Sports Betting Strategy: Looking at it Like War
By Loot, Sports Handicapper, Lootmeister.com
War is serious business. It may seem silly to compare something as relatively frivolous as sports betting to war. It’s not really in the same category. Comparing brave soldiers to guys sitting in a sportsbook is admittedly absurd on many levels. At the same time, sports bettors need every conceivable edge and looking at it in different ways can only help.
We are in a war of sorts, a war where most of us will lose. That’s first and foremost--respecting the opponent. When it comes to us vs. the bookie, it’s like Barbados vs. Germany. Your chances are about as good. It forces us to adopt different strategies to overcome what appear to be insurmountable odds.
For the purposes of a war comparison, we need to become guerilla warriors. We can’t just open up and start slugging it out or we’ll get wiped-out. Sports betting is suitable for this. When wagering on sports, we are able to dictate the terms of battle. We are able to isolate our battles to when our chances are at their best. In military confrontations, they’re not so lucky. Sometimes, they have to fight when they would rather not.
Look at the list of games you can bet on as a list of possible battles within a war. You can pick your battles and that is an indispensably-valuable weapon to have in your arsenal. You don’t have to play any other games than the ones you decide will give you your best chance to win. Of course, the worth of this weapon decreases with your level of selectivity. When you remain solidly selective when wagering on sports, you are giving yourself the best chance by only waging battle when you have the advantage.
We also need to value our arsenal to the fullest by making the best use of all our weapons. Sometimes, we get comfortable with a certain type of play. For many this will be the straight bet. For others. maybe it’s betting parlays. Whatever it is, we need to remember to break out the other guns from time to time. When looking a potential battle, maybe a certain gun comes through where another gun fails.
When betting on team sports, maybe a first-half bet is the better move. Maybe we look at a side when we should be looking more at the total. Once in a while, instead of straight-betting two big money line favorites, we parlay them. It can be anything. The key is when facing an opponent as strong as the bookie, it’s key to diversify our attack. Not all of the bets are advantageous, like huge sucker parlays or teasers, but there are a slew of weapons at our disposal that offer good value and are certainly playable.
We need to resign ourselves to the extreme length of time this war will take to win. And even then, the war is really never over in sports betting. If we think the way to win this this war is to charge down the battlefield with both guns blazing away, we’re as good as dead. This battlefield is hundreds of miles long. We have to slink our way through, trying to advance a little each month. Employing a Scarface Final Scene approach might be funner, but when you’re facedown in the fountain, you’ll be wishing you had taken the more prudent approach.
A far more thoughtful and resourceful approach is what is called for in the arena of sports wagering. We need to have a few snipers stationed around, a guy standing behind a wall looking for anyone who steps out, and a guy hiding in the weeds. Sure, it would be nice if we could just send in the tanks and employ the missiles and other high-tech weaponry. That is impossible from where we are operating in the beginning and intermediate stages of sports betting. Maybe if becoming a whale is a status you can attain, then you can engage in more traditional warfare.
As it is now for the vast majority of sports bettors, there is no ability to engage the enemy in trench warfare. We need to pick our spots, exploit areas of weakness and vulnerability, and not ever be wasteful. When you see how low the percentage is of people who are longterm successes in sports betting, it becomes obvious that in order to win this war, we need to be very cagey and focused on a longterm vision of success.
