Developing A Personal Betting Strategy

How to define, establish and trust your own process

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“Trust the process”. You’ve heard that phrase before, right? Well, it applies to your individual betting success as well. Depending on your personality, betting frequency, unit size and income, you must establish and stick to your own strategy, but whatever it is, our full suite of tools here at BetQL will undoubtedly help you make the most educated, data-backed decisions possible. 

Let’s explore some distinct types of betting strategies. Even if you don’t  fall into every category, you can likely find a way to resonate with at least one of them. To be clear, we are not recommending a particular style (except the last one), but are simply making you aware of what bettors typically do. 

Bet On One Team

It’s difficult to be an expert on an entire sport or league. However, with time and effort, becoming an expert of an individual team is an attainable and realistic premise. An inside-and-out knowledge of a team’s personnel can be helpful: roster (starters, reserves), tendencies, injuries, and coaching staff. Staying on top of lineup changes, scheme changes, recent news, transactions and more is much more doable if you’re focusing on one squad. While the clear issue with this method is bias (since team-specific bettors tend to support their favorite teams), there can also be a benefit to this strategy if you can accurately evaluate a matchup without letting fandom get in the way. 

Specialize In One Sport

The same idea applies as the one-team focus. Want to only bet NFL games? Go for it, but be sure you familiarize yourself with all of the nuances involved with betting on football. Want to be the world’s best NHL over/under bettor? How about sticking to NCAA Football moneylines? Whatever you think you can find an edge in and set clear goals is what you should bet on.

Have Restraint And Always Bet One Unit

The general rule of thumb is to bet somewhere between 1-5% of your bankroll on each wager you make and we recommend that you keep this percentage consistent. This is called your “unit size”, or the size or your bets. Conservative bettors tend to stay at 1-2% of their bankrolls while more aggressive bettors typically range from 3-5%. However, since establishing success in the betting world is a slow grind, many successful bettors wager just 1% of their bankroll on every bet. That way, you can be disciplined and establish your own personal strategy, which leads to the next section. 

While there will undoubtedly be certain bets you want to make more than others, it’s recommended not to deviate too far off of your unit size. For example, if you’re checking out the lines for tonight’s games and notice that Team A’s odds are wildly different from where you thought they’d be, you can consider making it a two-unit bet. But, it’s important to not get too emotional and make the aforementioned wager a four or five unit bet if you’re a conservative bettor. Remember that sportsbooks want even action on both sides of every bet they post. Therefore, when something looks “too good to be true”, it usually is. 

Use Relevant Betting Trends

Utilizing available betting trends and data can also be extremely beneficial. Does it help to know that a team has been involved in five-straight games in which the over won? Yes, of course it does. Does it help to realize that a team beat the spread as an underdog eight-straight times? Yep. How about that one team who failed to cover in 12 of their last 15 games at home? Absolutely. We feature those powerful trends for every game on our platform and they’re accessible to you with a simple click. Whether or not you solely use them to make bets is up to you, but if you’re looking for confirmation (or to be talked out) of a particular bet, the data is there for you to consume.

Fade The Public 

There’s no doubt that betting with the public can lead to short-term success. However, it’s not a winning long-term strategy. Remember, sportsbooks are profitable for a reason and understand that the public leans towards favorites, leans towards overs and reacts to breaking news in today’s social media age. You know those lines that look too good to be true? They probably are. If it was as simple as betting with the majority, we’d see a lot of millionaires cashing all over the sports betting world. Betting against the public shouldn’t be a strategy employed on every single wager, but rather in pick-and-choose situations. After all, oddsmakers are pretty damn accurate across the industry. However, there are times to take advantage of bad point spreads, over-adjustments or under-adjustments made by oddsmakers. That’s where we come in. 

Leverage Advanced Data 

In addition to best bets from our algorithm, we also equip bettors with public data, sharp data, powerful betting trends and daily model results. Whether you’re subscribed to a one-sport (Premium), two-sport (Pro) or all-sport (VIP/Sharp) package, you’ll instantly arm yourself with the industry’s best suite of tools.