How much money have you won so far?
Hardly any. I dont bet to make profit or a living. I just do it for fun. Even just putting $5 on a game makes a late night west coast game I dont care about much more exciting to watch. I'm only up $200 over 7 months with a starting bank roll of $500. My goal is to see how long I can last.
Almost all my bets are just $3-10. Most of my bets are just standard $5.
I find NBA is easiest, NHL medium and baseball oddly hard. Many boosted parlay bets in baseball involve a guy getting a HR as one factor. Hard to do. Even Judge or Trout hit a HR only maybe 20-25% of games.
There's one part of me that wants to amp up the bets adding a 0 to my bets where all my bets are $30-100 but I dont want to get out of hand.
There's so many betting options, what I do is the following. It's been a fun time doing it and learning the intricacies of player trends and how betting sites adjust their odds.
1. Team bets
- See the moneyline payout. Some teams get unusually big odds as an underdog. NHL is a sport where the visiting team has a decent chance of winning. Anytime I see a decent team with a +150-250 that hits my radar. It'll be a hockey game where they will be the visiting team playing a good team at home. Its worth it to me to take the underdog at a good odd like that. If the moneylines suck that night I do the next one.........
- Check the pt spread or goals/pts over/under
- In NBA, a team can be up 15 pts in the first half. But pending the starting odds, the site might just adjust the moving in-game pt spread only partially from lets say 4 to 8. Well, the team is at 15. Basketball things can change fast, but if you hurry up and do an in-progress bet, you got a 7 pt buffer to play with. Cross your fingers your team doesn't blow it. As the game progresses, the betting sites will close the gap. So in the 4th quarter, that 15 pt lead will end up being a 14-16 over/under. No buffer
- In NHL, I like to check who the starting goalie is. If possible, bet against teams playing a shit back up. There's many sites. I use this one.
https://www.dailyfaceoff.com/starting-goalies
2. Player bets
- In NBA, look for players who have oddly low pt, rebound, assist, double-double thresholds
- In NHL, looks for players who have a 0.5 pt threshold and bet the over. Only for players with a +100 or better pay out. I look at their stats and if it seems they get a pt every other game or better and they are playing a half crappy team/goalie that game I'll take them. But very important.... a player with 30 pts in 60 games is not every other game. Their game log might show they got some some lucky 2, 3 or even a 4 pt game. So the actual number of instances of getting a point might only be 22 times in 60 games. Which the chances of getting a point is only 35%. So I look for players that have lots of boring 1 pt games which proves they get pts more spread out than in bunches. I'd rather pick a player with 30 pts in 60 games getting at least 1 pt in 28 games, than a similar guy getting pts in 22. Sometimes you'll get a +100 or more payout for guys trending more than 50% which is even better
3. Important tip
- If you see a team with an totally odd awesome payout odd, make sure to check game news. There's a chance a player just got injured and is skipping the game with an afternoon announcement before game time. Betting sites are smart enough to adjust odds fast. I got burned one time doing a bet and lost. You can always pull back your bet before the game starts (and some bets allow partial cash outs during the game), but that bet was one of those locked and loaded bets. So that was on me for jumping the gun. Lesson learned. That was a game Embiid ended up skipping and I missed the afternoon roster update. This just doesn't go for injured players. But any allstar player can have the day off, load management, bereavement leave etc...