It’s that time of the year again, as the 2016 NFL season is upon us. All of the bookies and bettors from around the world are preparing their bankrolls and gathering their information in order to battle the bookmakers in Vegas this Fall and Winter in the most heavily wagered on sport in the United States. Every year, football brings out both the career bettors, as well as the “Weekend Warriors” trying to make a buck off College and Professional Football action, yet only 5% of bettors profit each year from their wagers. What sets apart the 95% of losing bettors from the 5% that actually win consistently when their money is on the line?
The answer: Information.
Information is easily the biggest difference between winners and losers. Access to winning information in sports is the most valuable piece to the puzzle. There’s experts and successful career-gamblers out there like Jon Price of Sports Information Traders, Billy Walters, and Kenny White. These are some of the most feared men in all of Vegas. Jon Price and Billy Walters particularly are not allowed in the vast majority of Las Vegas Casino Sportsbooks due to their proficiency at winning at a rate that few can match with their oversized wagers. Recently, Jon Price has began selling his information to common bettors, which has caused major ripples throughout the Vegas sportsbooks, as well as local bookmakers where Billy Walters is adamant against publicly selling his information unless he is doing so to adjust the line in his favor a sharp tactic that only the best sports handicappers implement.
Billy Walters & Jon Price have been featured in a number of national publications both in the United States and around the world, and what they portray as the the biggest key to their success, and that to sports gambling in general is resources. In order to have your finger on the pulse of the National Football League, College Football, or any of the major American sports, you must have access to unfiltered information coming straight from the people that are involved in the sports, themselves, not from the media who is paid to create storylines and mold the news and information to their liking. With the advent of the internet, people have easier access to information than ever before, but along with the good also comes the bad. Much of the information available for free on the internet is often misreported and manipulated, essentially robbing it of its value. While it’s difficult for the common bettor or fan to access the kind of information that the professionals like Jon Price and Billy Walters use, there are places that it’s available online, sometimes for a fee.
Wagering On Your Favorite Team – A Surefire way to lose money
Another one of the easiest trap-falls to avoid is the propensity for common fans and bettors to wager only on their favorite team or sport. When you zero in on a team and focus on them each week, you may become very aware of their strengths and weaknesses, but you lose focus of how they compare against the rest of the field. Jon Price has often said that he has a written rule to not wager on your favorite teams if you get emotional over this.
Key Metric to Look at as a successful Sports Bettor
In addition to only focusing on a particular team, many fans will also restrain their wagers to a single sport. All this does is limit you from taking advantage from poor lines in other sports which equate to missed opportunities for your bankroll. Sports Information Traders looks at a metric called “Delta” and this relates to all sports where lines come out not just football.
Wagering on sports is not about entertainment, or even watching the game. It’s about making money, plain and simple. With professional and college football by far being the most heavily wagered on sports in the country each year, naturally the Vegas bookmakers devote more resources to making sure that the lines for these games are absolutely perfect. Loose lines mean less profits for books, so they do everything they can each football season to minimize the margin for error, and keep bettors from collecting from the winning window at their sportsbooks. In sports like hockey, or even baseball, there’s far fewer handicappers betting at the books and often times this creates great opportunities but the thrill that many get from Football they don’t receive from other sports. Either way there is always a way to work harder than the guy next to you and to gain access to winning information.
The final piece of advice that many career-bettors have shared is to always bet within your bankroll. The Ultimate Handicappers has always preached money management as the most overlooked part of a successful bettors’ arsenal. You can win 1 out of 4 bets, but if you placed your heaviest wager down on the best information, you’re still likely to walk away a winner that day. Be weary of companies that offer to sell Parlays as they are opportunities to earn fast cash with a small bet but your odds are greatly decreased.
It’s all about maximizing the wins while minimizing the risk on your losses. Developing a sense of what is the best game for your highest wager and which games to play it safe on, takes us back to rule number one: Information. While you’re scrambling to prepare for this coming football season and getting ready to let your bankroll ride on weekly games, hoping for a quick and easy fortune, ask yourself if the information you have access to is the kind of winning information and quality resources that’s going to set you apart from the 95% of losers and the 5% winners in sports gambling.
