Earning money betting isn’t easy but one of your main goals while betting should be for you to think of betting as your job, not some sort of recreational activity or gambling but the way to earn money with a constant return of your investment (ROI). The best way for you to have a positive ROI over time is to have discipline and patience, and those are two main characteristics of all punters and bettors. Being disciplined means trying to decrease the amount of played combos/parlays as they just decrease your chances of winning money and beating the bookmakers.

Your chances when betting on football or sports with three different outcomes (1x2) are usually 33%, while they increase to 50% on the sports where there is no draw such as tennis, volleyball or even basketball usually as the overtime is counted at most of the online bookmakers. That means your chances decrease with every additional event you add on your betting slip, and we believe that single betting is the best way to go as it gives you the most edge over the bookies, combined with your knowledge and possible some inside information about a certain game. When people mention inside information, they immediately think of fixing, but that can also mean that some news about new injuries slipped up, or coach is planning to field the reserve squad for a certain match, and the inside info can never be your personal opinion. Please refer to our insiders section to see an example of it. We STRONGLY advise you to stay away from various online scam services selling insiders and fixed betting tips! Of course, some theories proved that doubles (betting on two matches) can be more beneficial than singles but your yield (the best indicator of your betting efficiency) will usually grow the most with singles.

System bets are also another very popular way of betting and they are consisted of charts of numerous amounts of combinations where punters usually include one or more bankers and from 2 to over 10 bets. The good thing about systems is you only need to win the minimum amount of bets you specify in your system (for example if you bet on a 2 out of 5 system, you need to win two bets plus the bankers (if any) for it to be won; average odds on 2/5 system are about 5.00 and there are 10 combinations there). One of the most popular systems in the betting world is called trixie and it’s a 2/3 system, and people use it a lot as it’s almost the same as the regular combo betting (except it’s a little safer but is also suitable for higher stakes betting, unlike most of other systems out there). The most important thing with systems is not actually picking the bets within a system but those bankers, which punters usually choose just to increase the total odds and the standard odds on those matches range from 1.2 to 1.8, and most often they’re the ones who can take the whole system down, even if some really high odds hit on the other matches.

Being patient means one should never rush while betting but rather skip a day or two if there isn’t anything interesting in the betting offer for that day than waste money on betting on (for you) anonymous betting events and sports without any prior info about it. Some inexperienced punters have rushed with making their betting decisions in the past, and have quite often gone bankrupt as they usually tend to use one of the most famous betting strategies Martingale which basically means they double their stakes until they win (or go bankrupt) and is actually one of the worst strategies out of there that punters usually use once they lose their control. Having knowledge about the sport/match you’re betting on is extremely important, and the only time a punter should bet on an event they don’t know much about is if they follow a tipster or a betting expert. Tipsters are usually people who share their betting insights and previews with the public, but there are some closed forums where such people get paid to post previews and earn money just by doing that if their yield is good.

Basic knowledge is definitely required for betting but another important, let’s call it a skill, for being successful in betting is doing math and being able to do calculations. We will touch on the value betting in some future articles a lot more but for now one of the basic things every bettor needs to know is – are the odds offered on my desired outcome valuable? The value betting and the probability of odds usually talk about the same things, as both concepts cover pretty much similar stuff and focus on whether the odds set by a certain bookmaker are worth the probability or not. The best way one will calculate the probability is if 100 is divided by the odds offered. For instance, the odds on Manchester United to beat Porto are 1.50 so to calculate bookmakers’ probability you’d need to divide 100 by 1.5=66.6%. If you personally believe Manchester United don’t have such chances of winning that match, you’d act accordingly and either bet on them if you think they have more than 66.6% chances or decide for a no-bet or even try betting on some other outcome if you think they don’t. Our personal view is that betting on the sports with two outcomes can be even a better opportunity to find value as the bookmakers have the smallest edge over a player in those cases, and the value can be found every time, under the condition the right bookmakers are used. This is another very important topic we’ll be covering largely in the near future, as choosing the best bookmaker is never an easy task, just like choosing the right company one might work in is also never easy. The more quality bookmakers on the market – the better it is. And luckily for us, the times are such, it’s not so hard to find a good and solid bookie on the Internet since the competition between them has been so huge that they simply had to improve their offer, and are nowadays just fighting over customers with their enhanced features, the number of leagues/sports they might be covering, bonuses and promotions, live betting and 24-hour customer service, etc. All those factors are important but at the end what we have to be sure of when seeking our bookmaker is – do they have what I need? And people need different things. The two most important things while choosing the bookmaker are: 1) Reliability – how safe is your money on their account? Is the bookie based on an off-shore (usually riskier as the laws on those islands are usually lenient) or it’s well-known and is located in a place we all know of? How often can you do withdrawals and are there any fees? Have they had any customer problems in the past? 2) The offer – how good are their odds? Are their margins near 100% or their odds are lower than most of other bookies’? How is their live betting service and are their betting limits below your standards? Are their rules suiting you?