Sports Betting 101 | Stop Trying To Win Bets
Back again with Week 2 of our new Gambling Blog here on Irish Sports Daily.
Check out Week 1’s column HERE
This is not a Pick Column meant to be an invitation to tail any of these plays. In fact, you probably shouldn’t tail these. And this is DEFINITELY NOT financial advice.
If the plays listed here were any good when these bets were placed, the number and/or price should have moved by now and the bet is probably no longer good at that new number or price.
If you are still able to find the same bet at the same price when you’re reading this, that’s a sign it may not have been a good bet in the first place.
Then why even write this column?
My hope is to offer some insight into the processes that led to these picks, which could help you find profitable picks of your own.
Positive EV Betting is a strategy that involves calculating the Fair Odds for any given game or prop and then finding prices that are more advantageous than those Fair Odds.
Each week, I’ll share some of the +EV plays that I’m on and then add some basic insight that should be helpful to sports bettors.
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LAST WEEK’S PLAYS (3-4, +$18)
| Risk | Play | Bet Odds | Fair Odds | W/L | Result |
| $50 | UTEP-Colorado St. 1H Under 25.5 | -102 | -110 | W | +$49 |
| $50 | -102 | -110 | L | -$50 | |
| $50 | +140 | +127 | L | -$50 | |
| $30 | Michigan 1Q Moneyline | +154 | +145 | W | +$46 |
| $25 | +280 | +259 | L | -$25 | |
| $25 | +175 | +165 | L | -$25 | |
| $25 | NY Giants Moneyline | +290 | +269 | W | +$73 |
| TOTAL | +$18 |
THIS WEEK’S PLAYS
| Risk | Play | Bet Odds | Fair Odds |
| $70 | Tusla-N. Texas 1Q Over 14.5 | +116 | +103 |
| $70 | WKU-BC Over 52.5 | -106 | -118 |
| $65 | Texas St-Sam Houston St. Over 55.5 | +100 | -111 |
| $55 | San Diego St. 1Q Moneyline | +112 | +102 |
| $35 | Stanford 1Q Moneyline | +500 | +427 |
| $30 | BYU 1st Half -0.5 | +155 | +145 |
| $30 | Kentucky 1Q Moneyline | +340 | +308 |
| $15 | South Alabama Moneyline | +400 | +381 |
The above bets found using DawBets
STOP TRYING TO WIN BETS
There was a period when I prioritized being able to sleep easy at night over all else when making bets.
I didn’t know it at the time, but fortunately I would soon realize this was a sign of putting more money at risk than I should have.
After dramatically sizing down my bets to the point where wins and losses didn’t affect my mood once the game was finished, I learned another valuable lesson.
Making picks you can live with at the end of the each day - like blindly backing Tom Brady or Patrick Mahomes - may seem like a sound strategy and even in a loss, there is some comfort in knowing you kept it simple. But as we talked about in last week’s installment, The Price Has To Be Right.
OK, whatever. How are you supposed to win money if you’re not focused on winning bets?
Well, it’s not that you shouldn’t try to win bets, but winning bets shouldn’t be your primary motive when sports gambling.
Your primary focus should be on winning money.
Let’s say we take the ISD private jet down to The Grove this morning to catch the first quarter of Kentucky at Ole Miss today. We want to get down a little action before we board the PJ back to South Bend for the Irish’s kickoff against Louisville at 3:30.
We want to back the Wildcats against the Rebels. We’re debating whether we take Kentucky +6.5 (-115) in the first quarter or if we should take the riskier play of the Wildcats winning the first quarter outright at +340.
The Fair Odds of Kentucky +6.5 in the first quarter are +100, so we’ll have about a 50/50 chance of winning.
Meanwhile, we determine the Fair Odds of Kentucky actually winning the first quarter to be +308, meaning the Wildcats only have 24.5 percent of cashing that for us.
If our primary goal is to be able to high-five a victory as we float back to the Midwest, then we should absolutely take the points.
But if we’re going to be betting often and our primary goal is to make money in the long run, not win bets, we should take the value with the Wildcats to win outright.
With the Moneyline, we’re getting a better price (+340) than the Fair Odds (+308). While the Wildcats are obviously more likely to cover the spread than win the quarter outright, our -115 price is nowhere near the Fair Odds of +100.
Here’s a simpler example.
Imagine you have two choices to bet $10
- Flip a coin at -105 odds
- Roll a die at +600 odds
Now, imagine we do each 3,000 times
| Win | Loss | Profit | Loss | Net | |
| Flipping Coin | 1500 | 1500 | $15,000 | ($15,750) | ($750) |
| Rolling Die | 500 | 2500 | $30,000 | ($25,000) | $5,000 |
You may end up with 1,000 more fist pumps than me, but I’ll roll that die every time and walk away with the profit despite losing 83.3 percent of my bets.
Playing it safe can actually be quite risky and the most important thing is making sure the price is right.
DawBets is a platform that helps you identify Fair Odds and bets that are being offered at better than Fair Odds at any given time. You can learn more about DawBets and how it can help you become a profitable bettor here.
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