Becoming professional punter

Some people treat sports-betting as a good form of entertainment. And we agree, most of the time placing bets is sheer fun! But we at 30bets.com strongly feel that sports-betting is something more than excitement and pleasure - once you know how to do it right, this form of investment can become your own business and the only stream of income.

In this post we have enlisted for you the 4 main steps of what it takes to become professional punter.

Sports-betting education.

We can't just 'guess' winners of games and expect to win against the bookie. The soonner we face the truth, the better for us: bookmakers are very good at what they do and we have no chance of beating them unless we work very hard. It is not about talent, we strongly believe it is about determination and knowledge.

And we do not only mean handicapping skills of picking up winners here. To become professional punter, we need to learn how to invest money in sports-betting market. One might have access to the best soccer picks in the world, but he will most likely not take full advantage of them unless he knows the rules of sports-betting market.

Skilled tipster needs to know how bookmaker assure profits, what exactly is bookmaker's margin, what is the advantage of Asian Handicap bets. It is very important for the punter to learn as much as he can on the topic of money management, risk management, short-term bankroll fluctuations, efficiency rates, standard deviation and binomial distribution.

The good news is that here at www.30bets.com we cover all areas mentioned above. Website is regularly updated and sometimes we send unpublished articles through the newsletter. There is many other very good betting websites use them! And we feel it is really worth buying some books on sports-betting as well. We are aware it might sound trivial but we do want to underline it again: in sports-betting, knowledge is the king.

A staking plan.

We believe that learning about money management is most important skill in sports-betting. It is important to set aside betting bankroll and separate it clearly from “everyday” money. Then, one should decide on what percentage of general bankroll he is willing to place on individual bet. One should also find the staking system and stick to it (fixed stake, percentage stake, fixed profit stake, Kelly stake?). And if we want to treat sports-betting as investment, we should decide to run spreadsheet of placed bets and statistics to keep track of the investments.

A method of handicapping

We do not recommend relying on good luck, crossing fingers and praying for success – it is important to to decide in advance what is the source of bets. One should place valuebets or do not bet at all. Do you want to use paid service? Go ahead! Find a good one, buy subscription and follow them. Do you want to hunt surebets? Why not! Would you prefer to specialize in few less popular football leagues and estimate your own chances for the games there? This are all very good ideas but the key thing is that we recommend to commit to one thing and practice it to become a specialist.

A wide portfolio of bookmakers.

We can't stress enough importance of odds for professional punter. It is immensely important to always take effort to get most attractive odds. Nowadays, there is plenty of websites offering live odds tools, where you can compare different bookmakers and their prices. Line shopping is crucial for every aspiring professional gambler. Go ahead and open many bookmakers accounts so you could always had a wide choice. You do not need to have money in each of them because with modern e-Wallets like Moneybookers or Netteler, it only takes few seconds to deposit funds when necessary.

Taking 2.00 odds in comparison to 1.95 for one bet makes a huge difference long-term. Imagine two tipsters: Steve and Kevin who subscribed to the same paid picks betting service. Steve has never heard of line shopping and he always places his bets with his favourite bookmaker. While Kevin started off wisely - opening 12 betting accounts so 12 different odds-offers is available for him at any time.

They place 300 bets a year and hit 56% of them. They both have a fixed stake of 200 EUR. Average odds in Steven's favourite bookmaker is 1.90 while Kevin is able to get 2.00 odds on average for the same set of picks. After a year:

Steven earns 56% * 300 * 200 * 1.90 = 3840 EUR
Kevin earns 56% * 300 * 200 * 2.00 = 7200 EUR

Very same bets and Kevin has 3360 EUR more (87%) !. Imagine how much more Kevin would win in the period of 5 seasons! It is really important to have a wide portfolio of bookmakers. Especially the ones that offer most competitive prices (1.95 / 1.95) on Asian Handicap and Under / Over bets.