Betting TV Games
Indulge me for a minute. Before you hit the confirm bet button on your offshore sportsbook account, call your bookie or plop your money down at a Nevada sportsbook, ask yourself why you are betting.It's a simple question and there is no incorrect answer. You should be betting because you enjoy the fun and excitement of placing a wager and watching or following the game or you should be betting to make money. Both are perfectly good reasons for making a bet.
But both reasons should be mutually exclusive of each other. By that, I mean that each game you wager on will fall into one of the two categories, not both.
Earlier I mentioned that there is no incorrect answer to the question of why you are placing a bet, but there is a wrong way to go about it. Nowhere is this more evident than when it comes to televised games.
Televised Games
Now, there are some of you out there who have to have a wager on every televised game there is. That's perfectly fine. You certainly won't find me condemning you for that.But when you are making a wager because a game is televised, you are not betting to make money. Don't even pretend that you are. You are betting for the excitement of watching your bet in action.
There has been plenty written about money management and sports betting over the years and for good reason. Poor money management has been the downfall of more bettors than poor handicapping.
But where most money management plans fall short is the phenomena of televised games.
In my role with About.com, I correspond with a number of different people regarding the world of sports gambling. Some are intelligent bettors who have been doing this for years, while others are newcomers to the scene looking for advice.
One bettor I correspond with has to have a bet on every televised game there is. As I mentioned earlier, that's fine and understandable.
But there are several problems relating to this particular individual, who happens to be a decent handicapper.
For starters, he wagers the same amount on every game. Secondly, he is very selective when it comes to his handicapping techniques and the games he likes. You should be able to see where this is heading...
Here is a case where the bettor is hurting his bankroll by following good money management.
As I mentioned, he wagers the same amount on every game. If Penn State was playing, Joe Paterno could show up at his doorstep with the entire Nittany Lion team and the game officials and tell him they were going to lose by 20 points on Saturday and his bet size would not change one bit.
Remember, he also wagers on every televised game. If his local Fox affiliate were broadcasting Eastern Washington University at Northern Arizona, two schools he likely knows nothing about, he will wager the same amount on the Penn State game as he will on the Eagles and the Lumberjacks.
Between cable networks and the major stations there are roughly 20 televised games each week and our friend is wagering on all of them. If he were to go 10-10, he would be down one unit for the week. If his serious wagers, or the games that he handicaps, go 6-4 for the weekend, he will still show a small profit, although not nearly as large as it could have been.
The real trouble starts when those wagers on televised games go 9-11, which is -3.1 units. Going 60% on his games will still not be enough to save the weekend.
Betting Different Amounts
If we go back to the question asked at the very beginning of the article, why you are betting, and use that as a guideline for every bet, we will make some progress.Proper money management techniques say not to fluctuate your wager size very much, if at all, which is generally sound advice. But it does fall short when dealing with the practice of betting games for the sole reason they are being televised.
If you wager on games for the sole reason of them being televised and for no other reason, continue doing so the way you have been. You're wagering for fun only and that's great.
Likewise, if you're wagering on games solely to make money, don't make any changes to what you're doing, but do be honest with yourself. Don't say that you're betting solely to make money when you're also gambling for fun.
If you're wagering for fun, as well as to make money, you need to change your plan of attack so that you are wagering more on the games you like and less on the games you're betting just because they're televised.
My suggestion is to have two separate bankrolls, one for your serious wagers and one for your fun wagers. If you're betting online, I would even go as far to make sure that both bankrolls are in different sportsbooks, so as to not be tempted to wager more on a televised game than you should.
What I would recommend is withdrawing 20 percent of the money in your sportsbook account and opening up a new account for your fun wagers. There are enough reputable sportsbooks where you shouldn't have any problems.
Then practice sound money management techniques with each of your two separate accounts. This will ensure that you're betting more on the games you actually do like and less on the games you're betting for fun.
Once again, let's go back to the question we asked at the very beginning, why am I betting?
If you answer that you are placing a particular bet to make money, you will place that bet at the sportsbook with 80 percent of your funds in it.
If you answer that you are placing a particular bet because you want to watch the game on TV, you should place that wager at the sportsbook that has the 20-percent of your bankroll.
Succeeding at sports gambling isn't always about showing the maximum profit. It's also about minimizing your losses and this simple plan will help you do exactly that.
