How Often Can You Expect to Win With Sports Betting?

Until recently, sports betting was officially illegal throughout the US. But when the Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that each state could decide the legality of different types of gambling, the sports gambling industry exploded.

Today, sports betting is one of the most popular forms of gambling—not just in the US but across the globe. In fact, it is beaten only by lotteries, and estimates show that almost one-third of the world’s population has engaged in sports betting at least once in their life. 

However, the big question for most players is how often they can expect to win when placing sports bets. After all, one of the biggest thrills of gambling or sports betting is the possibility of walking away a little (though hopefully a lot) richer. Let’s take a look at the answer to this burning question.

How Often Can You Win?

In gambling, you don’t know if you are going to win or lose your money. This is why it is always recommended to only place bets with cash that you’re comfortable being without. 

Knowing whether you will win—or how often you’ll get lucky—would take the fun out of the pastime. It would negate the entertainment value of sports betting and make it just another money-making activity. 

There is no accurate way to tell how often you will win. Similar to casino games, the outcome of a sports wager is left to chance. However, while casino games like slots only have one factor influencing their outcome (the random number generator they employ), sports betting has many factors.

These factors include the teams and players playing, any recent injuries players have sustained, where the game is taking place, and even the weather on the day of the match. With so many variables, calculating solid predictions of when a win will occur is almost impossible. 

While there is no way to ensure that you will win a specific sports bet, there are several things you can do to place more successful bets. Following these steps will allow you to win more frequently—and boost the winnings you may receive. 

Don’t Chase Losses

One of the best tips for gamblers who enjoy sports betting is to not chase losses. Naturally, many people want to recover money they have lost on bets. However, chasing losses can lead to even bigger losses, creating a repetitive cycle of trying to regain lost money—and spending more money to do so.

Because all casinos have a house edge, and bookmakers have odds and moneylines that favor them, the chances of regaining money from lost bets are incredibly slim. Therefore, it is best to let the cash go and focus on placing a more accurate bet next time around. 

Bet When Sober

Although being sober in terms of not drinking too many alcoholic beverages while gambling is smart, this tip relates more to placing bets while sober-minded. Too often, emotions can influence our thinking ability and cause us to place irrational bets.

Whether it be because we love a specific team or because we’re having a bad day and looking for a lucky break, placing a wager while dealing with strong emotions is never a good idea. Emotions can make you lose focus on the strategy behind your betting, causing you to place bets on a whim—which statistically doesn’t end well.

Understand Sports Betting

While this should be a given, many players don’t properly understand sports betting, moneylines, or betting odds before they place a wager. Instead, they want to simply enjoy entertainment sports betting without much thought or strategy behind their bets. 

To avoid that pitfall, it is essential to understand every aspect of sports betting. This ranges from how moneylines work (like those for upcoming NBA games), what odds you should look for, and how a point spread works. Information on all these things is readily available online, and even novice bettors can quickly get up to speed with all the variables. 

Do Your Research

One of the most vital and proven ways to improve betting accuracy is to do thorough research before placing a bet. This research can include looking at the track record of the competing teams, checking previous clashes they had, evaluating their players, and investigating the stadium or grounds where the match will be held.

Having some knowledge of these things can help you determine who is most likely to win in a game—also called the win probability. Once you’ve made this determination, you can place bets accordingly, even if that sometimes means betting on a team that bookmakers are pinning as an underdog. 

Choose When to Bet

Many believe that the more bets they place, the more likely they are to win. While this may work for gambling games such as lotteries, this isn’t completely true for sports betting. If all bets placed are inaccurate, there may be no wins achieved—and setting a bet on every game could cost a large sum of money.

Therefore, it is better to skip a bet on a game you haven’t researched and use that time to properly brush up on the pertinent details of an upcoming game. With so many games taking place in various sports, it is very difficult to place well-informed bets on every match—so it’s better to make accurate bets on a few choice games.