Everyone wants to know the secret to being a winning sports gambler. But there's not a single secret that no one is telling you about.
Many a man has gambled in his day, whether with real money or cookies. But Christatos Aristad was able to parlay his talents in gambling into a real profession, a lucrative one at that. While some may see professional gamblers as a bit shady, Mr. Aristad is of an older school of gambler, and is the consummate gentleman. Nov 13, 2018 As sports betting continues to roll out to more states, with so much at stake, expect stricter, clearly defined, and more public player policy from all professional leagues. It's in the best interest of the leagues, players, and bettors. Anyone serious about betting knows that it takes time and dedication to become a professional bettor. Building expert knowledge of a sport and gathering enough funds to invest in betting full-time is merely the starting point of making a career out of beating the bookmakers. 'Sports gambling is fun,' Korem tells The Post. 'It's exciting and an adrenaline rush.' As to what drew him to make the docuseries, he says, 'The legalization of sports betting will.
However, there are several tricks that professional gamblers use. Here's a list of seven tricks that sports betting professional gamblers use for long term profits.
All of these sports betting tricks work together. While you can start with one or two of them; eventually you need to learn how to use all seven of them. The good news is when you get the most important one down, about value, the rest of them fall into place easily.
1 – Know How to Get Big Money in Play
Most gamblers who bet on sports never think about what they would need to do in order to get large bets down. Yet many of these same gamblers dream of betting on sports full time and making a good living at it.
And while few people may ever earn as much money gambling from sports as Walters, he is proof you can make millions betting on sports. Of course, there's no denying that plenty of gamblers lose their money. It's a high risk game, after all. But what would it take to become a professional sports bettor?
If you're good enough to make a 1% profit on your bets over the course of a year, you have to get $10,000,000 in play over the course of the year to make $100,000. And a 1% profit margin is not something to take lightly. Many professional sports gamblers don't do this well.
Can you get $1,000,000 down in bets every month? This is over $33,000 on average every day. And not only do you need to get this much money in play, you have to find enough games that offer value to do it on.
2 – Use Systems and Their Eyes
I'd love to have a complete sports betting system that uses statistics to produce winning bets. And I'm sure you'd like to have one as well.
While it's possible that systems exist that can do this with no human interaction; I've yet to find one. I do use systems to help when I handicap sporting events, but the truth is that I still have to adjust what the systems spit out based on what I know and see from watching games.
Winning sports gamblers use a combination of systems and their eyes and brains to make winning wagers. You should build systems that use statistics and results to help you find games and lines that offer value, but you also need to watch games and use what you see to help you make more profitable decisions.
3 – Always Use the Lines for Profits
Consider two different betting lines on an NFL game offered at two different sportsbooks:
- New York Jets +2 ½
- New York Giants -2 ½
And
Professional sports bettors look for lines that are different at different sportsbooks. When they find different lines it gives them more opportunities to make a profit. One thing that they do sometimes is bet both sides of a game. I cover this in another section on this page.
You don't really find value just because you find two different lines. But different lines do improve your chance of winning after you evaluate the game.
Using the game with the lines listed above, if you handicap the game and decide the Jets are going to win, you're going to bet on the line where you get 3 ½ points.
On the other hand, if you handicap the game and decide the Giants should win by six, you're going to bet on the Giants where you give 2 ½ points.
A single point difference in the lines might not look like a big difference, but it can be the difference between winning and losing. Every single time you can make a bet with a better line it increases your long term profits.
Professional sports gamblers understand the long term power of finding and exploiting the best lines. You need to start doing the same thing before you make another wager.
4 – The Only Thing Is Value
Professional sports gamblers focus 100% on value. Nothing else matters. If you find value you make a bet. If you don't find value you don't place a bet. It's as simple as that.
Yet, most sports gamblers let all kinds of other things influence how they decide to make wagers. Are you focusing 100% on value, or are you letting anything else influence your betting decisions?
Betting on sports as a professional gambler is a business. If you're not treating your sports betting activities like a business, then you're not going to be a long term winner. A business runs based on profits. Nothing else matters.
Make a decision right now to never place a sports bet if you can't find value.
Value is a combination of effective handicapping and lines. You don't know if a game and line offers value until you handicap the game. Once you handicap the game and predict the outcome you compare your prediction to the available lines. Only then can you see if a game offers any type of value.
5 – Manage Their Bankroll
Do you have a separate bankroll for all of your sports bets or do you use your everyday money in your pocket or bank account to place bets?
Remember in the last section you learned that if you're not treating your sports betting like a business that you're going to have a hard time making a long term profit? Part of running your sports betting activities like a business is using a dedicated bankroll.
And the other thing you must do is manage your bankroll effectively. You need to know how much you can bet on each game to maximize your wins while making sure you don't bet too much so when you have a losing streak that it hurts your bankroll too much.
The best situation is to have a large enough bankroll so you can bet the maximum amount of money on every game where you have value. But this isn't realistic for most sports gamblers, so you have to learn how to manage the bankroll you do have available for maximum profits.
6 – Have No Loyalty
This is much like the section about the only thing being value, but this is such a large hole in most sports gambler's betting activity that I felt the need to give it a section. If you want to be a winning sports gambler you can't have any loyalty.
I don't mean that you can't have any loyalty to your friends and family. What I mean is that you can't let anything like loyalty stand between you and making profitable wagers.
You probably started betting on sports because you're a fan of a team. It's fine to bet on your favorite team when you're a fan, but you can't do it when you start treating your sports betting activities like a business.
Remember, the only thing that matters is value as a sports bettor. It doesn't matter how much you like a team or how much you want to support them; if there's no value you have no business betting on them.
Sports Gambling As A Profession Job
7 – Play Both Sides When Appropriate
When you're looking for value, sometimes you can find it on both sides of the same game. One common way that this happens is when you make an early week bet on an NFL game and then something changes during the week and you place a bet with value on the other side.
Another situation that comes up from time to time when looking at sports lines is like the example I used in an earlier section on this page. You could bet on the Giants and give 2 ½ points and bet on the Jets and get 3 ½ points and win both sides of the game if the Giants win by 3.
You can also occasionally find arbitrage opportunities where you lock in a guaranteed profit using different sportsbooks, but this is a challenging way to bet on sports.
Conclusion
The number one thing you need to know about the tricks that professional gamblers use when they bet on sports is that value is everything and the only thing. Once you learn to focus 100% on value, every other trick on this page is easier to use and more effective.
Professional sports gamblers know where to find the best lines, how to use lines to increase their profits, how to manage their bankroll, use systems and their eyes, and know how to get as much money in action as they need to.
Nothing about becoming a winning sports gambler is easy, but when you use the tricks on this page you have a simple path to long term sports gambling profits.
If you feel like your life is in dire need of a constant, mentally exhausting challenge, perhaps betting sports professionally will satisfy your needs. First, you need to understand a few numbers. One, the top sports bettors in the world don't win even 60% of the time. They top out around 58 or 59. So right off the bat, you already know that this is going to incur quite a bit of failure, and failure leads to stress. Loss of money leads to stress. In this case, one happens because of the other. It cannot be emphasized enough that this is a very, very stressful job. Betting sports full time is not as easy, fun, or glamorous as it may seem.
Work Required and Success Rates
The standard vig (fee for the house booking your action) is 10% of whatever you bet. You must bet $110 to win $100, $220 to win $200, and so on. If you win 52.4% of the time, you are something that around 97% of sports bettors are not and that is a long term winner. It will take you 10,000 bets of $110 to win $400 at a success rate of 52.4%. Not exactly golden, but hey, it is better than being down $200,000 and losing your job because of it. There are too many stories that end up this way. So how much do you want to make? If you want to make $40,000, you'll have to make 1,000 bets a year, averaging $110,000 a bet, and succeed 52.4% of the time. You don't want to be risking more than 2-3% of your bankroll on each bet. And that's playing it hard.
Really, 1% is the safe way to go. But even if you do 3% each bet, you still need over $3.3 million to do this prudently. Yes I'm obviously taking this to quite an extreme. But it's important, so let's recap. If you want to make $40,000 a year, you need to do something that 97% of the people trying, can't, and you must do it 1,000 times a year, and you must risk $110,000 every time. That is nearly 2.75 bets a day every day. That means you have to pretty much be an expert in every sport. May I remind you that this is if you are exclusively playing the games where the vig is -110. If you're ever laying more or less than -110, then this will affect how often you need to succeed.
55% seems to be the going win rate that will put you in the clear to make money you can live off of. We were talking millions before as a sufficient bankroll on the extreme sides, but you are going to need a lot of money either way. I would say at least $100,000. You are going to have to be able to weather the storm for a lot of failure. You are too likely to just go broke if you can't cover a long stretch of losing that wasn't necessarily your fault. Even if you lower your bet sizes, you run the risk of not being able to win enough to live off of even if you're winning. If you had $220,000 and won 55% of the time placing 300 bets a year of $2,200, you will win $33,000, or about $635 a week. The $2,200 bet is considered 1 unit of your bankroll. $635 is less than 29% of what you're risking on each individual bet. And your net goal per week should be 1 unit.
It takes many hours of regular research, to find where edges possibly exist. I just told you that 52.4% is what you need to do to barely break above even. What happens if you bet on a game where the true odds were one team was going to win 51% of the time and the other was 49%? That means long term, this is a losing play. The sportsbooks make their lines so that this is how things will result as often as they can. But they are human so they are not perfect, that is why edges exist.
There are so many different elements to be aware of. Things like who is injured, what the weather is like, how the side you like has been doing lately against what schedule don't even scratch the surface of the kinds of intricate and very mathematically complex things you need to always be researching. The said bits of information make up a couple grains of sand on the bench in the sports handicapping scene. Sports betting is a moving target of a game of being able to understand which elements are relevant and it varies on a game by game basis. It is never the same thing over and over again. How could it be? Almost everybody is losing!
Illusions
I know it must sound like I'm completely against sports betting and presenting arguments as to why you shouldn't do it, but the truth is I'm just talking about what actually goes on. If you think you can take on all of these things and still prevail, go for it. But there are reasons barely anyone can turn even the slightest profit at it. There are hazards everywhere. It's not just the vig you have to overcome.
One hazard is just being able to ignore your passion to watch. People really love sports. They love it so much it gives them false beliefs they are able to predict the outcome, and just love to have action at all. How much you are entertained by a game has nothing to do with matching up what will happen with the spread, and if it's even worth the payout. You may think you really see what's going on, but how can you know you do? You are already aware that if hardly anyone is winning, then how can sports betting be as easy as it seems? It takes a lot of success over a large sample of time to determine you have in fact developed the ability to find edges.
Winning is such a monstrous thrill. You feel the emotions with the players and anyone else who has been sweating it out with you. You can get a little heater going and win 7 or 8 bets in a row. You think, okay I got this. Except that is almost like saying if you successfully ran a red light without getting pulled over a bunch of times in a row, then you are now a wizard on knowing which red lights to run and which ones to stop at. Betting sports blindly is like trying to run a red light. You are not aware of the oncoming traffic from the left or the right. You are not aware if a cop is nearby watching. This is simply an ill-advised unsafe decision. That's why we have red lights in the first place, to protect us from getting hurt. That's why you use caution and put lots of time and thought into each bet, to protect yourself from burning money.
Sports Gambling Professionally
It is a hidden illusion for many bettors that you have put your work in, but really you have not. You went into the sportsbook and saw a line that looked appealing to you, for whatever reason. You text your friend you like it. He says he likes it too. You go to the window and bet. If it was that easy, why is it that 97% of the bettors lose? Many bets take place just like this example.
Maybe you did put in a lot of research. What if it was the wrong research and you lose anyway? People love to rationalize and say they were unlucky. Doesn't matter if it's because they have a problem or if it is just their ego insisting they really knew what they were doing. Either way it makes things very easy to continue. After all, you know that even the top bettors are going to have to incur a losing. You convince yourself it is too hard to see if you're making inaccurate picks, or if you really are just getting unlucky. These illusions keeps people going for a long time. Sooner or later, they just have to, and you finally realize it was them all along.
Then there's The Sure Thing. I capitalized it because people think this is also a possibility. A lock. A can't miss. The thing about professional or college sports is the difference between the two teams is so small. It is very underrated as to how small it is. If you are watching the best team in the NFL play the worst team, you feel like there's no way they can lose. If the superior team plays the way they can play football, yeah they'll probably win a huge percentage of the time. What if they play badly? If you play badly against another team full of freak athletes, all of whom are also professional football players, the supposed dominant team is at a high risk of getting beat. You will not just show up and win because you are better. You still have to do your job right, and not everybody always does this. You can't completely prevent the other team from just having a great game either. That happens too. That is why there is upsets. And that is why when you play the moneyline in games that have a huge favorite, you are going to have to lay a lot of odds on them just to be the victor.
Sports Gambling As A Profession As A
I'd love to have a complete sports betting system that uses statistics to produce winning bets. And I'm sure you'd like to have one as well.
While it's possible that systems exist that can do this with no human interaction; I've yet to find one. I do use systems to help when I handicap sporting events, but the truth is that I still have to adjust what the systems spit out based on what I know and see from watching games.
Winning sports gamblers use a combination of systems and their eyes and brains to make winning wagers. You should build systems that use statistics and results to help you find games and lines that offer value, but you also need to watch games and use what you see to help you make more profitable decisions.
3 – Always Use the Lines for Profits
Consider two different betting lines on an NFL game offered at two different sportsbooks:
- New York Jets +2 ½
- New York Giants -2 ½
And
Professional sports bettors look for lines that are different at different sportsbooks. When they find different lines it gives them more opportunities to make a profit. One thing that they do sometimes is bet both sides of a game. I cover this in another section on this page.
You don't really find value just because you find two different lines. But different lines do improve your chance of winning after you evaluate the game.
Using the game with the lines listed above, if you handicap the game and decide the Jets are going to win, you're going to bet on the line where you get 3 ½ points.
On the other hand, if you handicap the game and decide the Giants should win by six, you're going to bet on the Giants where you give 2 ½ points.
A single point difference in the lines might not look like a big difference, but it can be the difference between winning and losing. Every single time you can make a bet with a better line it increases your long term profits.
Professional sports gamblers understand the long term power of finding and exploiting the best lines. You need to start doing the same thing before you make another wager.
4 – The Only Thing Is Value
Professional sports gamblers focus 100% on value. Nothing else matters. If you find value you make a bet. If you don't find value you don't place a bet. It's as simple as that.
Yet, most sports gamblers let all kinds of other things influence how they decide to make wagers. Are you focusing 100% on value, or are you letting anything else influence your betting decisions?
Betting on sports as a professional gambler is a business. If you're not treating your sports betting activities like a business, then you're not going to be a long term winner. A business runs based on profits. Nothing else matters.
Make a decision right now to never place a sports bet if you can't find value.
Value is a combination of effective handicapping and lines. You don't know if a game and line offers value until you handicap the game. Once you handicap the game and predict the outcome you compare your prediction to the available lines. Only then can you see if a game offers any type of value.
5 – Manage Their Bankroll
Do you have a separate bankroll for all of your sports bets or do you use your everyday money in your pocket or bank account to place bets?
Remember in the last section you learned that if you're not treating your sports betting like a business that you're going to have a hard time making a long term profit? Part of running your sports betting activities like a business is using a dedicated bankroll.
And the other thing you must do is manage your bankroll effectively. You need to know how much you can bet on each game to maximize your wins while making sure you don't bet too much so when you have a losing streak that it hurts your bankroll too much.
The best situation is to have a large enough bankroll so you can bet the maximum amount of money on every game where you have value. But this isn't realistic for most sports gamblers, so you have to learn how to manage the bankroll you do have available for maximum profits.
6 – Have No Loyalty
This is much like the section about the only thing being value, but this is such a large hole in most sports gambler's betting activity that I felt the need to give it a section. If you want to be a winning sports gambler you can't have any loyalty.
I don't mean that you can't have any loyalty to your friends and family. What I mean is that you can't let anything like loyalty stand between you and making profitable wagers.
You probably started betting on sports because you're a fan of a team. It's fine to bet on your favorite team when you're a fan, but you can't do it when you start treating your sports betting activities like a business.
Remember, the only thing that matters is value as a sports bettor. It doesn't matter how much you like a team or how much you want to support them; if there's no value you have no business betting on them.
Sports Gambling As A Profession Job
7 – Play Both Sides When Appropriate
When you're looking for value, sometimes you can find it on both sides of the same game. One common way that this happens is when you make an early week bet on an NFL game and then something changes during the week and you place a bet with value on the other side.
Another situation that comes up from time to time when looking at sports lines is like the example I used in an earlier section on this page. You could bet on the Giants and give 2 ½ points and bet on the Jets and get 3 ½ points and win both sides of the game if the Giants win by 3.
You can also occasionally find arbitrage opportunities where you lock in a guaranteed profit using different sportsbooks, but this is a challenging way to bet on sports.
Conclusion
The number one thing you need to know about the tricks that professional gamblers use when they bet on sports is that value is everything and the only thing. Once you learn to focus 100% on value, every other trick on this page is easier to use and more effective.
Professional sports gamblers know where to find the best lines, how to use lines to increase their profits, how to manage their bankroll, use systems and their eyes, and know how to get as much money in action as they need to.
Nothing about becoming a winning sports gambler is easy, but when you use the tricks on this page you have a simple path to long term sports gambling profits.
If you feel like your life is in dire need of a constant, mentally exhausting challenge, perhaps betting sports professionally will satisfy your needs. First, you need to understand a few numbers. One, the top sports bettors in the world don't win even 60% of the time. They top out around 58 or 59. So right off the bat, you already know that this is going to incur quite a bit of failure, and failure leads to stress. Loss of money leads to stress. In this case, one happens because of the other. It cannot be emphasized enough that this is a very, very stressful job. Betting sports full time is not as easy, fun, or glamorous as it may seem.
Work Required and Success Rates
The standard vig (fee for the house booking your action) is 10% of whatever you bet. You must bet $110 to win $100, $220 to win $200, and so on. If you win 52.4% of the time, you are something that around 97% of sports bettors are not and that is a long term winner. It will take you 10,000 bets of $110 to win $400 at a success rate of 52.4%. Not exactly golden, but hey, it is better than being down $200,000 and losing your job because of it. There are too many stories that end up this way. So how much do you want to make? If you want to make $40,000, you'll have to make 1,000 bets a year, averaging $110,000 a bet, and succeed 52.4% of the time. You don't want to be risking more than 2-3% of your bankroll on each bet. And that's playing it hard.
Really, 1% is the safe way to go. But even if you do 3% each bet, you still need over $3.3 million to do this prudently. Yes I'm obviously taking this to quite an extreme. But it's important, so let's recap. If you want to make $40,000 a year, you need to do something that 97% of the people trying, can't, and you must do it 1,000 times a year, and you must risk $110,000 every time. That is nearly 2.75 bets a day every day. That means you have to pretty much be an expert in every sport. May I remind you that this is if you are exclusively playing the games where the vig is -110. If you're ever laying more or less than -110, then this will affect how often you need to succeed.
55% seems to be the going win rate that will put you in the clear to make money you can live off of. We were talking millions before as a sufficient bankroll on the extreme sides, but you are going to need a lot of money either way. I would say at least $100,000. You are going to have to be able to weather the storm for a lot of failure. You are too likely to just go broke if you can't cover a long stretch of losing that wasn't necessarily your fault. Even if you lower your bet sizes, you run the risk of not being able to win enough to live off of even if you're winning. If you had $220,000 and won 55% of the time placing 300 bets a year of $2,200, you will win $33,000, or about $635 a week. The $2,200 bet is considered 1 unit of your bankroll. $635 is less than 29% of what you're risking on each individual bet. And your net goal per week should be 1 unit.
It takes many hours of regular research, to find where edges possibly exist. I just told you that 52.4% is what you need to do to barely break above even. What happens if you bet on a game where the true odds were one team was going to win 51% of the time and the other was 49%? That means long term, this is a losing play. The sportsbooks make their lines so that this is how things will result as often as they can. But they are human so they are not perfect, that is why edges exist.
There are so many different elements to be aware of. Things like who is injured, what the weather is like, how the side you like has been doing lately against what schedule don't even scratch the surface of the kinds of intricate and very mathematically complex things you need to always be researching. The said bits of information make up a couple grains of sand on the bench in the sports handicapping scene. Sports betting is a moving target of a game of being able to understand which elements are relevant and it varies on a game by game basis. It is never the same thing over and over again. How could it be? Almost everybody is losing!
Illusions
I know it must sound like I'm completely against sports betting and presenting arguments as to why you shouldn't do it, but the truth is I'm just talking about what actually goes on. If you think you can take on all of these things and still prevail, go for it. But there are reasons barely anyone can turn even the slightest profit at it. There are hazards everywhere. It's not just the vig you have to overcome.
One hazard is just being able to ignore your passion to watch. People really love sports. They love it so much it gives them false beliefs they are able to predict the outcome, and just love to have action at all. How much you are entertained by a game has nothing to do with matching up what will happen with the spread, and if it's even worth the payout. You may think you really see what's going on, but how can you know you do? You are already aware that if hardly anyone is winning, then how can sports betting be as easy as it seems? It takes a lot of success over a large sample of time to determine you have in fact developed the ability to find edges.
Winning is such a monstrous thrill. You feel the emotions with the players and anyone else who has been sweating it out with you. You can get a little heater going and win 7 or 8 bets in a row. You think, okay I got this. Except that is almost like saying if you successfully ran a red light without getting pulled over a bunch of times in a row, then you are now a wizard on knowing which red lights to run and which ones to stop at. Betting sports blindly is like trying to run a red light. You are not aware of the oncoming traffic from the left or the right. You are not aware if a cop is nearby watching. This is simply an ill-advised unsafe decision. That's why we have red lights in the first place, to protect us from getting hurt. That's why you use caution and put lots of time and thought into each bet, to protect yourself from burning money.
Sports Gambling Professionally
It is a hidden illusion for many bettors that you have put your work in, but really you have not. You went into the sportsbook and saw a line that looked appealing to you, for whatever reason. You text your friend you like it. He says he likes it too. You go to the window and bet. If it was that easy, why is it that 97% of the bettors lose? Many bets take place just like this example.
Maybe you did put in a lot of research. What if it was the wrong research and you lose anyway? People love to rationalize and say they were unlucky. Doesn't matter if it's because they have a problem or if it is just their ego insisting they really knew what they were doing. Either way it makes things very easy to continue. After all, you know that even the top bettors are going to have to incur a losing. You convince yourself it is too hard to see if you're making inaccurate picks, or if you really are just getting unlucky. These illusions keeps people going for a long time. Sooner or later, they just have to, and you finally realize it was them all along.
Then there's The Sure Thing. I capitalized it because people think this is also a possibility. A lock. A can't miss. The thing about professional or college sports is the difference between the two teams is so small. It is very underrated as to how small it is. If you are watching the best team in the NFL play the worst team, you feel like there's no way they can lose. If the superior team plays the way they can play football, yeah they'll probably win a huge percentage of the time. What if they play badly? If you play badly against another team full of freak athletes, all of whom are also professional football players, the supposed dominant team is at a high risk of getting beat. You will not just show up and win because you are better. You still have to do your job right, and not everybody always does this. You can't completely prevent the other team from just having a great game either. That happens too. That is why there is upsets. And that is why when you play the moneyline in games that have a huge favorite, you are going to have to lay a lot of odds on them just to be the victor.
Sports Gambling As A Profession As A
Betting $800 to win $100 doesn't sound very appealing. When you win 6 of those in a row then finally the upset hits, you'll understand why. The edges are not found easily. Think of it as being a detective. You can't just show up to the crime scene and know who the culprits are based on what's on the surface. You have to look well beneath to understand what's really going on, and it just takes time.
I wish you the best if you take this on as a full time career. I can only imagine it first developed as hey, what could be better than making a living from my hobby? It's doable. People do it. Humans have shown themselves to be capable of nearly anything. Just understand at all times this requires a near infinite amount of discipline and diligence.
Sports Gambling As A Profession Change
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