As a sports betting fan, the question always looms in the back of the mind: Can I bet sports for a living? What does it take to be a pro sports bettor? Is it even possible?
Keep reading to learn the basic facts about professional sports gamblers, and your chances of becoming one.
The Dream
Imagine sitting around your house, getting paid huge sums of money to watch and bet on sports. That’s what a pro sports bettor does! It’s a real job and a real career possibility.
The truth is that a very small percentage of sports bettor are full-time professionals, and a smaller percentage of them make huge money doing it. These guys know their stuff and live for the excitement and adventure the job offers. No boss to answer to, no possibility of getting fired.
It’s the Life of Rily.
The Reality
Most people who try to be a professional sports gambler will fail. That’s because the majority of sports bettors are amateurs looking for a good time. Of course, most people fail.
Amateurs don’t take the serious technical approach that the business requires to succeed. They are in it for fun, mostly, and if the cash comes their way, great!
Real professionals take a systematic approach to betting. It’s a business to them, and they treat it that way. They don’t bet hunches, they bet statistics.
Be a Pro Sports Bettor
You can’t be a professional roulette player. You might win a lot of money playing roulette, but that just means you got lucky.
Professional sports bettors, however, don’t rely on luck. They rely on skill and statistics to ply their trade.
A pro will decide if a bet is “positive expectation” or “negative expectation”. Every roulette bet, unless you’re cheating, is a negative expectation bet. A professional gambler looks at a roulette wheel and keeps on walking.
This leads to why you can make money on sports. You don’t have have to bet every game. A pro looks for positive EV plays and makes them, and simply doesn’t bet games they don’t think are winners. They can sit back and wait forever until the bookmakers make a mistake.
Pro sports betters are basically like the bookmakers. They have to use math and statistics to calculate the odds of the event they are betting on. Pro sports bettors will come up with precise statistics that match the way sophisticated casinos cater to the Vegas gambler.
The professional then compares his numbers with the odds the bookmakers offers. Most of the time they just about match up, and sometimes the difference falls outside the range of the spread.
You need to win more than 50% to win at sports betting. A typical NFL gambler must bet $11 to win $10, so he has to win 55% of the time to break even. A pro knows these number like the back of his hand.
Once a Bettor, Twice a Pro
No one ever accomplished anything they didn’t try. Sports betting isn’t easy, but you can be successful if you do your homework and you get the right advice. Check out our blog for some terrific inside strategies and start your journey towards becoming a real pro sports bettor.