What are the top five things to avoid when betting on sports?

top 5 of things to avoid when betting on sports

Betting on sports should be fun. At its most fundamental level, any punter who places a wager should get a degree of excitement and enjoyment from the process.

That should be the case regardless of whether they win or lose. Of course, everyone that places a bet wants to win. However, winning should not be the decisive factor as to whether you enjoy betting.

This positive attitude is the foundation stone for developing good, responsible betting habits. It will help ensure your relationship with sports betting remains what it should be - a fun, enjoyable, affordable and responsible hobby.

However, retaining a positive mindset, especially when in the midst of a losing streak, can be tricky. It is then that some of the less responsible betting behaviours and decisions can be made.

So what are those behaviours that you never want to engage in when betting on sports?

In this article, we’ll highlight five behaviours that you should never engage in when sports betting. We will also explain why they can be so detrimental to your enjoyment of sports betting and even to other aspects of your personal life.

Five Things You Should Never Do When Sports Betting

1. Bet more than you can comfortably afford to lose.

Alongside having the right attitude to sports betting, being financially responsible when sports betting is also not just important, but a necessity. That means, if you do not have comfortably enough funds available to bet with, then you should not bet.

Many people that develop problems when betting do so because they started with good intentions, but then made a bad decision at one point. Often, that decision is to bet with money they could not afford to lose.

By that, I don’t mean solely making a bet of a monetary value that made them uncomfortable (although that is also true in this case). Often it means simply losing the money they could comfortably afford to lose. Then deciding that they want to try and recoup some of that by betting money that is needed for other things.

Betting should be viewed as an enjoyable hobby, never a necessity or a solution to a financial problem. So, to enjoy it responsibly, you should only ever use funds that you can afford to lose, once everything else you need to pay for is sorted.

A good skill to use here is budgeting. Many bookmakers now offer customers tools to calculate their monthly disposable income once all the necessities have been paid for.

By having a budget each week or per month and sticking to it, you can ensure that you only ever bet with money that you can afford to lose. By doing that, you also lay the foundation to enjoy responsible sports betting for many years to come.

2. Bet on the belief it is a way to resolve money problems.

Whether it is rising energy bills, increases in rent or mortgage costs, an unexpected bill arriving for the car, a child’s school trip or an unexpected trip to the vet for your pet hamster, even the best family budget can fall short at times. This often means that on some occasions, people may be a little short of cash.

Betting is never a way to resolve this, even in the short term and even for just a relatively small amount of money. Yes, you can win money when betting. But it is never guaranteed and the odds are always stacked against you.

In fact, in those months when your disposable income is less than usual, it is more prudent to stop betting and use the funds on items that are more important and far more of a necessity.

Humans are predisposed to remember the better times more so than the average or worse. In betting terms, that means, you may well recall when that £50 double turned into a fantastic win of £400. That may well be at the forefront of your mind when you are looking at an unexpected car repair bill of £350.

However, your mind won’t recall the tens or even hundreds of other £50 double bets you laid, but lost. There are always better solutions to resolve money issues, even more serious, longer-term issues, than gambling.

In fact, in extreme cases, gambling will likely only exacerbate the problem.

3. Bet when angry and/or under the influence of alcohol.

In poker, there is a term called “tilt’. It is used to describe a player that has become so angry at what has happened in the game, that they are not playing rationally and their anger is making them make fundamental mistakes and errors in judgement.

Being on ‘tilt’ is not just a problem in poker. If you are angry for any reason and decide that sports betting is the answer. Be aware, it likely isn’t. Because you are not in the right mindset to enjoy what it has to offer in a responsible matter.

The same is true if you have enjoyed a plentiful supply of alcohol in the hours preceding your attempts to bet. In the same way being angry can cloud your judgement, alcohol, or indeed any other form of drug, can impair your judgement considerably.

Suddenly, that 150/1 bet on Stirling Albion to beat Manchester City 7-0 in that pre-season friendly seems like a great idea for a bet.

So, never bet when angry or when you have had excess alcohol or similar. You need a clear head to make qualified judgements on what markets and selections to bet on. Anger and alcohol will both severely impair this.

4. Chase your losses.

If there were to be a Ten Commandments of sports betting, or gambling of any form, then the first of those commandments would be never to chase your losses.

Much of this refers back to developing the right attitude to sports betting that we mentioned in the introduction. Once you make a bet, view it as money spent—money you would not ordinarily get back. Then, view any winnings you may receive back as a bonus.

Issues quickly arise when people view a loss as ‘money I should have won or need to have won’ and so they attempt to recoup that money by making another bet. Which often also loses. They then have incurred greater losses, so now need to make larger and longer odds bets to recoup the funds they have spent. The spiral downwards can continue for an alarming time for those who try to chase their losses in such a way.

Like it or not, for all the excitement of winning, even the best sports bettors lose far more often than they win. However, by understanding that a loss is a loss, and that the money is gone, it nurtures a positive attitude to losing bets and avoids an individual losing cash they can’t afford to in pursuit of the lost stakes.

5. Leave all your winnings in your betting account for future bets.

Many punters will land a win, but leave the winnings in their account for future bets. While for the majority of wins, this is absolutely fine, there is a point where you should consider sharing the benefits of any good fortune you may have with a bookmaker.

Betting is, by and large, a solitary activity. Your friends and family may know you bet, but they are not involved in the process in the main. They don’t get the enjoyment from it you do. They may even wonder why you bet in the first place. Especially if they only see money going out of your account into a bookmakers account, and none coming the other way.

As such, it is a prudent idea to share any good fortune you do get from time to time with others. If you land a bigger value win, withdraw the money from your betting account. Treat yourself or better still, your family and/or friends to something nice.

If they see some benefit from your betting, then they are likely to be more supportive of your hobby.Furthermore, it feels nice to enjoy something that you feel the bookmaker is paying for!

So if lady luck shines down on you and you enjoy a good size win at the bookmakers, remember to withdraw it and enjoy the fruits of your labour. Otherwise, if you leave it in your account, the likelihood is you will just end up giving it back to the bookmaker over time.