Sports Betting Tips: Treating Money Responsibly
By Loot, Sports Handicapper, Lootmeister.com
Sports Betting is definitely a form of gambling that is higher on the food chain than, say, playing slot machines. It is in fact, however, still gambling. And when gambling, we need to be wary of the common pitfalls that have plagued players for centuries on end. We may think we are calculating and deliberating individuals and that the normal problems of gamblers don’t affect us. If it doesn’t affect you, that’s great. But it never hurts to remind ourselves of common traps.
One of the main problems is a mental disconnect as it pertains to money. Many of us have fallen into this trap before, where we look at the money we gamble with a little differently than other money. When you’re in a casino, everything is set up to make you think you’re in some fantasy world. That’s why some of us have done unfathomable things with money in casinos before. There were times where we looked at our bankrolls like it was monopoly money.
Many of us have driven home from a casino thinking of all the things we could have bought if we had just left when we were up a few hundred bucks. We’ll think things like that was an electric bill we just flushed down the toilet or sneakers for our kid. It’s funny how those things only snap into perspective after the fact. While we’re playing, it’s another story.
It’s a funny kind of thing that happens to normally-sound people when they gamble. They lose sight of the true value of money for some reason. It could be the environment, their need for escapism, or just something that snaps in their head when they’re gambling. Whatever it is, it’s something that the casinos and bookies have been relying on for centuries.
This phenomenon even occurs in an online setting. Sure, we all know that with most top-flight online books, our winnings are rather easy to get our hands on and that we can do it pretty quickly. But there is still that disconnect for some reason. Maybe it’s that our money is in some exotic faraway location. Perhaps we see our account balance and just can’t quite internalize that it is our money.
A lot of us suffer from a blue-collar mentality that has been pounded into our heads for a whole lifetime. We just have a hard time considering money to be truly ours until it is literally in our hands. Until then, it’s not really our money. It’s just numbers in the air. Obviously, this perspective can be detrimental to our bottom lines.
Whether we are in a brick-and-mortar or online setting, you need to make sure you’re looking at your money the right way. That money you are playing with is YOUR money. When you cash in a winning bet, that is now YOUR money. There should be no such thing in your mind as “playing with the house’s money.” Once that money crosses over from the casino or book into your hands, it is 100% YOUR money.
Let’s say you win a $500 bet on a football game. Then later in the day, you try to double-up by betting on a game you hadn’t previously thought of betting and you lose. At the end of the day, you say you were even. But you really lost $500. You lost $500 because you were willy-nilly with the way you perceived money that you had won.
Being successful at sports-betting requires a certain flippancy toward money. If we were such tight-wads, we wouldn’t be betting in the first place. But you can’t just completely detach yourself completely from the financial concerns that are in the heads of normal people. That doesn’t mean we have to agonize over every $10 we lose. It doesn’t mean we should empty our accounts if we turn $100 into $200.
It just means we need to check ourselves from time to time to make sure we don’t fall into the monopoly money syndrome. It’s not as rare as it sounds. It can happen to the best of us. When we’re at the store, we keep our mind on our money properly. We shop conscientiously. We look for the best prices. When we are betting on sports, we need to do some of those things and not fall into the trap of being too cavalier with our money.
Speaking of shopping for the best prices, many people think that they have to bet on games at -110 odds. This is not true! You can bet on games at -105 at 5Dimes! This will save you OODLES of cash!
