We all know that September marks the start of another football season, but you may not know that it's also Responsible Gaming Education Month. Let's celebrate with 6 tips to bet more responsibly.
Dive into and digest these guidelines to make sure that your football season remains fun and not troublesome. Let's get into it!
This tip is in the No. 1 slot for a reason, but not enough recreational gamblers adhere to it. Before starting any new season, it's vital to set aside a bankroll. As Ben Franklin once said, "he who fails to plan, plans to fail."
How much money should be in your betting bankroll? That's impossible for me to know. We all come from different backgrounds and different income sizes. That said, your bankroll should be an amount of money that you're comfortable losing.
I know you're probably rolling your eyes because losing is never comfortable. That said, 98% of gamblers lose so we always have to plan for the worst. Pick a number that won't negatively affect your lifestyle if you end up losing it.
I've been betting on sports regularly since 2001 and I was fortunate that someone taught me this lesson early on. Whatever your bankroll size is, only wager 1 to 2% of it per play. This is a hard and fast rule among most professional sports bettors.
How do those numbers line up? If your bankroll is $2,000, your bet size should be in the $20 to $40 range. That unit size is conservative enough to keep you in the game when the inevitable cold streak happens.
Once I set my bankroll for the season, I never deviate from it. Treat it like an investment and be content with slow and steady gains.
I appreciate Gambling Twitter (or Gambling X as it's now called) because I've made a ton of good connections on that platform. However, the one thing that irks me about most sports bettors on social media is their lack of transparency.
It seems like everyone on X hits 70% of their plays and never seems to have a losing day, week, or month. The reality is that very few people on the planet can make any type of regular income betting on sports. Even the best sports investors in the world only win 54 to 58% of the time.
I'm not saying all of this to be Negative Nelly, but sports betting is freaking hard. The folks who set these lines work incredibly hard and they have lots of resources. To put it bluntly, sports betting is not a get-rich-quick scheme.
At the beginning of each new season, I like to write out some goals. Using my long-term winning percentage of 54% in college football and the NFL combined, I can project what a good, average, and bad season will look like from a record standpoint.
On any given week, I will typically find 7 solid plays in college football and 5 in the NFL. That means I'll usually have around 240 plays for the entire season. That may sound like a lot, but I think it's a reasonable amount for 5 months of investing.
This means that on an average season, I'll go 130-110 for a profit of around 9 units. On a really good season with 58% winners, I'll go 139-101 for a profit of 28 units. A pretty rough season of picking just 48% winners would yield a record of 115-125 for a loss of 22.5 units.
I don't mean to bore you with numbers, but I can't stress how important it is to project your wins or losses before the season begins. Doing this over the decades has helped me keep from getting too high during the winning years and too low during the down years.
Sports betting is a fun hobby, but it can be incredibly time-consuming. Since more states have legalized online sports betting, there is a boatload of content out there each day to digest.
While it may be fun to listen to everybody's best bets for the week, it's a good idea to set limits on how much content you take in. Setting a bankroll of time and not just money will help you keep things balanced in your life.
Lastly, never be afraid to reach out for help if your gambling is negatively impacting your life. This stuff is supposed to be fun, but gambling addiction is nothing to take lightly. We're all humans and we all struggle at times.
If you're worried about your gambling habits, just know that there is always help available and you're never alone. Calling 1-800-GAMBLER will put you in touch with a trained professional who can offer guidance and support.