Prospector Sam - Seven Times That You Should Avoid Sports Betting

Prospector Sam is here to break down seven times that you should NOT be gambling or sports betting.

One of the great ironies of sports gambling is that you know you’re starting to get better when you learn not to do it. No, that doesn’t mean giving up all together (I haven’t completely lost my brain), but learning to stop in the right moments. This is a common theme I’ve come across in conversations with experienced gamblers, and is almost universally accepted as an important learned skill. Winning money is already difficult, so figuring out ways to minimize avoidable losses can be crucial in the battle to become a profitable sports gambler.

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Now, this article needs a big old asterisk right in front of it, because there are a large number of sports gamblers that it doesn’t apply to at all; namely, people who just gamble for fun. I know a bunch of folks who bet on sports as a form of entertainment, rather than a money-making endeavor, because it’s a way to make games more interesting when they watch them. To those people, just ignore this. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with gambling that way, so long as you don’t think you’re going to get rich off pure luck (you could, but you could also win the lottery or discover a 10 pound diamond buried in a field…).

For the people who look at sports gambling as a money making enterprise, though, this shit matters. Now, let’s be clear; it’s absolutely impossible to cut losses out completely, or even close to it. The best gamblers hit around 56-58% of the time on standard bets, which means you’re still going to miss A LOT. Get over it, and get used to it. But there’s not much cushion between a profitable winning percentage and an unprofitable one (considering standard bets pay 91 cents to the dollar), which means you need to learn when you’re better off just keeping your money in your pocket in stead of taking a chance. 

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So that’s the goal for today’s lesson. Professor Sam (god, imagine me in charge of the minds of young children, what a train wreck) is going to talk about a number of situation where, as a bettor trying to step up their performance, you can learn to stop making avoidable mistakes. The transition from new/casual gambler to a sophisticated one is challenging, but if I can do it then anybody can. So, with all of my nonsense out of the way, let’s get to the real meat and potatoes of this piece. 

1. Drunk Gambling 🥴

I’m going to start with the most obvious and easy changes to make, and then work my way down to more challenging or sophisticated ones. This should be pretty obvious to any human being who’s ever had a sip of alcohol, but it’s maybe not the easiest. Basically, you just aren’t as smart when you drink (but you are a stud, go chat that pretty guy/girl up who’s giving you the eyes). So nine beers in at 1 am, avoid those “brilliant” ideas and put the phone away. It just isn’t going to end well in almost any situation, and I can say that as somebody with a fair amount of experience in the practice. Liquid courage may be fun, but getting courageous with your money won’t be.

2. Chasing Losses 🏃‍♂️

If, at any point in time, the only or best reason you have for making a bet is that you’re down money and want to make it back, walk away immediately. The temptation is obvious. You had a bet or bets that you liked but they just didn’t fucking work out. Guess what? Thats part of life, and its part of gambling (not that anyone should be following life advice from me). Some days, you just have to take your lumps and walk away. The key is that long term profit is exactly that - long term. You’re going to have days, weeks, and even months where you lose money, but you’ll also have ones where you win at a higher rate. If you start compounding those losses, though, it gets harder to dig your way out over the long term. It’s not going to be easy, and you’ll always want to scratch that itch. Hell, I still get sad every time I lose a bet. But what I’ve learned not to do is take a shot at a pick I don’t love just for the sake of trying to fix a short term failure.

3. Parlays ✖️

This one is going to be a tough hurdle for a bunch of people to get over, and it’s a rule I struggle to follow myself. Parlays are, in terms of expected return, a very bad idea. And that sucks, because there’s nothing more exciting than the idea that you could go on a heater and hit a 12 game Hail Mary to win 100k. But, in terms of high quality betting, it’s mostly just a good way to ensure that you’re giving the book money. Do I think people should never make parlays? No, because sports gambling is still supposed to be fun. Every once in a while make a hero play with a bunch of games you like on a big NFL weekend or the first round of March Madness. But treat it like a trip to the movie theatre, not an investment. Because you’ll usually walk away holding less money than you started with.

4. Spreading Yourself Too Thin 🧈

This is, conveniently, somewhat connected to the previous point. It is, statistically speaking, very unlikely that you will find good value or an edge in every single damn game on the slate. Even if that were the case, there will still be some bets you like better than others. Basically, pick the ones where you see more value and bet them heavier than the ones with less value, because the wider the net you cast the more likely you’ll regress towards the median. Does it backfire sometimes? Sure, you’ll have days where your best bets miss and your coin flip picks hit, and you’ll call yourself a dumbass for not seeing it. But hindsight is a bitch (not even a good looking one) and always 20/20, so its no use beating yourself up after the fact. Take bigger shots where you have more value rather than trying to bite off too much and losing the edge you gained from your research and insight.

5. Abandoning Ship 🚢

This is where we start to get into the high quality betting strategies and how to use them effectively. One thing that I’ve found most successful bettors do is plan, meaning they know exactly where their money is going long before game time. For example, on any given NFL Sunday a smart bettor will have looked at the board early in the week, and know which lines or bets they want to put their money on before Sunday morning. It’s a great idea in theory, but it also can be hard to resist the temptation of deviating from those plans. You might be up a bunch early in the day and think you can push for an even bigger payout because you’re running hot, or you might be down and looking to pull yourself out of a deficit (see above, dummy). The problem is, nothing about your analysis of the games has changed in that time, and you picked certain games to bet and others to leave alone for a reason. Sticking to the original strategy will help avoid impulsive or emotional bets that don’t fit into a long term plan, since those bad bets are usually closer to picking a color on the roulette wheel than they are a smart investment.

6. The Timing isn’t Right 🕑

If you want to be up there with the best in the gambling world, you need to have an understanding of line movement. In fact, some of the best gamblers can even use large bankrolls to move lines to their advantage (but that’s a lesson for after you start rounding your money at the 10k level, something I’m not exactly versed in). More important for our purposes is the reality that lines move, and it makes a huge difference when you get in on a bet. Matt Landes, a fellow Dimers content creator and friend of the show, explained the idea better than I ever could and it stuck with me; the margins for value in sports gambling are small, and if you get in after the line has already moved there’s a good chance that that value is already gone. Sure, a half point line shift or a couple of points on the total might not seem like a huge deal, and a lot of the time the final result doesn’t fall close enough to matter. But, while it might not always have an impact, there are games or bets when it sure as hell does and you’ll kick yourself if you stepped in too late and lost (or you might even be able to use over-adjustments to your advantage). Don’t ignore important information that’s readily available, even if it’s just a sanity check before you place your wager.

7. The Money isn’t Right 🏦

This one is hands down the hardest to come to grips with. Hell, it drives me fucking crazy when I have to do it, but it’s a reality of gambling. Sometimes, the potential payout just isn’t worth the risk. I find this issue pops up more in certain sports (soccer is a prime example) or certain types of bets (think money lines or props), but its always something to have in the back of your mind. Basically, you have to be able to effectively gauge an entirely new variable; what are the actual odds that you’re right. The trick is to avoid the highlight monster we discussed before, which makes us look at sports gambling in terms of right or wrong. While there’s always a “right answer,” sports gambling isn’t a math problem where you can figure that answer out if you crunch the numbers long enough. There’s a chance things turn out one way, and a chance that things turn out the other, and you need to decide whether the likelihood of the outcome you prefer pays out high enough for that risk. If not, you should walk away. That decision is often a painful one, especially if you pass and end up being right. But, over the long term, being able to see where the danger is, and making sure you get paid above your risk, is critical to successful gambling. Taking chances where the money isn’t good enough will lead to losses, and walking away will help you avoid bad traps. Is it easy to know what those situations are? Absolutely fucking not, and this is a constant battle that even the best gamblers lose to sometimes. But it’s a crucial skill and necessary to reach the highest levels of the high stakes sports gambling world.

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