Bruce Dias 
Between more legal betting options and the ease of using a smartphone to place bets, the last decade has been a real boom for the online betting industry with an influx of new bettors eager to start winning.
But they say it takes 10,000 hours of experience to master a skill. It can take less than an hour to put yourself in financial harm if you don’t approach betting with the proper amount of preparation and seriousness.
Whether you are wagering on traditional sports or esports, we have pinned down the 5 strategies that will make you a better bettor.
Manage Your Bankroll
There are many good strategies to improve your betting success, but nothing is more important than setting some standards and limits for your bankroll, the name given to how much money you’re willing to spend on your bets.
You could set deposit limits on many top-ranked offshore sportsbooks. But let’s say you start at $100 per week as your budget. From there, you’ll want to think of how much your unit size will be, which is the amount you spend per bet. It’s generally viewed that your unit size should be 1-2% of your bankroll, so that’d be bets of $1 or $2 on a $100 budget ($10 or $20 for $1,000).
The key is to stick to those unit sizes, especially if you’re a high-volume bettor. If you only want to make a few bets a week, then you can get away with more than 2% per bet. It’s also a good idea to get comfortable with not betting every day. Remember, you should be betting on games you’ve researched and not betting for the sake of betting. Make those wagers count for something.
The other key is to never chase losses. You’ll have cold streaks, but you just have to gut through them and hope it turns around. If it doesn’t, then adjust your strategies. It also helps to track your bets in a spreadsheet where you can see which types of bets you do your best and worst at.
A consistent process is the way to consistently win bets. Otherwise, it’s just blind dumb luck and that’s too hard to repeat over the long term.
Limit Your Parlays
New bettors tend to love parlays because they are like lottery tickets with low-risk, high-reward payouts if you win. But every leg has to hit for you to win a parlay, and each additional leg makes that harder to do. Even an NBA prop bet with -1000 odds is known to fail more frequently than you’d like, so be careful of not adding too many legs.
Parlays should never be your main source of betting and should be done more for recreational gambling. Only include a few legs and don’t bet a lot on it.
Research Is Key
With sports, you need to do your research and keep up with the leagues you’re betting on a daily basis. Study the injury news, the recent statistical trends, recent performance data, weather reports, and head-to-head history in past matchups.
There are many analytics sites and resources out there for this, and you can also follow along on social media like Reddit, X/Twitter, or even gambling Discords.
Make Accounts at Multiple Sportsbooks
You should create accounts with multiple trusted sportsbooks so you can shop for the best prices (odds) and take advantage of the welcome offers for new customers and promos for existing users such as deposit bonuses and odds boosts.
But shopping for the best odds can find real value, especially for futures bets and markets with more volatile or varied odds.
Find Your Niche Markets
Again, you don’t have to bet every day just because there are games to bet. You also don’t have to stick to traditional bets like moneyline, spread, and totals. You should get creative and try props or betting alternate lines or teasers.
Maybe you’re good at picking out a few home run hitters in MLB every day but you struggle to get them on a parlay. You could try a Round Robin bet instead with three hitters, only needing to get two right for a win.
By tracking your progress in a spreadsheet on different markets, you can find your niche markets and where you excel and where you need to stop or change your strategy.
