The key to making money wagering on games is to use proper money management techniques. Please read the money management article below for the best way to manage your bank roll. It takes discipline. But if you get a professional handicapper that knows what he is doing, and following these wagering strategies. You will make a profit.

We recommend Flat wagering at a set percent. Just depends on your bankroll size. The Stars on a play we use is just a confidence in that wager. This is designed if you disagree with one of our selections, that it will tell you how strong we exactly feel about a play. The grading system:

1*- free comp play

2*- a little better then a free play or its equivalent. A comp. play that our clients will get as well

3*- Solid play that should hit 55% of the time

4*- Good play that should hit a goal of 57-60%

5*- What you would call a lock, if ever such a thing. We expect this to be in the 65% and above.

Football:

Typically, the average for a player should be $100 on football as a benchmark. If your bankroll is small, say $200 or less. Then you should bet a fixed 5% of your roll on all plays. If your bankroll is say $10000 or more, then recommend a set 2% play. You can adjust this on the size of your bankroll. Please read the 2 articles below for more tips.

Basketball:

Similar guidelines for percentages as above for football. Only difference is your dealing with a sport that plays lots of games with to many other variables coming into factor. Such as some players maybe taking a night off and not performing to there highest level. Since not every game has the same significant meaning as say football, which they play once a week and have a short season, with that said we base playing basketball as only $60 instead,use this as the average for your benchmark. With this is mind, you would never exceed 3% of your bankroll on a basketball play.

Baseball:

Same as above as basketball and the football bankroll guidelines, but your dealing with even more variables with a larger impact of players involved in game. So if your a $100 player. Only recommend going $30 on that play as the average wager for your benchmark. So, again with this in mind. You would never exceed 1.5% of your bankroll on a play in baseball.

Set yourself these types of guidelines and discipline. So if you have a bad week. The impact is less. Never try to make up for a bad week by over wagering the following night or week!

Money Management – The Amateur’s Downfall
By William D. Foote

Does anyone know why so many people lose at sports betting? Most think it is because of poor handicapping. While this can be true, it is not why most people lose. We know hundreds and hundreds of folks that are excellent handicappers or have access to winning picks that still lose their shirts year in and year out.

Quite simply, the vast majority of all gamblers maintain poor money management skills. That simple reason above all others is why they lose money. There are those that manage money poorly because they are uninformed and there are those that manage poorly because they are undisciplined. Unfortunately most often times, gamblers are uniformed and undisciplined.

We could write an entire twelve Volume Encyclopedia length case study on this subject. Given our space and time, we are going to summarize and hopefully you will get the gist. We want to talk about betting discipline and bet size. They actually go hand in hand.

If you are serious about success, it is imperative that you make a plan and remain disciplined. Your plan must entail proper bet size per unit or per game. You should never risk more than 5% of your bankroll on any one play with an average play being roughly 2% to 3% of your bankroll. We would guess that 99.9% of gamblers are wagering too much on each game and we strongly urge you to not fall into the same trap.

Most people will wonder, 2% of bankroll? How the hell am I going to make any real money that way? Our answer is very simple. Exert a little patience and a little discipline over a period of time. If you do this, 2% of a growing bankroll can earn you a full time living no matter how small your bankroll is to start. Not too long ago, we wrote an article showing how a $2,000 bankroll could turn into $7,000,000 in twenty years playing 4% on each game and picking only 55%.

It is imperative to bet a low percentage of bankroll to achieve success. Over the course of any season, and especially in the daily sports, you will encounter winning as well as losing streaks. If you are betting too high of bankroll percentage, one losing streak could eat up your entire bankroll and put you out of business. We cannot stress enough how important this concept is to your success.

A typical example would be a player that has a bankroll of $1000 and bets $100 on each game. One of two things will happen to this player. He will either hit a cold streak and be out of the game before he knows it, or he will hit a hot streak, up his bets to $200 or $300 per game and then hit a losing streak and be forced out of the game. Quite simply, there is no way to win if you are betting 10% of your bankroll on each game. Losing streaks will happen, as simple mathematics dictates this fact.

The next area we need to focus on is discipline. This is where most folks fail miserably. We have been betting full time for nearly many years. In the beginning, we were unsuccessful because we lacked discipline. We always could pick winners, but sticking to a very strict plan was the problem. If there is any one piece of advice we could lend amateur sports bettors it is this; you are not going to win every day or even every week. Do not concern yourselves with the battles and focus on the war.

Do you know how often we get emails from clients that sound like this, “I was wondering about the free service I am entitled to because of the losing week we had”. We will read this, scratch our heads for a moment and reply back. “Losing week? You should have gone 7-3 and picked up 9 units. We went 1-0 on Thursday, 1-0 on Friday, 4-0 on Saturday and 1-3 on Sunday. How did you lose money going 7-3?” To which the client replies.

“Well, I was betting $100 per game Thursday, Friday and Saturday and made $600. On Sunday I decided to up my bets to $300 a piece in the morning and went 1-2 and lost $360. Since I was down over $300 dollars for Sunday, I bet $700 on the Sunday Night Game. This way I could win back the $360 lost earlier in the day and still show a Sunday profit. Well, the Sunday Night Game lost and now I am in the hole $530 for the week and you all said of I did not show a profit I would get free service.”

Basically, this person had turned a 7-3 weekend into a lose money proposition. In other words, the picks he bet went 70% and he lost money. Day in and day out we receive similar emails with similar type circumstances.

The difference between professional gamblers and amateur gamblers is 20% the quality of picks they are playing and 80% the way they manage money. In the case we had described above, the individual failed to accept that Sunday was not going to produce a net profit for him (the battle). Instead of realizing that Thursday through Sunday was a great success that netted a significant profit (the war), they chose to lose site of the overall plan.

We wish we had more time and more space to help you all understand these concepts, as they are extremely valuable. It pains us to see folks lose over and over because they do not understand money management and the concept of long term profit as opposed to near term foolishness. Make a plan, establish a bankroll, stick to the plan and you will make money. Don’t do those things and you will not.

I've read at least a dozen essays about the importance of money management over the years, but have gained very little from my time spent reading. Why? Because most of what I've read is an amalgamation of nonsensical tidbits that are difficult to make sense of, difficult to use and ill conceived to begin with. This essay is not about criticizing other systems, however. Rather, the goal here is to formulate and explain a money management system that is user-friendly, works in the long term, and can have a real impact on creating and retaining profit from your sportsbetting investment. So without further ado, here's the Whocovers.com money management system that's been proven to work over the long term.

It starts with these five words: Straight bet and flat bet. Meaning, avoid the parlays, teasers, props etc that most books like to promote (it increases their own profit margins, of course). If you like the Broncos to cover the spread on a particular day, and the Bears and Falcons as well, bet them all individually. If you win all three, that's great, but winning two of three is much more likely than sweeping the card. And two out of three produces a profit. Even winning just one of the three bets is not a disastrous result. Sure, it's not a winning day, but for the three bets you made, at least you got a return on one of them. When you get into the habit of parlays and teasers, there's no result possible except winning all three bets that will allow you to get any return on your investment at all.

Flat betting means to wager a similar amount on every game that you play. We'll talk about wager size as a percentage of bankroll in a moment, but first we must discuss the concept in general. When you vary your bet size, it's easy to pick more winners than losers, but not bring home any profit as a result. Again, let's go back to the day where you like the Bears, Falcons and Broncos as well. Let's say you feel like the Broncos are the best bet on the board, and you decide to bet $330 to win $300 on LA. Then you like the Falcons and Bears a bit less, betting $165 to win $150 on both of those. Lo and behold, you win two out of three. Unfortunately, the two that you won were the smaller ones, and on a day where you picked more winners than losers, you'll still lose money. Specifically, you risked a total of $660, won two out of three, and got back only $600, a loss of $60. Had you bet them all for the same amount, you'd have a profit. For example, had you flat bet all three at, say, $220 to win $200, you'd have won $180. Same thing, winning two out of three; same amount of total cash risked, but one method shows profit, while the other shows loss. This is the key: When you vary your bet size, picking more winners than losers does not guarantee a profit. Same thing with parlays and teasers. But when you flat bet, keeping your bet size constant, regardless of how much you supposedly 'like' the plays the results are extremely predictable. Win more games than you lose and you'll make a profit every time.

Determining the appropriate bet size is a bit more difficult, but it's not hard once you understand the basic concepts involved. The goal is to bet enough to maximize winnings while keeping plenty in reserve to withstand any potential losing streak. Because you could be the best handicapper in the world, but if you lose all your money during a bad run, you're done - it's that simple. You have to be conservative enough to keep yourself in action, during good times and bad. And the amount of your bankroll will determine your standard bet size. Few folks recommend this, but I think your percentage of bankroll that you should be willing to risk on each and every play does vary depending on the size of your bankroll. Here's why:

Most bettors begin with a short bankroll, perhaps a few hundred dollars or a grand - somewhere in that range. For bettors with larger 'rolls a standard play involves around 2%-3% of their bankroll. For example, with 10k to invest in sports betting, the standard wager size should be between $220 to win $200 or $330 to win $300. But if you only have $200 to begin with, betting 2% of your bankroll equals a $4 bet. Not much fun or excitement to win four bucks, nor much profit when you do win. That's why, with lesser bankrolls, I'd advocate a more aggressive betting strategy for the short term; somewhere in the range of 5% - 7.5%. You have to be able to win something, and beginning bettors with this type of bankroll generally aren't as concerned from the get-go about riding out a losing period. I would never recommend beginning to get involved with sportsbetting without a minimum of $500 in your bankroll, making a standard wager size in the $25 - $30 dollar range perfectly normal and acceptable for beginning bettors. It's high enough to make some kind of profit and enjoy the fruits of your labors when you win, but you can ride out a bad week or two and still be in action.

Bettors with larger bankrolls must bet a lower percentage on each wager. Firstly, you have more to lose, so protecting your investment becomes crucial. It's one thing to lose a couple hundred dollars sportsbetting; it's quite another to lose a five figure bankroll. And you must think about what will happen if you do lose, because losing, while extremely undesirable, is a possible outcome. A rational bettor accepts this risk, understands it and makes his or her decisions accordingly. When you've got 5k in various accounts offshore, you can afford to take lesser risks to achieve your desired goal of making a profit. Again, the range of 2%-3% makes sense. You still make a nice profit when you win, and you limit your risk of losing your hard earned investment.

Straight bet and flat bet a specific and pre-determined percentage of your bankroll. That's the key. The hard part is having the discipline to do it, every single time. NO exceptions, no wild betting sprees off a big winning weekend or chasing to win back all the losses from a bad week in a single day. There isn't anyone reading this essay who hasn't seen a game that they absolutely loved, a sure winner. The temptation is there to load up on these games, the 'it's a lock to win' mentality. The reality is that when a $50 bettor places a $500 wager on a game, it's no more likely to win than any other game that the same bettor puts $50 on. The goal is always the same: If you can pick more winners than losers, you should show a profit.

The term for this kind of betting pattern is 'grinding'. We're not looking for the big score. Sure, there's someone somewhere who hits a seven team parlay every week, and there's someone else who risks his or her entire bankroll on a single play and wins that bet. But there are many more who don't have that kind of success, and those that do have it rarely maintain that kind of 'luck' over the long term. Eventually, they return everything that they've won back into the bookies hands. The grinders method is much less volatile and much more likely to achieve positive results over the course of a single season, or many, many years.

The bottom line is this: don't look for the quick score, because that's when the odds really are against you. Professional bettors including myself don't look for the 6-0 weekend. Rather, our goal is more like a 12-8 week, that coveted 60% winners to losers ratio. A $110 bettor who goes 12-8 for a week will return $320 on a total investment of $2200 for the week, about a 15% return. Ask any stock investor if they'd be happy with a 15% return for a week, and the answer is universally 'YES'. If you can average that kind of return over the long term, and it is quite possible to do so, you'll be betting and winning on sports for years to come, and enjoying the profits from your sportsbetting investment. Small, steady, regular profit over the long term can only be achieved with a solid money management system such as this one. Use it, be disciplined and watch your sportsbetting investment grow.

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