Youre on the first tee at the golf course, and meet your playing partners. The most common question after everyone gets comfortable: What do you do?
When you work in sports betting, the answer can be complicated, and usually ignites follow-ups surrounding the inquirers own experience in betting, often wondering aloud what they have been doing wrong.
Like golf, theres no simple guide for how to get better at betting, but when asked for tips on how to get the readership started, it seemed like an opportunity to put advice that Id give on the golf course on virtual paper here.
Ideally, we would have the time an 18-hole walk provides to break it all down, but at least we can cut out the shanks, duffs and 3-putts, and simply chat about betting getting you set up with The Front, make a move after The Turn, and see if we cant finish strong with a good close-out, all while handing out some tips along the way that might work better than keep your eye on the ball.
Here are 13 betting tips to help you get prepared for football season, whether its your first time wagering or youre a little more advanced.
Even if you made your first sports bet 20 years ago (legally in Nevada, of course), it doesnt mean you cant restart your betting life. When you unlock a new skill or process, it can feel like a new beginning. Each summer, in the sleepy part of the calendar, you can take stock with the various sports seasons on the horizon. In that vein, lets look at some of the basics to instill some new-found confidence.
Your bankroll is the total money you set aside for sports betting, in the same way you budget for a standard vacation relative to what you can afford.
Youre going to take that all-inclusive holiday to the tropical beach location, or youll gather the crew for a bucket-list golf trip, knowing that all youll be tangibly left with is the memories of the highs and lows of the experience.
If you have that same attitude toward sports betting knowing youll probably get a little burnt and the money spent will be a drop in the bucket of your lifes income thats a good place to start, because the reality is, youre probably going to lose your initial bankroll over time. The key to improving your experience will be to make that money last exponentially longer than a trip to Jamaica or Pinehurst.
Bankroll tip: Price out the cost of your standard annual vacation, and make that your sports betting bankroll.
Shop ’til You Drop was a thoroughly mediocre, turn-of-the-millenium game show in which contestants wildly flailed around a pretend store. If they were good at knowing the correct retail price of certain goods, they would earn a shopping spree. In sports betting, you need to have a solid idea of what the correct price is for a bet, and shop at numerous stores (sportsbooks) for it.
There are two ways to shop for the best price:
Shopping tip No. 1: Take your initial bankroll and spread it out across at least three sportsbooks.
Shopping tip No. 2: Odds and lines move from the time the market opens until the game starts. If you have a good grasp on what the price should be on a bet, you can either beat the market to a good bet before the price moves, or wait to get the price you want.
Legend has it that newly inducted Major League Baseball Hall of Famer Ichiro Suzuki, despite never hitting more than 15 home runs in a season, would take the last portion of batting practice to just crank dingers. Even though he made a point to prove that he could swing for the fences, Ichiro built a Hall of Fame career on knowing he should rack up singles and doubles (and steal over 500 bases), hitting .321 during his prime with the Mariners.
As bettors, we could go to the batters box looking to go yard (in the form of long-shot parlays and Same Game Parlays), but the chances of extending your bankroll and enjoying the sports betting experience go way up when you bet one outcome at a time.
Even if you didnt parlay them, youll never be disappointed by going 6-0 on a standard NFL Sunday; plus, going 5-1 or 4-2 in your six picks no longer wrecks that grand slam parlay. Instead, its the betting equivalent of Ichiro going 3-for-4 with a stolen base and two runs scored. It will add up to a legendary career.
Betting tip: Leave the parlays to the bad bettors. Shoot for hitting 53-55% on single outcome bets to accumulate profit over the long term by betting 1-2% of your bankroll as your units value for each bet.
The social-media age has turned personal moments into a communal experience. While its best to keep your bets to yourself society doesnt need to see your bet slips on Instagram its important to track results for your personal records.
There are plenty of sports betting apps that allow you to log your bets, crunching the numbers for you, or you can do it yourself using the type of spreadsheet we all have access to.
Coming into the season with a plan to be honest with yourself about how you do is crucial to managing your bankroll and your long-term expectations. If youre interested enough in sports betting to make the bet and watch the game, you should enjoy the process of record-keeping as well.
By dividing your units won/lost into your units bet, you can determine your return on investment for the day, week, month and/or season. You can also uncover the sports that are best and worst for your bankroll and adjust accordingly.
Tracking tip: Heres what a simple tracking chart could look like on a 4-3 Sunday.
Ok, weve created our bankroll, found a handful of sportsbooks to shop at, built a framework for our expectations and a way to track our betting to see how it goes. In golf terms, while we didnt go low on the opening nine holes, we set ourselves up to believe we can score a personal best just as soon as we grab a hot dog. Here are some things to think about as you go on the next step of your betting journey actually making the bets.
Understanding what the market (oddsmakers and other bettors) thinks of a team or individual player is a crucial starting point for knowing what a good price (odds, point spread, etc.) is on a bet.
If everyone loves the Los Angeles Lakers, its going to be hard to argue that theyre undervalued in the betting market and worth a wager. In turn, if no one wants to bet on a backup quarterback, maybe his team has been devalued to the point where its worth a bet. The most uncomfortable bets are often the best, as it can mean theres value in going against the grain.
Market tracking tip: You can track the market by creating your own power rating list of every team in the league before the season. Compare that list to a league-wide odds market like championship futures or regular-season win totals to see what the market thinks of a team compared to you. On a game-by-game basis, guessing the point spread of a game or a yardage total for a player prop is a good starting point for what you think the correct number should be. Knowing a team or players recent record against the number (spread or prop total) helps to gauge how theyre performing relative to expectations.
Dont forget about home-field/-court/-ice advantage, but dont overvalue it either.
In the NFL, the uninformed will tell you that home-field is worth three points. Thats an antiquated perspective. In recent seasons, sportsbooks have been assigning 1-2 points for home-field advantage (around 1.7 on average) and certain home fields or arenas can be worth a little more or a little less. Weather can also factor in, especially if its a warm-weather team traveling to play in the cold (think, Miami Dolphins at the Kansas City Chiefs in the postseason last year) or vice-versa.
Home advantage tip: Heres the approximate average value of playing at home for the major sports.
Home-field advantages worth to the spread (in points):
NFL: 1-2
CFB: 3-4
NBA: 2-4
CBB: 2-4
NHL: 3-4% to ML win probability
MLB: 2-3% to ML win probability
Movie-goers will recall the summer of 2025 as one where Brad Pitt was doing Brad Pitt things in the creatively titled blockbuster, “F1: The Movie.” Its tagline was an auto-inclusion in the trailer and is something we can apply to our betting.
Most bettors mistake analysis for opinion, but opinion is little more than gut instinct. Gut instinct turns into little more than hope when the game starts, and, as Sonny Hayes says in the APX meeting room in the film, hope is not a strategy.
Like the movies made-up F1 team, its best to respect the science or math involved in what were doing instead of fearing it just because weve never thought of a game as a matchup of two entities that carry a numeric valuation.
The money line (a bet on a team to simply win the game) is a function of each teams win probability after sportsbooks take their hold (the money they make on offering a safe and legal betting service).
For example, two equally valued teams (good, average, or bad) playing on a neutral site, creates a 50/50 bet which is lined at -110/-110. The sportsbook is pricing that 50/50 bet at 52.4% (the implied win probability) on each side.
From the perspective of the sportsbook, a $110 bet on either side pays the winner(s) $100 with the house holding $110 profiting $10 of every $110 bet on each side. Like being Brad Pitt, thats a good way to go about life.
When sports betting was invented, it meant that each team would be assigned a valuation for every matchup. Being open to the idea that sports betting is about comparing team values and turning any result into a mathematical probability will give you an advantage over the vast majority of bettors who dont realize this.
Betting tip: Find a good odds calculator/translator, so that you can understand what the implied win probability is for something with odds like -300 (75%) or +9500 (1%).
Close your eyes and pick a sport you like to bet on. Got one? Good.
What do you believe are the three most important elements to success for a team in that sport? This will help to narrow your focus.
If you picked hockey, maybe you think creating offense at even-strength, a good penalty kill and a hot goaltender are the keys to winning an NHL game. Use the key metrics around those categories to create a rating for the two teams in the game youre thinking about betting on.
Betting tip: Compare the differences in each teams key elements. If theyre drastically different than the implied win probability for each side, theres likely a valuable bet to be made, regardless of whether thats on the favorite or the underdog. If theyre similar, but one teams a sizable underdog, it might be time to take a shot on ‘dog.
Ok, so youre getting a handle on what it takes to get better at sports betting, but even the best bettors win just 55% of the time. Like in golf, things wont always go your way, but putting the finishing touches on your overall score comes down to your frame of mind when the going gets tough. How do we get into the right mindset to be one of those bettors? By winning the psychological battle that betting on sports can be.
In football, a good cornerback is said to need a short memory. They have to be aggressive, even if they just got burned on the previous play. Bettors must have the same point of view.
Bettors love to take what they saw from the most recent game, applying that recency to bet on the next game. Considering how many teams finish their season with a winning percentage of between 36% and 64%, theres a lot of win-loss-win-loss-win-loss stretches among those in the meaty part of the curve. The standings are tight before we factor in point spreads and moneyline odds that level the playing field even further.
Betting tip: Dig deeper into why the teams won or lost their most recent game. Focus on key plays and outlier results that might have skewed the final score.
As it does in regular society, history does have a tendency to repeat itself.
The bigger the sample size of a teams strengths and weaknesses, the better. The 2025 Indiana Pacers surprised those who follow the NBA closely by making the NBA Finals and pushing the Oklahoma City Thunder to seven games, but the Pacers had been in the 2024 Conference finals and had experienced making the final of the inaugural in-season tournament in 2023. While Indianas regular-season record was 50-32 (good for just fourth in the conference), there were at least a handful of data points to show the Pacers were capable of raising their level in bigger games.
Things like matchup issues between teams dont just go away because one team had success in games or series with other teams. Plus, whether its a tough stretch in the regular season, or an easier playoff path, long-term context should be applied to the handicap of any matchup.
Betting tip: While its good to have a baseline rating for a team, dont treat players and teams like theyre in a video game where their skills will always be consistent. Understand that were all day-to-day, and that all humans have a range within which theyre capable of performing.
Defining value is much harder than many let on.
In the NFL, because a high-profile result lingers on repeat for days after, there can be a very clear change in valuation of a team by the betting market in the short term.
In basketball, the market might have the point spread correct, but theres a crucial mismatch in personnel.
In hockey, the starting goaltender can drastically change a teams value in one game.
In baseball, momentum is only as good as the next days starting pitcher.
There are many ways to argue that a bet is worth making. Some have statistical backing, others feature a more qualitative case. However, to get to a bet, make sure youre able to make the case that theres something being missed by the market at large. If you know Lamar Jackson is good at home at night, the betting market likely does as well, but if you know the Browns offensive line is run-blocking at the best rate in the NFL, you might have a leg up on the market that’s worried about Clevelands quarterback situation.
Betting tip: Value is defined by the difference in the number (point spread, moneyline price, etc.) youre willing to bet and the number being offered in the market. Value is not exclusive to underdogs. A favorite can be valuable if you deem it should be an even bigger favorite.
A judge determines what arguments a jury is allowed to hear. If you limit your knowledge consumption to what you want to hear, youre doing yourself a disservice.
A good juror should be hungry for information and salient arguments from both sides.
Particularly for big games, there is no shortage of opinions on why each team makes for a valuable bet. Its your duty as a consumer of content to be the jury, picking which argument makes more sense to you. Your bet should align with your beliefs about the event, and once you click submit, take ownership of that decision.
Youre not required to bet on every game, nor every game you watch. Being selective in your wagering is one of the biggest advantages that we have over the sportsbook. Oddsmakers are expected to provide a line, but bettors arent forced to make a bet.
Betting tip: Consume arguments for each side of a bet. If both cases are just as compelling, exercise your right to pass on betting a game.
At the end of the day, responsible sports betting is about increasing your acumen of how betting works, and then applying your knowledge level of the sport.
Things like creating a betting bankroll budget, assigning an appropriate unit value to your bets, understanding why youve invested in the wager and taking personal ownership of your decisions are all elements to being a good bettor. However, the key to responsible betting is to treat it as a fun hobby thats augmenting the experience of watching a game.
There will be lip-outs unimaginably wacky losses youll never forget, while the shocking wins somehow dont resonate the same way. However, its all part of the experience and the sports betting industry is a large community that will share it with you in a way that will augment your involvement in sports betting, as long as you dont take it too seriously.
Happiness tip: Find pleasure in the process of finding valuable wagers and learning more about sports betting, while treating the results of events and bets as the recreational hobby it is supposed to be.
You can find valuable bets and analysis from Yahoo Sports betting contributor, Matt Russell, at THE WINDOW.