One of the biggest challenges for football bettors is the volume of NFL and college games they have to deal with on Saturdays and Sundays during the regular season if they bet on both. On a busy weekend there are more than 50 football games on Saturday and 16 on Sunday. That’s far more games than even the most impressive sports handicapper can properly deal with. People are always tempted to do too much and handicap too many games. That can mean that they aren’t as prepared as they could be for each game. That can get expensive. Here are six tips to help you deal with the weekend’s avalanche of games:
Do as much as you can in advance – The biggest mistake people make is trying to leave too much until Saturday and Sunday. By the time those days roll around you are going to be overwhelmed with the pressure of oncoming kickoffs, the last minute news and opinions, and the temptation to watch every game you can. It’s too much to handle if you want to be sure to make good sports betting decisions. The more handicapping you can have done before the weekend starts the better off you are. If you handicap games during the week you can do so without pressure and you can afford to spend more time per game and do things properly.
Plan your budget in advance – With so many football games to deal with it can be very easy to wind up spending far more money than you intended to. You can easily be distracted by the prospect of the next game, the next angle, or the next opportunity. Suddenly you have made a whole pile of bets, and you have a chance to blow up your whole bankroll in one weekend if things don’t go well. It’s very important that you decide in advance how much you are willing to bet and what unit size you are going to use to bet it. Then you have to have the self-discipline to stick to that budget regardless of what happens. The biggest difference between smart, successful football bettors and gamblers is that smart bettors know how to manage – and keep – their money. Ultimately, you don’t stand a chance of making any money if you don’t have any money left to bet.
Don’t try to do it all – You might feel like you want to bet every game, or bet every game in a specific conference or division. Successful sports bettors know that they can’t do that. Betting on football is all about finding value. You have to be able to spot the games that have value, and to resist the temptation to bet on games that don’t have any value. It doesn’t matter what your opinion is about who will win or lose a particular game. It only matters if the risk involved in your opinion comes with enough potential reward to make it worthwhile.
Quickly eliminate games that aren’t interesting – In order to deal with the huge number of games that are available to choose from you have to be able to quickly eliminate the games that aren’t interesting or potentially profitable to you. How you do that will depend on your betting style and technique. What you need to remember, though, is that there are a lot of games that just aren’t going to work for you because of their particular style of play, the odds, and the matchups and how they compare to your preferences and the situations that are most profitable for you. The faster a football handicapper can recognize those games and discard them the faster they can start to look at the games that might have some potential for success.
Don’t try to dig yourself out of a hole – If things go poorly early on then you could find yourself in a big hole before Saturday is in the books. The worst possible thing a handicapper can do is to start to increase your bet size and take extra risks in order to recoup your losses and turn the weekend into a winner. Bars at casinos are full of losers with stories to tell about how they chased their losses and wound up broke. Don’t be one of those losers. It’s crucial to remember that being a winning bettor is all about the long term and not the short term. You’re going to have weekends where you are a loser, but if you have things figured out then over the long term you’ll get back those losses and more.
Stick with what you know best – With so many games to choose from there are going to be plenty of games for you regardless of what you like to bet. If you have betting for a while then you know that there are some types of games and bets that you are very successful with, and others that just don’t work for you. If your record keeping is good enough then you can easily figure out which situations are which. Because there are so many football games and so many potential opportunities there is no reason for you to be betting games that differ from what you do best. The choosy sports handicappers are ultimately going to be the successful ones.
