As football is the world’s most popular sport, it makes sense that the football betting scene would be almost as large, and it means that there are millions of bettors around the world trying their luck by wagering on the sport.
For the most part, sports betting remains the same regardless of the sport, making it a pastime that’s extremely easy to get in to, but also one that leaves the bettor set up for making some common mistakes.
One of the best tools that a sports bettor can rely on is their own experience, and there’s no better way of gaining this experience than by making mistakes.
However, for those that don’t have the time, money, or inclination to make those mistakes and to go into the betting scene better prepared, these are some of the most common mistakes that most football bettors make at one point or another.
1. Not Doing Proper Research
For most people, sports betting is something as more of a simple pastime with a hope of winning some extra money, but obviously this doesn’t work for most people, as the house usually ends up winning.
Success in betting relies on a few factors, and one of the most crucial is the amount of information that’s available to a bettor as they’re making their wager.
This information can be acquired from a few sources, such as from sports books, previous betting outcomes, and even old notes kept by the bettor. Patterns are always present in sports betting, and it’s usually easy to find and exploit those patterns when making a potentially successful bet.
2. Choosing Favourites
When we first dive into betting, we tend to go for what we know, and in the case of football, we will naturally gravitate toward our favourite team when putting money down as a wager.
It’s much easier to simply vouch for a team that we are familiar with rather than looking at the statistics in question and making a calculated decision, completely disregarding our emotional connection with a specific team or player.
The most common winners are those that take the time to look at the history of the players and teams in question; how they’ve performed in previous games, and then makes a decision based on the information they have in hand.
It might even mean having to bet on a team that they strongly dislike, but that could also mean having a much higher probability of earning real money at the end of the day. This is a golden rule for most kinds of wagering, whether it’s at the tables or even election betting.
3. Following The General Public
Another extremely common mistake for a bettor to make is placing a wager based on what everyone else is doing. It’s always worth remembering that bookmakers are out to make a profit, and they’re aware that most of their customers will bet using their emotions, and it means that the majority of them will lose their bets.
And while it’s not always a certainty, for the most part it can pay off to keep track of what the crowds are doing and instead choosing to do something different.