Betting with Your Head

As the expression goes, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” In the world of online sports gambling, too, any number of paths can lead the successful bettor to victory after victory at the online sportsbook and any number of methods may be employed in picking winners. There are, however, two fairly iron-clad rules regarding what *not* to do:

1. Do not bet on your favorite team indiscriminately (with exceptions; more below).
2. Stay open-minded through the course of the season.

Wagering on one’s favorite team is a common practice at the online sportsbook: Such faith drives NCAA bowl game betting, some Super Bowl betting, and European soccer (most especially English Premier League betting). Serious punters, of course, have no illusions about their own favorite teams – if they even have one at all.

Love and devotion make for great blinders and, while your knowledge may be second-to-none on your team’s current injuries, attitude and playmaking abilities, any semblance of objectivity may be non-existent: Convincing yourself of impending victory is great as a fan, but potentially costly at the sportsbook.

This principle was made quite apparent during the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Most online sportsbooks reported that England was drawing an incredibly disproportionate amount of action, eventually giving the English 6/1 odds to win the tournament – a supposition that seems laughable in hindsight, and yet it’s a mistake millions in the British Isles will make again when the Cup restarts.

Of course, if you’re a fan of a juggernaut (and by “juggernaut,” we mean serious all-time powers like the 1999 St. Louis Rams or 2007 New England Patriots), feel free to wager. Most of the time, though, just stay away from betting your team’s games at all.

Just as important as not falling in love with your own team is not falling in love with your own predictions. If that NFL team you picked to win the Super Bowl starts the season 0-3, you should be jumping off your own bandwagon right quick. A single injury to the left tackle in the NFL or an upset home loss in the Premiership can send a team reeling with poor results for weeks and affect the table for the rest of the season; on the plus side, a couple of good free-agent signings and/or sleeper mid-round draft picks can utterly change the fortunes of a team for a year or even much, much longer. (Consider what the 1974 NFL Draft did for the Pittsburgh Steelers franchise, to name one easy example.)

One fairly obvious place where self-destructive belief sneaks in is in “outright winner” betting at the beginning of a season: Despite the fact that sports franchises in most leagues rarely repeat titles, the defending champions typically tend to draw the shortest odds and the most betting action during the pre-season at online sportsbooks. Unless you’re talking about the NBA or possibly Manchester United, the bettor’s head is telling him/her that Team X will not repeat. Who will listen...?

Both of these recommendations are part of the solid “bet with your head, not with your heart” philosophy of sports wagering: Truly the only way to go to make money at the online sportsbook.