If you are looking for a simple method on how to be able to bet on sports and win consistently, then I must sadly inform you that such a method simply does not exist. You cannot take a series of negative expected value bets and bet various amounts that somehow will make the net return positive. If you want to be profitable at betting on sports you need to come up with a way for you to identify bets that are profitable on their own and do not need to be saved by some betting system.
The reason you are on this page might be that you have heard about some betting method that is able to beat the bookies by simply changing up your bet sizing as you go. Maybe it was called something like Martingale? Maybe you are curious about the topic of bet sizing and if there are any systems that are better than others.
We will use this article to go over some of the most popular betting systems that are out there, how they supposedly seem to work and why they don’t. At the end we want to give some tips on how to manage your money when you are betting on sports to allow you the best chance of not going bankrupt and win the most when you find the winners.
First we want to note that it is common to use the phrase ‘betting system’ about two different concepts in sports betting. Some use it about methods that is utilized to find profitable bets based on either data that is manipulated, a set of events that needs to come true or others. This is what we will call handicapping, or maybe sports betting system.
For this article though we are talking about betting systems in the sense of a set of rules we have set for ourselves before we start betting and tend to follow in order to gain the maximum and lose the least. This might also be referred to as betting strategy. There are many different ways to go about this (as we will go into detail with later) and everyone has a system. Some are better than others, but what all of them have in common is that they cannot be used to bet blindly and hope to make a profit in turn simply by the way you size your bets. For this you need to do some handicapping or find an edge somehow on your own.
You will find that there is an endless supply of different kinds of betting systems available to those that want to beat sports betting, but some are more popular than others. We will introduce the most popular ones here, describe how they intend to work and why they will not work in the long run.
The most popular betting system by far and if you have been gambling for a while or have much experience with it you have probably heard about it, maybe even given it a go. This system can be used on any kind of game where you can bet on outcomes and it has mostly been used in the casino betting on roulette, but it has also been used for other casino games and also betting on sports.
The Rules – The basic gist of how this betting system works is that you start out by betting a very small amount, preferably the lowest limit and if you win your bet you take your profit and continue with your betting. Should your bet lose you will double your bet size on the next bet. You will continue to double your bet sizing until your next win, where you will reduce your bet size to the minimum and start over again.
The idea here is that you will not encounter a string of 10 or more losses in a row and thus will always end up ahead by chasing them. Albeit there are small wins to be had, this system is meant to produce steady profits and remove losses altogether.
Why it doesn’t work – This system might sound like a good one at first glance and that is probably why so many have gone ahead and given it a go. For most it will also work out in the short term as you will often acquire many small wins before you encounter a string of losses enough to bankrupt you, but if you play for long enough you will run into such a streak sooner or later.
But some of you might argue that you can simply increase your bets even more and continue to hock for the win. Well, that is not possible when your bet size has become large enough. The betting sites have limits on how much you can wager on any given event and if you reach this, place a bet and lose, you cannot increase it more. Then you are for all intents and purposes broke.
Let’s use bets on the NFL at Pinnacle Sports as an example, as they are known for having some of the highest limits online. When the game gets close to kick-off you can sometimes find limits as high as $100,000.
So if you start out betting $1, then if you lose you increase your next bet to $2, then to $4 and so on. If you are so unfortunate as to lose 17 bets in a row you will just have lost a wager of $65,536 and be over $130,000 in the hole. And even if you had the bankroll to place another wager you would not be able to given that the limit is set at $100,000.
This will not happen often off course as losing 17 in a row is quite unlikely, but because the loss you incur with such an event is so massive you cannot risk it and it will not be worth it. You will not make up for it even if you win 100,000 bets in a row and then go on a 17 game losing streak.
It is not out of stupidity that people go ahead with these types of bets, but rather that they do not have in-depth knowledge of how statistics and math works. Most also adhere to what is called the gambler’s fallacy. This is the belief that if some events have happened more often than not then it will happen with less frequency in the future. Let us take roulette as an example: if there have been 10 spins of the wheel, and 10 of those have ended in the ball landing on red. Many will not think that black is “due” to come up and will bet on that. It cannot possibly land on red once more? Can it? Off course it can.
What people need to understand and be able to discern is that these (spinning of a roulette wheel) are independent events. That means that the ball and wheel does not have memory and knows how many times it has come up on a specific color. It merely follows the laws of physics and normal distribution will do it's part after that. Don’t make this mistake and think you can spot streaks in independent events.
Although we have spent this entire page letting you know how bad betting systems are and you will only lose more money using them, we should mention that there are systems that can bring you profit over the long haul, but they are often just called “systems” when a more appropriate name probably would be strategies or angles.
You can take some examples of football betting systems that works: finding two bets where you bet on opposite outcomes, but the odds are high enough that you secure a profit no matter the outcome of the actual game. This is called arbitrage betting and is a very popular betting method among online gamblers. It is hard to do on your own, so buying some help in the form of a system or tools will greatly increase your chances of winning money.
So hopefully now you are convinced that simply relying on a betting system is not the way to riches in football betting, but it needs to be a part of your whole arsenal of tricks when you are going up against the bookies. I would recommend spending your precious time on analyzing games and coming up with a profitable angle rather then bet sizing. Set a simple percentage, between 1-3% of your bankroll that you will wager on every game to make it simple. When you are more advanced you might want to take a look at the Kelly Criterion in order to maximize bankroll growth, but for now a simple flat betting formula will do. I still use that for most of my bets still as it is easier and pretty close to optimal anyways.
I am not going to say that you should not ever use martingale or any other betting system when you are betting online. If you want to give it a whirl you are more than welcome. I have tried it out just for fun when playing the slots or other casino games sometime and I can get on some good streaks and play with my money for quite some time before I eventually bust out. But you should not expect to win in the long run when using this betting system and do not play with money you cannot afford to lose.
