Betting 101 - "No winnings in 5 months, please help me!"

Betting 101 will be a new series of daily articles that take a look at common issues and problems people experience when football betting. These discussions will be based on real life scenarios, with real life questions and responses, with the sole intent of (hopefully) helping you improve your betting game. So lets jump right into it, with the first article taking a look at a frustrated punter that hasn't won in 5 months...Maybe you might be able to relate to this.

Question

I have been doing football bets for a few years now. There were times when I would win 3/4 hundred £ in a single day. The last while I have been doing terrible. I had a good Christmas, but since then I have not won one bet. I am talking about doing a few bets every single day and nothing. I don't spend mad like just 5 or 10 at most a day. Even doing single and doubles with teams that should 100% win and nothing. Most of bets are accumulators of course but I have tried everything. I have been looking at this sub for the last couple of months and every tip I tail losses or I miss the bet as it is put up later than when I looked. If there are any genuine websites or twitter accounts that are not fake that would be real helpful. Or if there are a few bets that I could follow here. I am not sure if this has an alert built in for new bets put up that would be great. Anyway if somebody could help with more form please that would be so helpful. If and when I get back on form I will most definitely be sharing tips on here. Thank you for reading.
> Posted by Peblolaru1880

Responses

If you want to turn a long term profit:

• DO NOT bet accumulators.

• DO NOT bet on favorites just by looking at the odds.

• DO NOT bet on leagues you have no knowledge about.

• LOOK for live or in-play betting, high value there.

• DEVELOP a method that works for you and stick to it. Looking at recent form, injuries/suspensions, home/away performances or trends, cards/corners or goal scorer markets, over/under markets, handicap markets.

> Posted by Simaoms

Take a time off.... The more pressure you put on yourself to "break the losing streak", the worse your bets will be... Take a time off and clean your mind...

> Posted by deletedFalco

I am just going to confirm what Simaom's has said (look at his record, I would follow any advice he gives!). First thing I would do is to just stop betting accumulators, the idea is to build a winning mindset and accumulators really bread that sort of 'fast and loose' style of betting that we want to avoid. Accumulators are gambling, you want to be investing.
Try and stay away from huge favourites. Even though you like a massive favourite at home, when the odds get down around 1.3, 1.25, there is just no value given the expected outcomes.
Pick a few leagues and stick to it until you start to build a good knowledge base. The more popular leagues are double-edged swords; there are certainly more options to bet on but the bookies are also much better at setting lines. Every day there is usually one or two very valuable lines to be found in a regional league that you will be able to spot because you will have done the research.
Don't get me wrong, never go and chase losses just for the sake of trying to get back even, but also don't be afraid to keep betting the rest of your card. I know too many people that go down 2 or 3 units early and then give up on the rest of their day's bets when they might have hit. You should only be betting what you can afford to lose anyway, so never let a bad beat stand in the way of your next profit. Good luck!

> Posted by spectresoccer

Keep track of your bets. Understand what picks that you do that work and what picks that doesn't work. Look over your money management and bet in percent of what you have instead of bet a fixed sum of money. All picks needs to pull its own weight. Those type of picks that doesn't, those type of picks have to be used to a minimal. A good continuation can be to begin to time-stamp your picks in Oddsportal or similar type of tool.

> Posted by essbeck

I think deletedFalco, Simaoms and essbeck have pretty much hit the nail on the head with their replies. The only thing I can add to this to make your life easier initially is focus on a particular aspect of the game; (1) Firstly whether you will bet pre-match or in-play (2) and whether you will look at over/under goals, team to win (drawing 0-0 at half-time, see if a team comes out dominating the 2nd half after a dressing room talk), lay the draw, correct scoreline, or a variation of the aforementioned are just few of the many examples you can use. What I'm trying to say is, it doesn't need to be difficult or overly complicated to work. When you decide on a criteria, start to paper bet the results (record game information, expected outcome, actual outcome, odds, profit/loss in a spreadsheet) rather than use real money. Setup a variation of different criteria, so that you eventually have several different betting systems; if you're seeing consistency in one, keep it, otherwise delete it, and then rinse and repeat this method. What you will eventually have is a bunch of different angles on how to bet on any particular football game, so that you're never keeping all your eggs in the same basket. When you're happy with your results, start to bet real money.

> Posted by Nthan