Guidelines For Betting

If you are going to Las Vegas for the gambling, make sure you take enough money to cover yourself if lose it at the tables. Set a limit and stick to it. It is hard because one more play might be the big one. However, one more play and you could lose everything. Lower your bets when you aren’t winning. If you start to losing, switch tables or even casinos. Go where you feel comfortable and try again. Sometimes you will spot advertisements for sure winners or big jackpots. These are scams. Don’t buy them. If anybody figured out how to beat the slot machines, they wouldn’t share it with everyone else. Quit once you get ahead of where you started. If you up a hundred dollars, get up from the table. Don’t let greed separate you from your winnings. Don’t go into debt to make bets. If you are down to your last dollars and have maxed out your credit cards, it is time to stop. Don’t even let it get that far. Some people have used up their savings and used their homes as collateral. Please be careful in knowing what you can and cannot afford to wager. The chances are you will lose most of the money you have brought with you to gamble. The house usually has the odds on their side. Sure you might win a few times, but they usually will get it all back and more. If you get lucky in a short run, take the money and leave. You will be better off for it. You will also have some coin to play another day. Don’t use the winnings from one play to increase on the next. Greed is getting the better of you. Hold on to the winnings and keep your bets at the original levels you started at. This way, you can build up your winnings and if you lose all your gambling money, you still are not completely broke.

Sports Betting Glossary

Betting Straight Up – Winning straight-up means simply winning on the scoreboard without any regard to the point spread. Betting straight-up would be to take a side or a team and bet on them to win outright.

ATS or “Against the Spread,” – Betting with a point spread or line instead of on the straight-up result. Taking points on an underdog or giving points on a favorite.

Side – Like betting straight-up, a side bet is a wager on a particular team, or side to win a contest.

Betting the totals/over/under – The line on a given contest, representing the combined number of points/goals scored by the two teams; see over/under. Betting the over/under is a bet on whether the combined total of the points or goals scored by the two teams will exceed or be less than a specified number.

Half time total – Betting on a team or total in the first half of the game only.

Parlays – A parlay bet is a bet with two or more teams where all the teams must win for the bettor to be successful. Parlays are viewed by sharp gamblers as a sucker bet because the house edge (juice) is large.

Teaser – A bet on two or more teams where the line on each team is adjusted in the favor of the bettor. All bets must win in order to win a teaser.

Betting the “Money Line,” – The amount you must bet to win $100 (if betting a favorite), or the amount you win if you bet $100 (if betting an underdog). This is a bet based on the straight-up result of the game without a spread.

Betting the “Puckline,” – Used only in hockey. A “spread” usually set at exactly 1.5 goals. Favorites lay -1.5 goals while underdogs “get” +1.5 goals.

Now that we have covered the betting basics, we can breakdown some of the “exotics,” or “promotional,” bets.

Promos/exotics – Any wager other than a straight bet or parlay – also called a prop or proposition.

Betting “futures,” – Wagers made, or lines/odds posted on an event or outcome taking place some time in the future, like betting during the season on the eventual Super Bowl winner.

Sports Betting and Losing

Winning in sports betting is easy. It’s fun, profitable and you rarely see a winner who does not have a smile plastered on his face. Losing on the other hand is a difficult pill to swallow. The loser is out of money and out of luck and it gets even worse when it is by a last minute shot or field goal and the loss is the result of a bad break.

Growing up as a sports bettor like many of us I had a mentor and he always told me that winning is easy, but if you can handle losing than this can be a very fun and profitable venture. There are several rules of thumbs you should keep in mind when you have lost a game and when you learn to follow all of these things then losing is not that difficult after all.

- Don’t watch the games: If you don’t watch a game then you will never realize that a bad call, tough shot or bad reply cost you some money. This is the hardest rule that there is to follow because everyone enjoys watching a game they have action on.

- Vent then shake it off: After a tough loss take a minute by yourself and vent. Scream at the top of your lungs, call a friend and tell him/her about it and then let it go. The sooner you put it behind you the better and you can move on to the good part; winning.

- Look at the big picture: After losing a big game on a bad call look at your crib sheet for the day. Often people will be so disappointed with a tough beat they will not take the time to look at the numbers for the day, week, or month. If overall you are up then that loss does not seem so big after all.

- No What-If Scenario’s: This goes back to rule #3 and is connected in many ways. How many times have you found your self saying: “yeah I won $100, but if I won that game it would have been $300!” Stop playing what-if and remember the big picture.

- Think about baseball: A baseball player who hits .300 is considered great. Same thing for a good handicapper who just needs to be over .500 to do well and make money. Get used to losing it happens to the best of us.

- Avoid losing and study: This is easier said then done, but it will make you a better capper if you study your losses. Look at the box scores, the lines, and anything else that you may have noticed before the game that could have saved you if you had noticed it before hand. In the long run this will save you some serious money just by investing a little time.

- Pull back the reigns: This rule is best used if you are in a losing streak, not if you have just lost one bad game. If you are in a losing streak, shade back your bet amounts. The lower you bet the easier it is to swallow and when you heat up you can raise them again. When in a losing streak avoid carnival bets as well such as teasers and parlays. This will also help you avoid chasing.

- Take a day off: This is suggested for winning and losing, a day off always does the body and the mind good and it gives you a chance to appreciate the better things in life.

The professionals in this business only suggest to be successful you need only hit about 54% of your selections. That means you will lose and you will lose up to 46% of the time and that is if you are good. Handling how you lose is important and will allow you to prosper and more importantly, profit.