Betting plays various roles in our lives and many bettors approach the activity in different ways. To some, it is a simple pastime, a way to make certain sporting events more interesting. For others, it’s more involved and every tool at one’s disposal is constantly used to ensure maximum success in betting. Others still sit somewhere between these two extremes. But whoever you are, the question of if, and how, you can guarantee returns with betting is a common one—so today we’re going to examine that question.
Let’s get started.
Profiting from betting
Firstly, to give a simple answer to the question, you cannot guarantee a return with betting. Profiting from betting is incredibly difficult to do and no matter how knowledgeable and savvy you are about betting, you’ll never be able to win every time. After all, if there were some way to do so, then betting companies would quickly go out of business.
Problem gambling is a big issue in many places; in the UK, for instance, problem gamblers accumulate, on average, more than £10,000 worth of debt before they seek any kind of help. Starting out with the attitude that you’ll ever be able to guarantee your returns is how you can end up in a situation like this.
With all that said, there are ways that you can approach betting that will give you a much better chance of winning and profiting in the long run. But again, all this does is increase your chances, however greatly—it never guarantees anything. Let’s look at some key tips for improving your returns from betting.
Research
Firstly, it starts with research. How exactly do you want to bet? Betting online at a one of the many betting sites in Ireland like Topbettingsites.ie and the UK is among the most common ways to bet. If you want to bet on a sport, then you’ll need to have some degree of knowledge about the sport in order to be able to see any kind of long term returns. The bets you make will need to be informed by your knowledge of the sport. If you don’t know the sport, you must take a lot of time to research it before you start betting.
Once you’ve started betting, though, the research always continues; listen to sports talk programs and podcasts and read the sports news constantly. The better you know the sport, the more likely you’ll be to get consistent returns.
Budgeting
Once you’ve actually got going with the betting, one of the most important things is that you budget properly and strictly. One of the biggest factors in why people lose money betting is that they can get emotional when losing a bet, and may begin to chase your losses. Chasing your losses means continually making more bets after you lose one in order that you can win back the money you lost. This is a sure way to end up in debt.
Set yourself a weekly or monthly budget for how much you will spend on betting, and stick to it. Don’t deviate from it by even a penny. This way, you will never bet more than you can afford to lose, and thus you give yourself the best chance of making a profit in the long term.
Promotions and offers
With the competition so fierce between bookmakers today, there are a lot of benefits of this to the consumer. Bookmakers must fight one another for your attention, and one of the main ways they do that is through their offers and promotions on sports betting. New customer offers will be the most lucrative, so make use of as many of these as you can to get free bets. But for the biggest sporting events, often the bookmakers will offer promotions for existing customers, too. Making use of these is a great way to increase your returns.
This is also a great way to get into betting on different markets besides just the game outcome. You can use promotions to bet on things like late goals or which player will score the most, and at what point in the game—these accumulator bets can be really lucrative.
So, again, the short answer is that you can never guarantee a return with betting. This is in the nature of the activity, and there’s nothing you can do to guarantee a return. Indeed, a major part of being able to even make an overall profit on betting is allowing for the losses you will make in your betting. There are certainly ways that you can increase your chances of betting consistently, and eventually you may get to a point where your betting is broadly profitable—but this is very difficult and takes a lot of time. Even if you do get to this point, every individual bet is still just that: a bet with an uncertain outcome.
Underage gambling is an offence. You must be over 18 years old to gamble.
Any form of gambling should always be fun, playing in a way that is right for you. It’s good to set limits, take time out or set up reminders.
Please gamble responsibly and in moderation.
For more information on the tools available to help to keep you safe or if you want advice or support you can call the National Gambling Helpline on 0808 8020 133 (England, Scotland and Wales or visit Gamblingtherapy.org).
