Pro Sports Betting
For avid sports betting fans, turning their most beloved pastime into a full-time profession seems like a great deal. You may have spent hours daydreaming and wondering if the dream could ever become a reality.
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But first, you must dedicate yourself to the craft entirely. Becoming a pro sports bettor takes more work than you can imagine, but the rewards are immense.
- To become a true professional bettor you must continue applying a sound staking plan and treating your betting and your betting bankroll as an investment. Whether that be an investment that you wish to skim regular profits off as a secondary or perhaps primary source of income, or treat your betting.
- In the past 18 months identical twins Gavin and Alex Walker made nearly £400,000 without even getting up off their sofa. They don’t work in the City.
So, let’s look at how to become a pro sports bettor so you can start winning at online sportsbooks.
It’s No Walk in the Park
The life of a pro sports bettor isn’t a reprieve from your 40-hour workweek. But it will most certainly shake up the monotony of everyday life.
To be transparent, not everyone is cut out to be a pro sports bettor. For gamblers willing to make the sacrifices to succeed, it can be gratifying.
No pro sports bettor comes close to even a 75% winning percentage. That would be insane.
They lose plenty, but if they win close to 54%, they make a decent profit. They earn enough that the wins outweigh the losses, and they can stay afloat.
Why Be a Pro Sports Bettor?
Becoming a pro sports bettor is such an appealing career choice because there are so many distinct advantages.
To begin with, being 100% in command of your daily grind is incredibly attractive. Total control over your workweek is what I’m talking about here.
Most of the work you put in as a pro sports bettor can be done when it’s most convenient.
As with most anything, there are exceptions to the rule. Generally, life as a pro sports bettor will put you in charge of your schedule.
The freedom to make your own schedule is priceless. Take it from somebody who enjoys this perk. It’s the best feeling in the world to be where you want to be when you want to be there. Of course, my wife sometimes has other ideas.
Pro Play Sports Betting
In addition to deciding when you work, you’ll benefit from choosing how much or little you work. In the beginning, you will likely still be working another job to ease into the transition. Whenever you decide to cut the cord and go full bore, you should expect to put in tireless hours as you get started.
Once you have established yourself into a routine and are comfortable in your new career, you can choose to work more often or less often. This will depend mainly on your own goals and outside commitments.
The flexibility doesn’t end there either. You’ll also have the luxury of choosing where to work. Thanks to smartphones, tablets, and laptops, you aren’t spending long hours at the sportsbook.
Here are some other reasons to become a pro sports bettor—the dress code, earning potential, and the pure adrenaline rush.
Characteristics of a Pro Sports Bettor
There are no prerequisites to becoming a pro sports bettor. Any gambler with the necessary determination can succeed in this field.
There are, however, personality traits that lend themselves to improving your chances of success. If you plan to be a pro sports bettor and find yourself lacking in any of the following areas, you may want to work on these.
You don’t necessarily need to be a die-hard sports fanatic. You never want your emotions to interfere with making the best picks.
Being interested in sports will hedge against things getting stale. As we’ve all learned at some point in other work lines, the promise of money won’t always be the draw needed to keep you on the hook.
I already mentioned the importance of knowledge. The critical aspect is to continue learning about your craft, strategies, the sports, leagues, and teams you are betting on. Do your research.
There isn’t a professional gambler on the planet that has maintained long term success because of luck.
Having a proclivity for numbers is as vital to your success as knowledge for a pro sports bettor. You don’t need a PhD in mathematics to carry the load. Most of the sports betting math is relatively basic and easy to comprehend. Pro sports bettors will need to understand things like probabilities and odds well.
Sports betting can be rewarding and is as exciting as it sounds. Just remember to always take the good with the bad.
Be realistic. You won’t win every sports bet. In fact, just breaking even is a great start. That is going to take winning about 52% of your bets. This is a marathon, not a sprint, so don’t expect to make a million in your first month.
Set Goals
You’ll want to keep tabs on your progress and have an eye on your spending. To help with this, you need specific goals to work toward.
Don’t go down the road of many hopefuls and set goals that are simply too big too early. Set a realistic goal for your first year’s earnings and steadily work towards that number.
Some sports bettors will set monthly goals. Don’t fall into this habit. Because of the unpredictability of sports betting, a bad week can sidetrack an entire month.
Remember it’s a marathon, not a sprint.
Keep Detailed Records of Your Wins and Losses
You will be more successful at fine-tuning your approach when you have an accurate record of your best and, as importantly, your worst bets.
Look for patterns that have emerged in your wins and losses.
You should know that and leverage your strengths into more profits. Always analyze your strengths and weaknesses. You can’t stay away from weak points in your betting game if you don’t know what they are. You don’t want to arrogantly assume you don’t have any.
All-pro Sports Betting
Manage Your Bankroll Effectively
All gamblers need to stick to a firm staking plan. This is even more important if you want to become a pro sports bettor.
Pro sports bettors do not have the luxury of taking enormous risks.
Your income depends on every bet you make. Bankroll management will make you or break you as a pro sports bettor.
Even the most analytical mind on the planet is wasted if you can’t manage your money correctly.
Check Your Emotions at the Door
Sports bettors that bet on a team because they want the team to win are doomed to failure. Always bet based on your best analysis of the matchups. Anything less than that is going to be a genuinely tragic and unnecessary setback.
This can spell disaster for some pro sports bettors. You eventually will take a string of losses. That feeling of euphoria from winning beckons you to double down and get it all back in one fail swoop. Avoid this mentality like the plague.
Become a Master of Your Discipline
Self-control and discipline are paramount to your success. It will be easy to get carried away sometimes. This is why it’s imperative that you set firm guidelines and stick to them.
A work schedule for a pro sports bettor may look different for everyone. I suggest going hard to begin, but not so hard that you burn out. After you have spent a few months as a pro sports bettor, you will then have a much better idea of how to maximize your time efficiently.
Know Your Worth
Sports betting can be anything but predictable. There are going to be times where your winning percentage will be far below what is needed.
Don’t let your confidence waver. Sports bettors can fall into the trap of making small safe bets when this happens. Stay focused on finding value and know that bad days are just that and not the end of the world.
Conclusion
The life of a pro sports bettor is sure to be as exciting as it is unpredictable. Taking the proper steps and putting in the research ahead of launching into your new profession will continue to pay dividends far down the road.
Gambler X is a professional sports bettor who makes his living betting legally in Las Vegas. He has agreed to share insights and experiences in the betting industry but prefers anonymity to keep his edge against the sportsbooks.
I am a professional gambler in my mid-30s, based in Las Vegas. Although I dabble in a variety of gambling ventures, sports betting is my bread and butter. For the past five years, it has been my family's main source of income, fed and clothed my children and allowed my wife to go back to school to finish her education. It has given me the type of personal and professional freedom that I try not to take for granted.
The life of a professional sports bettor is filled with worry. Imagine busting your butt all day, only to have the difference between a winning and losing day decided by a two-point conversion in a preseason game (that happened to me a couple of times this year). Sometimes those bad days turn into bad weeks, which turn into bad months ... which turn into bad years. It's impossible to not go at least a little crazy from time to time. It's basically a job requirement.
The worst part of it is that the day-to-day variance isn't my main concern anymore. What really keeps me up at night is the fear of losing my edge. I've been asked many times what my biggest fears are for the future of sports betting, and my answer is always the same: change.
Nevada was a bubble, and it was nearly impossible for a U.S. citizen to make a living betting sports (at least legally) unless he or she lived here. But with legalized sports betting now in five states (and counting), that change is here.
And I'm not happy about it.
I was 18 years old when I made my first sports bet. It was with a bookie (gasp) in the small midwestern town where I grew up. I was spending most of my days grinding away in an underground poker game, in which the only thing more common than a bookie was a broke degenerate trying to place a bet with him.
It didn't take me long to figure out that all the bookies were doing was adding a few points to all the local teams, just locking in value. But if you tried to take the other side, they would cut you off after a few bets. What's a young man trying to find an edge supposed to do?
My answer was to start taking bets myself.
I undercut the market by offering the same numbers as everyone else but not charging juice. By offering all my bets at even money, I quickly became the favorite bookie of every casual bettor in town.
It was a worthwhile venture, but it didn't make me rich by any means -- and I still didn't really understand much of anything about sports betting. I did understand that being a local bookie was a terrible way to try to make a living and that moving to Vegas to try to make a living being a professional gambler was probably not my best idea. But it had to be more fun than spending the rest of my life in a dreary midwestern town. And I knew I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I didn't at least try to make it in Sin City.
My big break was that the one guy I knew who lived in Vegas had a similar idea and was already way more successful than I could ever dream of being. I was lucky that he was willing to show me the ropes and that I picked it up quickly. My earliest memory of being a pro sports bettor in Vegas is driving 40 minutes north of The Strip to pick off bad numbers at the then-independent Aliante sportsbook -- nearly every single afternoon.
Being a professional sports bettor is a lot more than just picking winners. It's about getting action down with casinos that actively go out of their way to deny your bets or ban you from the sportsbook entirely. It's about getting five figures on a game and not moving the line. It's about finding an edge and pushing that edge hard enough that you make a great living but not hard enough that the sportsbooks figure out where they are screwing up.
All of that might sound easy -- and to a certain extent it is in Vegas, where there are so many casinos and gamblers that it's easy to stay anonymous -- but it takes time and plenty of patience. And it has gotten harder in Vegas.
The number of sportsbooks here that offer mobile apps has basically tripled. And while my bet sizes have quadrupled, my edge has decreased. It's well documented that most books are banning winners, but my edge has decreased for other reasons. As much as everyone wants to make fun of them, sportsbooks are getting sharper. They are making fewer and fewer egregious errors and doing a better job of staying in line with the sharper overseas markets.
I used to be able to see a bet that was out of line with the market, hop in the car and go grab it with ease. Those days are long gone -- and will never come back.
Now that legal sports betting has spread to other states, there are more variables and more information to learn.
Legalization means more places for sharp bettors to sneak bets through without moving the market. More casinos sharing liquidity and information to stay one step ahead of bettors. More jurisdictions and hodgepodge shops where one is the majority owner, but lines are set by another, and software is provided by a third. It's just more stuff to make my life miserable.
And it means I've been traveling all over this summer on fact-finding missions.
I've visited Delaware, New Jersey and Mississippi to see how things are run. I traveled all over to test out the new markets. I pushed them hard. A lot of bets at max limits, just testing every place over and over again with the idea of trying to find some place outside of Nevada that would be sustainable for a professional bettor longer-term. I haven't been particularly impressed.
Take Dover Downs in Delaware, for example. The book is owned by the state lottery, and William Hill sets the lines and decides what bets to take for a very small percentage of profits. This strategy leads to dealing one-way lines, on which they are taking action on only one side and then banning anyone William Hill in Las Vegas deems likely to win money. If the State of Delaware is the primary beneficiary from the sports book, then shouldn't it be required to offer a fair system in which anyone can play?
In Mississippi, I mostly targeted MGM properties. The staff were friendly, and they took big bets with no issues. But as I suspected, they mostly mirror MGM Las Vegas' lines, so there is no real opportunity for me.
And New Jersey? It was supposed to be the golden goose, but there have been several hiccups. Don't even get me started on the recent FanDuel fiasco.
For me, independent books that set their own lines and manage their own risk are the lifeblood of my business. They mean more chances to pick off bad lines, opportunities to arbitrage and more places I can go fire the same bet at the number I want. Of all my travels to the new states, the most disheartening thing to me was how few of those opportunities were out there.
The manager at every sportsbook I visited is underqualified and doesn't make a move without checking with the bosses in Vegas first. They aren't really aware that for someone who does this for a living, one tiny mistake or moment of complacency can cost big time.
There are a few lucrative spots in these other states, but the cost to exploit them is so prohibitive that I'm better off crawling back to the desert and trying to gather the facts about the new and ever-changing environment.
Pro Sports Betting Lines
That's just the glamorous life of a sports bettor.