Betting lessons: Being Sensible About Your Betting

One of the first and most important lessons to learn as a bettor is that there is more to betting than just simply picking winners. Of course, without picking winners you will ultimately lose money, but the second part, which is just as important, is being able to take a sensible approach and bet sensibly at all times.

There are many punters out there who pick regular winners, but their profit does not show that because they do not approach things in a sensible manner. These people will get the taste of success, and then up stakes straight after, only to back losers with more cash, and ultimately that will wipe out the profit they made. Having two winners from four selections would normally be seen as good betting, but if you have regular stakes on your two winners and then up your stakes on the last two selections because you have won, that is not good betting.

When choosing what stakes to bet with, it is vital that you have a plan you are happy with, you stick to the plan and you do not change, based on recent wins or losses. Betting is a long game, and a long-term approach is required to get the most from your betting, do not focus and make changes on recent short-term events. The two common approaches to betting stakes are to bet everything at level stakes, or to use a point system where you rate bets.

Table of Contents

1 Choosing a Staking Plan
2 When to Bet and When to Walk Away
3 Betting is Personal
4 Best Bookmaker in 2024
- 4.1 22Bet (full review)
- 4.2 Rating

Choosing a Staking Plan

Betting at level stakes is the easiest and simplest way of working things out, and something everyone can adopt straight away. Using this method, you have a stake amount per bet and you will always place this amount on the bet, regardless of how strongly you fancy the selection to win, and regardless of the price of the selection.

Using a points system is a little more complicated, but something that most people should be able to adopt. When you bet in this way you are rating every bet you place, based on the chances of the selection winning and the price that it is available at. The outsiders that are a big price and which you think have a small chance of winning would be one point bets, standard bets would be two point bets and if you strongly fancy a selection it would be a three-point bet. The majority of people using this system stick to three points otherwise it gets very complicated.

After this you need to decide what monetary value one point has, and then you can work out how much to stake based on the points you allocate to each bet. Just remember that if you strongly fancy a selection you will be placing three points on it, so make sure three points is not too much money for you to be spending on one selection.

To successfully use this method you have to have betting knowledge, which you do not really need to have for the first. However, if you can get this method to work for you and you correctly place the right amount of points on each bet then you are sure to see your betting become more uniformed and more profitable. Getting the right staking plan in place is just as important as picking out a number of winners, and although you do need winners to be a success, you also need a plan of action to make success happen, and that includes playing the right stakes.

When to Bet and When to Walk Away

One of the key areas when it comes to being sensible around betting is knowing when to bet on a selection, and when to walk away and leave it. You do not have to place a bet on every single selection that you fancy. There are many reasons to not back something. Many people place too many bets, and the majority of the time that comes from being worried they will miss out on a winner. The fact is, you will miss out on winners, but you will also miss out on losers by taking a stronger approach, and that is the key thing to remember.

There is nothing wrong with not placing a bet on a selection you have picked out, you may feel the selection is not strong enough to warrant money placing on it, or simply that the price is not good enough. This selective type of betting will work in the long run if you are good at being selective, and you make the correct decisions that aren’t focused on profit and fear of missing out. Try to remember that betting is a long-term strategy and that you will from time to time miss out on winners you fancy. However, if you pick the right ones to leave out, you will miss out on a lot more losers than winners, and that will mean more profit and less losing bets in the long run.

Betting is Personal

Betting is something that is very personal, and only you can make the right decisions about your betting. Take time to look at how you bet at the moment, and look through the things here to see if any of them can be easily implemented into your strategy. While not everything will work for you, some things will and anything that you can add to your betting approach will make you a better and more profitable bettor.

Look at the stakes you use, the way you bet and be looking for ways to improve yourself. Try and find a method that works for you, this may not happen straight away and may need tweaking, but when you do find it, you will know straight away because you will see your profit rise. Trial and error is not always the way forward, but in this case, testing out different methods until you find one that works is certainly something you should be looking to do.