it is not only important to win as many as possible, but to establish a good and balanced ratio between the losing wagers and the winning ones. Being selective is key in this process, since it might be very enticing to place a wager in every game that happens every week wishing you would guess right and earn lots of money, but that is not something realistic and should not be a path to follow. Therefore, the sensible thing to do is to always place a bet when you find a good statistical reason for it and stop betting just for the sake of it.

When you are truly positive about making a winning prediction based on previous facts, you should go ahead and trust your instinct. Following the same criteria, if you have been able to find value on a bet, you should act on it. The goal should be to find both of these qualities on every bet you place, although it will not always be possible, but betting for any other reasons will make you lose money in the end.

Instead of trying to make lots of wager, focus on making a smaller amount of winning ones. This will be more effective and bring in the bigger profits.

Focus On Studying

As a last suggestion, we have kept a very crucial one: studying. Analyzing and learning from observation, trial, and error, and being constant while doing so will take you far. If you put the effort, it will make you a great professional football bettor, so stay humble and try to learn a little every day, with the aim of improving as you play and observe yourself, others, and all of your results. Learning the strategy as well as the rules of the game will certainly help you reach your goals and benefits, and although it might seem a daunting and boring task, the positives will outdo the negatives. If you really want to become a good football gambler, then you are going to need to put all your efforts into developing your knowledge and attention. Nothing comes easy, but hard work is honestly the only way to achieve your goals. Loving the NBA and following games and players’ performance will also be of great use, since knowing the intricate machinery of a sport makes you a better gambler.

To do all of this you are going to need to invest a lot of time and patience. There is a lot of information to take in and to contrast, so take one step at a time and try to not get overwhelmed by everything since there is no need to hurry. First, aim to perfectly control the basics and then reach for the harder tactics and ideas. You will eventually find yourself mastering most of the elements of football betting and the final prize will make the difficulties of the journey worth all the labor.

FAQ

How do you successfully gamble in football?

In order to thrive when gambling in football, you need to be a very disciplined person. Apply all the information and guidelines we have mentioned in this article, such as only wagering the money that you have in your bankroll and never exceeding that or going into bankruptcy. This applies to every type of gambling and it is something that players need to keep in mind in order to have a healthy and enjoyable experience.

You should think about the players on the field, the people whose performance directly affects the outcome of your betting job. They know that they have to be responsible and act accordingly so their team can win. In the same way, you need to work on your self-control and willpower, and never give up when things get hard.

What is the best bet in football?

Asian Handicap betting is becoming a popular choice among bettors that want an alternative to the classic 1×2. One of its best features is the ability to consolidate a positive outcome when a player acts on everything they have learned through the years.

On the contrary, it can be very irritating to find that a winning bet turns into a push on a late consolation. This happens, most certainly, when the extra return is not being proposed at a proper rate.

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