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We are past or near the midpoint of the college and NFL seasons and you are not happy. All your hopes and dreams of a winning year are not looking good and you don’t know what to do.
Let’s examine what has gone wrong and what you can do to turn it around and still end up with a profit.
Understanding How the Statistics Work
A lot of people formulate an opinion early on a team and expect them to play that way all season. A team might have looked great for a game or two, then went on a losing streak or stopped covering the spread despite winning.
First and foremost, football is a week-to-week sport. When reviewing statistics and performance, you should take the long view of what the numbers say AND take the last three games and see if there are differences.
If a team was averaging x-number of yards per play and that number is now 1.5 YPP lower, that’s a big difference offensively. If it is not related to scheduling, something has changed and you need to identify what that is on offense or defense or both.
How most teams will play throughout the season will go up and down and you need to know what is going on at the moment, not what happened in September.
Cold Streaks, Hot Streaks and Trying to Hit Home Runs (Bankroll Management)
After studying the numbers at Oddstrader.com for a college football weekend and you go 2-8 or worse, most football bettors are inclined to chase that losing day by throwing even more money at the problem. Then they go 0-5 in the NFL and jump in a hole that could take all season to climb out of.
Instead, reduce the number of NFL bets to say your three best and wager the same amount per game as you did in college.
Going 2-8 can shake your confidence and a lot of bettors make bad decisions when it comes to poor performance and money. By choosing just three games and betting the same amount, you will not retrieve all the money you lost, however, if you have a winning day, you will feel much better about the following week, and have a clearer head to keep recouping your cash.
Hot streaks can be just as dangerous as losing ones. Say you get hot in football, maybe a 10-1 or 17-3 streak and you feel impregnable. You’ve kept upping your bets for football picks and now you are after a big payday. You take the – Let it Ride Approach – on a game that you cannot lose, then it does.
You had made over $6,000 in your streak, your bet $5,000 on one game and despite having a 17-4 record, you have less than $1,000 to show for it as a good-sized bettor. That is what you call horrible money management because how long will it take you to get that 5-grand back?
Listening To the Wrong People
With all the programming available to viewers, there are a lot of so-called experts on network TV and YouTube. Though plenty of them are knowledgeable about the sport they are covering, that doesn’t mean they know the first thing about sports betting.
Because handing out free picks is part of their job these days, too many people assume they are well versed in all aspects. This is simply not true and they cost those betting cash on football every single weekend.
Though plenty of handicappers have a well-deserved bad reputation, many do work hard and know more about college football and the NFL than any commentator that you can listen to. We are not advocating buying picks, rather, seek those that know and understand betting football to increase your knowledge.
Learn From Your Mistakes
One of the worst things in life is to keep repeating the same mistakes. The same applies to wagering against the betting odds like you will find at Oddstrader.
If you are losing bets because you didn’t hear about injuries, you better find a website that can clue you in on injuries, or just download our app!
If you keep losing or pushing on bets and many other people are winning on those same games, you need to open up a couple more betting accounts at sportsbooks because you are probably missing out on better numbers that could make you money.
If you assumed that a team like LSU, who always had good running backs and a top offensive line could run over a foe and cover a 10-point spread and you learned during the game they were 120th in the country in rushing at one point this season, you have to study more if you want to win and not be just a gambler.
Everything mentioned here is fixable, now the rest is up to you…if winning matters that is.
