Track your betting, as if you are budgeting for other areas such as utilities, food, car expenses, and other household items. This helps you better see the full picture of where the money is going, and where you might be able to find extra money.
When placing sports bets the need to keep records, and the value of keeping records, is the same. Tracking your bets helps you understand where your money is going, but it also helps you understand where you can find more successes in sports wagering, as well as where you can try and eliminate the losses.
Track Your Betting With Bankroll Management
If we’re measuring success in sports betting by making a profit – and why wouldn’t use that as the metric – you need to treat sports betting like you would any other investment. Be it the stock market or real estate, you always want to know where the money is going, and you want to focus on the long-term picture.
Picking the winners is important, but so is managing your capital and following good financial practices. And one of the chief ways to practice good financing in sports betting is to keep detailed records of where the money is going. If you place bets randomly or alter the amounts of your bets on a regular basis without a strategy behind it, you will lose money and ultimately be a sports betting failure.
However, if you employ one of the bankroll management strategies that are in common use in the sports betting world (Flat Betting Strategy, as an example), you will be more consistent in your betting and your winning.
Tracking Your Bets
Successful bankroll management plans rely on detailed record-keeping to make them work. The amount of your next bet is directly related to the results of your previous bets, and where those bets have put you toward your overall financial goal.
Without detailed records, there is no bankroll management strategy, and you are going to lose more money in the long run.
How you choose to keep those records is entirely up to you. You can keep records in a small notepad that you always have with you when placing sports bets. You can create a spreadsheet that allows you to quickly input the bets and amounts, and then return with the results and updated cash totals.
There is also an entire market of sports betting tracker apps available for your mobile device. These can be quite advanced, allowing you to quickly track bets with multiple sportsbooks, in a variety of currencies, and broken down by sport. Also, many of these apps are free – if you don’t mind ads – so they themselves won’t eat into your profits.
It really doesn’t matter how you choose to track your bets, as long as you do it. And make sure you include this information when keeping your betting notes:
- Date of wager
- Sport
- Type of wager (point spread, totals, Moneyline, etc.)
- Chosen winner and amount of bet
- Matchup details (home team, starting pitchers, NBA/NHL days of rest, weather, etc.)
- Final result
When organized properly these types of notes can be easy and quick to scan, and incredibly valuable in setting you up for success.
Identifying Strengths and Weaknesses
Every successful athlete watches films of their performance so they can become better at their sport. Hitters analyze every aspect of their swing. Wide receivers go over the details of routes and how they break and in and out of them. Basketball players scrutinize the elbow placement and launch position of their shots.
You too need to “watch the film” and identify where you have strengths, and where your sports betting game has weaknesses. The film is your record-keeping, and it is every bit as informative as a slow-motion analysis of a golf swing.
You may find that betting on certain teams is a loser more than any other, which helps you identify a hole in your ability to analyze them properly. You may also find that betting on certain sports, and the specific bets you place inside that sport, are where you find your greatest winning percentages and amounts.
The margins between being a successful sports bettor, and just one of the masses who loses at sports betting, are small. Any edge that you can give yourself can be the difference between losing $50-$100 every week and winning $100 a week.
Detailed record-keeping that controls your focus on managing your bankroll, and helps you dial in on the strengths and weaknesses of your overall sports betting performance, can be that winning edge. When done properly, tracking your sports bets is every bit as important and making the right bets.