Tag Archives: portfolio
How To Place Sports Bets Intelligently
The last thing that anyone wants to do when first getting involved with sports betting is lose money. Unfortunately, in many cases this cannot be avoided, because you can’t always be sure of the outcome every time, but what you can do is hone your skills by learning how to look at things more intelligently.
Here is some advice on how you can take yourself from losing heaps of cash to a megastar of the sports betting world.
First, my advice would be to carefully monitor your return on investment before ever placing a bet. It’s possible to sit down and work through the numbers so that you don’t get lost.
Second, pay very close attention to trends. Pick several teams that you are interested in and stick with them. Monitor every little thing that appears to be going on within their inner circle. Things like injuries, new players and other insider information can give you the edge you are looking for.
In the game of sports betting, the ones who stand up tall are those who pay close attention to everything little aspect of the game.
Manage your bankroll carefully. Remember to treat this like any other business where you carefully monitor what’s going in and what’s going out.
In all reality, almost all sports bettors bet way more than they can afford to lose – don’t make this mistake. The truth is that you should really be putting up no more than 6% of your entire bankroll at any one given time. This gives you space to make money and lose less.
Unfortunately, for some odd reason people think that betting on sports is some different thing altogether. They don’t realize that you need to treat it with the care of a stock portfolio. No one wants to be risky with their market portfolio, but for some reason they really do view sports betting as you either lose or win and you have no control.
Although the above statement might be true to some degree, it does not mean that you need to be completely reckless about it. Be extremely cautious with your wagers and you will see your bankroll grow, and don’t you dare start betting more than 10% just because you are starting to feel good about yourself.
Remember that sports investing is a game of numbers, calmness, insight and self control – something that many people aren’t mature enough to do. Be better than that and you will go along way.
Horse Race Handicapping: Dutching
Dutching is the professional handicapper’s equivalent to portfolio diversification. One of the greatest mistakes an investor can make is not properly diversifying his or her portfolio. Adequate diversification will include an increased number of investments, allowing those with upward price movements to offset those with downward price movements.
In handicapping, dutching allows a bettor to wager on two or more runners, at different odds, in the same race. The bets are made in proportion to each horse’s chances of winning, so that no matter which runner prevails, the payoff will be the same. Since dutching allows us to bet on three or four runners, obviously we have a better chance of cashing Xtra Winners. However; even when we win while dutching, we will always have some losing tickets with this method.
Here is how it works: Assume that through applying a long-shot angle, you have eliminated the non-contenders and are left with three horses. You are confident that one of the three will be victorious but have no particular bias toward any of them. By placing a varying win bet on each of the three horses, the dollar amounts being dictated by the odds, you will realize a profit no matter which of the three wins. In addition, the profit will be approximately the same for each outcome, and you can predetermine it.
So, how do we know how much to wager on each horse in order to guarantee a profit? First, we need to convert the horses’ current odds into a percentage. This tell us what the market or pool says the real-time percentage chance each horse has of winning the race. The math for this is simple, but, in the interest of brevity, I am going to omit it here. It is covered in detail in my book, Handicapping the Wall Street Way: Picking Xtra Winners at the Track.
Just print the following chart:
ODDS ODDS AMT. BET PAYOFF
Pisces Pleasure 3-1 25 $25.00 $100.00
Nostalgic Moment 4-1 20 $20.00 $100.00
Trubble 9-1 10 $10.00 $100.00
With a total outlay of fifty-five dollars, we would expect a profit of forty-five dollars whether Pisces Pleasure, Nostalgic Moment, or Trubble won. For this example, I assigned a unit value of one dollar to each percentage point. Although the value assigned is entirely at each individual handicapper’s discretion, it MUST be the same for each horse.
As with the stock market, there is a certain degree of volatility in the betting pool. It is not at all uncommon to see sizable fluctuations in the odds, especially at smaller tracks. To negate these fluctuations, one should endeavor to wait until the last possible second to place his or her wagers.