Research is one of the most important aspects of sports betting. Specifically, the willingness to roll up your sleeves and do it, and the insight to know how to do it properly.

Celebrity handicapper Steve Stevens from CNBC's original series 'Money Talks' provides simple explanations of sports betting terminology and gives out his fo.

10 Simple Strategies for Becoming a Better Sports Bettor 1. Manage Your Bankroll and Create a Unit Size. It’s integral that, as a sports bettor, you decide how much money you’re. Understand Your Risk. It does little good to win bets and then get stiffed by the sport betting site. This is the reason I strongly advise sticking to legitimate sportsbooks. The gambling sites you frequent should be trustworthy. Sports Betting Explained: The Basics. Benefits of Sports Betting. Sports betting is one of the more. Understand the concept of value. If you don't have this, walk away. Sure you might be.

Good research will make smart bets that pay off. That’s not to say you should ignore your gut. If your gut is telling you to something, it better have the data to back it up.

Below, we’re going to dig deeply into the art and science of sports betting research. Here’s a peek at what we’ll be covering:

• Why smart research is critical to your performance
• Sports betting biases and how they can hurt your bankroll
• What you should be focusing on when researching your bets
• Where to find reliable data
• How to create an effective research and analysis plan
• How to avoid costly misinterpretations of the data
• The art of analyzing your past performance
• The importance of identifying good value

By the time you finish reading, you’ll know how to make intelligent bets that bolster your bankroll.

Why Research Is Important For Sports Betting

When it comes to sports gambling, the more you know, the better you perform.

Information is what separates the hobbyist bettor who loses the majority of his (or her) bets from the profitable handicapper.

The former makes bets recklessly. He pays little attention to data and spends little time working the numbers. Consequently, he lacks the intel he needs to make intelligent wagers.

The latter knows there’s immense power in information. He spends time and effort crunching numbers to find opportunities. He can look at the moneyline or spread for a given game, and know whether it offers good value.

Predictably, the handicapper makes winning bets more often than the hobbyist. Many expert handicappers are professional, full-time sports bettors who make a comfortable living.

And that’s the reason research is crucial. It’ll help you to optimize your betting performance. Research gives you a greater chance of success every time you wager money. It helps you to hone in on the best opportunities while avoiding excessive risk.

The Danger Of Sports Betting Biases

Biases give rise to preconceptions. They might seem harmless, but can be very costly when it comes to betting on football, basketball, and other sports. They result in false expectations, and ultimately lead to poor decision-making.

Following are 5 common sports betting biases you’d do well to avoid

1. Confirmation bias

You have an existing theory about a game and interpret information in a way that confirms your theory.

2. Hindsight bias

You suddenly have 20/20 vision when reflecting on past games. You base future decisions on this newfound “insight.”

3. Outcome bias

You unfairly judge the merit of your decision based on how a particular bet turns out. Good decisions look like terrible ones in the light of unfavorable outcomes. Note that it’s possible for sound decisions to result in lost bets. Outcome bias contradicts the logic behind those decisions.

4. Recency bias

You place too much importance on recent performance, using it to predict future performance. For example, you assume the Celtics will win an upcoming game because they’ve won their last seven games.

5. Gambler’s Fallacy

You misinterpret past events as having predictive value. For example, you assume the Patriots will win the Super Bowl because they won last year.

These preconceptions have zero value when you bet on sports.

In fact, they’re worse than valueless because they prompt you to make terrible decisions that result in losses.

Biases are expensive. While they may be a part of human nature, it’s in your interest to abandon them.

Sports Betting Research Basics: What To Keep Your Eyes On

Suppose you’re betting on a team sport (e.g. football, basketball, hockey, etc.) as opposed to player-based sport, such as tennis, MMA, or golf. That being the case, there are a number of basic stats you should focus on.

Start by reviewing each team’s long-term performance.

• How have they fared during their last several seasons?

Next, review the teams’ short-term shifts in performance.

• First, identify the shifts. Then, try to identify the factors that caused them.

For example, let’s say a team has recently had difficulty preventing turnovers.

• Is the QB having trouble holding the ball after the snap, or are his receivers failing to make first downs?

The next step is to focus on recent news.

Pay attention to the injury report.

• Who’s a recent addition? Who just came off the list?

Pay attention to recent suspensions.

• If a key player has been suspended, when is he due back on the field?

How To Get Good At Sports Betting

Who’s been consigned to warm the bench, and how are his subs expected to perform?

• If you are betting NBA and want some great ‘who benefits when someone is injured’ tools, check out Fantasy5x5, it’s awesome.

Now, check out the matchups.

What happened in past games when the two teams you’re researching have met on the field? Does one typically outperform the other? Or is there a deeply-rooted rivalry between the teams that increases the uncertainty of the game’s outcome?

Those are the basics.

They’re a starting point.

You’ll also want to research select stats based on the sport you’re betting on.

• Football

Pay attention to numbers like turnover differential, points per game, yards per game, sacks, tackles, interceptions, pass yards per attempt, and defensive points per 100 yards.

• Basketball

Focus on turnover percentage, field goal percentage, pace factor, free throw rate, and a team’s against-the-spread (ATS) record.

• Baseball

Watch the starting pitcher’s stats (ERA, WHIP, K/9, etc.). Then, drill down to the hitters’ numbers (on-base percentage, runs per game, BABIP, etc.).

The above is by no means an exhaustive list. But you get the idea: many of the stats you should track will depend on the sport.

Start with the basics. That alone will put you ahead of most hobbyist sports bettors.

Where To Find Reliable, Actionable Information

So you know you need information to make intelligent bets. The question is, where do you find it? The data needs to be reliable. You’re not looking for opinions. You’re looking for solid, actionable intel.

The good news is that you can find such information at a myriad of places online. Start at the official websites for whatever sport you’re betting on.

Examples include NFL.com, NBA.com, MLB.com, and NHL.com.

You’ll find basic stats as well as details about scheduling changes, injuries, and suspensions. But keep your expectations in check. These sites are useful, but won’t deliver the hardcore data you need to complete your research.

Next, visit sites like ESPN.com that offer data on all of the popular sports. They’re great for keeping abreast of breaking news items. Fair warning: these sites employ a lot of columnists; the level of insight varies wildly between them.

Next, visit sites that specialize in providing sports statistics.

Examples include Baseball-Reference.com, Pro-Football-Reference.com, and Basketball-Reference.com. Whichever sites you use, just make sure their numbers are accurate and regularly updated.

Fan sites often deliver surprisingly good intel. Some of these sites are run by folks who live and breathe their favorite teams. They follow everything these teams and their respective players do.

Oftentimes, these folks are more knowledgeable about their favorite teams and athletes than the columnists at places like ESPN.com.

I have mixed feelings about social media. It can be useful in terms of finding good, actionable intel. But there’s such a low signal-to-noise ratio that finding such intel can be time-consuming and tedious. Proceed with caution.

How To Create A Sports Betting Research PLAN

In my opinion, it’s just as important to have a plan for researching a game/bet as it is to know where to find good intel. Your plan is your blueprint. It’s your map. It guides your actions, ensuring that you take the necessary steps to obtain the info you need to make smart bets.

Without a plan, you risk forgetting steps. And that’s a recipe for disaster.

We covered the basics in the previous sections. You now know the type of research you need to do, and you’ll eventually come up with a list of places to source the data. Let’s now put it all together into a simple procedure you can follow each time you intend to bet.

First, create a folder in your browser.

• Store your bookmarks

Store bookmarks for every site you use for intel, from ESPN.com to Pro-Football-Reference.com (if you decide to use the latter). If you follow a particular columnist, add a bookmark for his column to this folder.

You want everything in one place. That’ll alleviate the need to search for stuff later.

• Commit to prioritizing data over opinions.

It’s easy to become an information junkie, reading column after column with little to show for your time. Decide upfront that numbers will always trump opinions.

• Commit to spending a certain amount of time researching games.

If you know in advance that your research will take two hours to complete, you’ll be less inclined to rush things and cut corners. The time expectation is already set.

• Lastly, create a cheat sheet.

Write down easy-to-follow steps. For example, your cheat sheet for football betting might look like the following:

1. Review each team’s long-term track record
2. Review short-term performance trends
3. Check the injury report
4. Note recent suspensions
5. Visit select sites to obtain relevant stats
6. Crunch data to yield key data
7. Watch each team’s most recent games
8. Shop for the best lines

Advice Betting Sport

This cheat sheet will ensure you don’t forget a step. Eventually, you’ll memorize the research and analysis process, and won’t need this aid. But until that happens, it’s useful.

Warning: Be Careful Not To Misinterpret The Data!

One of the most common blunders made by sports bettors is to perceive insight where none exists. This misstep often leads to poor decisions that end up costing a lot of money.

For example, suppose you notice that the Steelers tend to win whenever Ben Roethlisberger starts as QB and Antonio Brown is one of his receivers. While both players are excellent performers, the fact that both are on the field doesn’t mean the Steelers are going to win.

That might sound obvious to you. But you’d be surprised by how often bets are made based on this type of correlation. It’s as misguided as thinking a Subaru Outback is a superb vehicle just because you see a bunch of them on the road.

Your research will yield a lot of useful data. Just be careful not to mistakenly assign causation to variables that seem related.

How To Use Your Past Betting Performance For Intel

In addition to the data you obtain via research, you’ll also want to review your past betting records. You may find that you excel at some types of wagers and consistently stumble making other types.

We’ve talked about how to track your betting activity in the past, so I won’t belabor that point here. The most important thing to remember is that your past performance will reveal your strengths along with areas you need to improve.

For example, you might find that you have difficulty making prop bets work regardless of the amount of research you do.

The point is that you should keep a betting log and use it to inform your decisions. It’s a different type of research than we’ve focused on in the majority of this guide. But it’s just as crucial. Or you may discover that you excel at parlays and over/unders. Incidentally, maybe you tend to perform better betting on certain teams than others.

The Hunt For Value: Finding The Best Opportunities

It’s important to identify bets that also offer good value. That’s one of the ways you can maximize your chances of winning. Finding good-value bets is a matter of looking at the odds.

The odds for a wager reflect the probability that a particular outcome will occur. Your job is to decide whether the odds are acceptable given the potential payoff.

Finding value isn’t about winning bets. It’s about identifying bets where the probability of winning is greater than the odds imply.

Another way to think of it is that you’re seeking potential rewards that outweigh the accompanying risks.

The process of identifying good-value bets involves a fair bit of math, and thus lies beyond the scope of this guide. Suffice to say, it’s a skill worth learning.

Value betting is an effective tactic shared by professional sports bettors.

The Most Important Step: Choosing Legitimate Sportsbooks

All the research in the world won’t help you if you risk your money placing bets at dubious sportsbooks in the first place.

Above all, this point can’t be overstated. It does little good to win bets and then get stiffed by the sport betting site.

This is the reason I strongly advise sticking to legitimate sportsbooks. The gambling sites you frequent should be trustworthy, offer easy and convenient banking options, and provide responsive customer support.

Lastly, if you’re not sure where to start, I encourage you to check out my list of top-rated betting sites. Read the comprehensive reviews for each one. They’ll give you the information you need to choose reputable sportsbooks where you can place bets with the comfort of knowing your money is safe.

If You Liked This Guide, You’ll Love These!

This guide is aimed primarily at people who have never bet on sports before, and know very little about what’s involved. It contains all the information needed to get started, with everything explained in a manner that’s very easy to follow. Even those who already have some experience of betting on sports may find the guide useful, as it’s very comprehensive with a lot of helpful advice.

There are a few different parts to this guide. The first part features a number of articles that are all about the basics of sports betting. These cover topics such as the mechanics of sports betting, how to place wagers, and the roles of probability and odds. The next part contains some advice for when you first start betting, and includes some useful resources for beginners. There’s a glossary of sports betting terms, and an FAQ. Finally, there’s a collection of articles explaining all about the various types of bets and the different forms of betting.

Everything that’s included in this beginner’s guide to sports betting is listed below. If you’re a complete novice then we’d recommend reading through everything in order, but you can skip to anything that is of particular interest if you prefer. Also on this page is some additional information about some other sports betting sections on our website. These are useful if you want to expand your knowledge and improve your betting skills, and there’s some advice for betting online as well.

Sports Betting Explained: The Basics

Benefits of Sports Betting

Sports betting is one of the more popular forms of gambling, because it offers a few advantages over many of the alternatives. In this article we look at its benefits when compared to playing casino games or playing poker, and also some of the other reasons why you might want to try betting on sports.

Mechanics of Sports Betting

Before you should even consider risking your own money, you should really understand the basic mechanics of how sports betting works. This article will teach you exactly what you need to know in order to start betting your money, including the three main components that make up a sports wager.

How to Place Sports Bets

Once you know how sports betting works, you can then think about placing some bets. In this article we explain what’s involved in the process, and the various methods you can use. Telephone betting, bookmaker shops, casino sportsbooks, and online gambling sites are all covered.

Understanding Odds

Odds are an integral part of sports betting, so you really need to understand them. This article does exactly that by explaining what they are and how they work, as well as also looking at their different formats. There is a guide to the math involved in calculating potential payouts when figuring out your returns.

How Bookmakers Make Money

Bookmakers don’t just make money by accident. They use specific techniques to ensure that they (usually at least) make a profit from every betting market that they offer. You need to be aware of these techniques, as they are the reason why bookmakers have the advantage over their customers.

Probability and Value

The concept of value and how it relates to probability is vital knowledge if you are to stand any chance of success when betting on sports. This article explains what you need to know in detail, and will give you a fundamental understanding of what it takes to identify good betting opportunities.

Tips, Advice and Useful Resources

The next two articles contain tips for what to do, and what not to do, when you first start betting. You should follow the advice featured in these articles from the moment you start betting. It will help you get into good habits, and greatly improve your chances of making money in the long run.

Top Tips for Beginners

There is little point in trying to become an expert on sports betting as soon as you start out. It can be hard enough trying to understand how everything works. As a beginner, it’s important to focus primarily on just the basics. There are a few simple tips that are worth following though, and we’ve listed them all in this article.

MORE Mistakes to Avoid

It’s natural to make mistakes as a beginner to sports betting, and you shouldn’t worry too much if you do. They are part of the learning process. With that being said, there are a few common mistakes that are actually relatively easy to avoid. This article provides some advice on how not to fall into the same traps that so many beginners do.

We’ve also provided two additional resources which contain very useful information for beginners.

Sports Betting FAQ

There are several questions that we hear all the time from sports betting beginners looking for advice on getting started. We’ve compiled a list of the most common ones, and provided detailed answers to them in our FAQ. The following are some examples of the questions we answer.

• What Is The Best Sport To Bet On?
• What Is A Value Bet?
• How Much Should I Stake?
• Should I Pay For Tips

The answers to these questions, and more, can all be found on the following page.

Sports Betting Glossary

There are times when it can feel like sports betting has its own language, and this can make things very confusing for a beginner. Our comprehensive glossary can clear up any confusion, as it explains all the jargon and technical terms you are likely to encounter when betting on sports.

It’s not necessary to learn all the words and phrases contained in this glossary at this stage, but you might want to bookmark it to refer to any time you come across a term you don’t understand.

Types of Bets and Different Forms of Betting

Types of Bets

The following articles will teach you all about the different wagers you can place on sports events. You probably won’t want to use all of these when you first start betting, but it’s still advisable to understand all the available options and how they work.

The first of these articles contains a brief overview of each type of bet, and you should read this one as a minimum. The rest of the articles explain each bet in more detail, with working examples. You can read them now, or refer to them at a later date when you are ready to start experimenting with different wagers.

Forms of Betting

There are a few alternative forms of sports betting that provide different ways to bet on sports events. We advise familiarizing yourself with these, even if you don’t have any plans to get involved with them right now. It’s always useful to consider other ways of making money from your sports knowledge

Before You Start: Information You Should Know

For some reason, a lot of people seem to think that betting on sports makes watching them less enjoyable. This is perhaps because they are under the impression that it means taking things too seriously, and worrying about things like statistics and form rather than simply relaxing and watching a game.

Let us assure you that this is nonsense. You certainly can choose to take your betting seriously, and it may affect the way that you watch sports events, but it really doesn’t take the fun out of things. It’s quite the opposite in fact. In our view at least, placing wagers on events makes watching them even more enjoyable. It adds to the excitement, as it means there’s always something or someone to cheer for.

It’s not essential to learn all about the strategy involved in sports betting, and indeed the vast majority of people who bet don’t. They simply enjoy putting their sports knowledge to the test, and giving themselves the opportunity to win some money. We do recommend learning at least the basics of what to do, but they are all that’s needed if you just want to have some fun and place the occasional wagers on your favorite sports.

As fun as sports betting can be, it’s important to recognize the fact that it does involve risk. It doesn’t matter how much you know about sports, you’re never going to be able to predict the outcome of events with 100% accuracy. Even if you mostly back big favorites, there’s still going to be the occasional upset where things don’t turn out as expected.

Risk is a part of any form of gambling, so don’t let this put you off betting on sports. It’s just that you need to be prepared for the possibility of losing money. Most people do lose money overall, and there’s a good chance that you will too. This is why you must gamble responsibly. You should set a budget to bet with, and only ever use money that you can afford to lose.

Even though most people lose money through sports betting, this doesn’t mean that you have to. The bookmakers do have an advantage because they set the odds, but their advantage is not impossible to overcome. It’s not like playing casino games where there is a house edge that cannot be beaten. There’s still some luck involved of course, but there is no reason at all why you can’t take from the bookmakers if you know what you’re doing.

If you plan on taking your betting seriously, and are aiming to make consistent profits, then you need to go a step or two further than just understanding the basics. Success takes hard work and commitment, and there’s a lot to learn, but with enough knowledge and the right approach you can be a winner. The following two sections of our sports betting guide can help you to achieve your goals.

Sports Betting Online

The information in this beginner’s guide is all relevant regardless of how you actually choose to place your bets. The advice it contains applies regardless of whether you bet over the phone, in a bookmakers shop, or with a casino sportsbook. Seeing as the most popular way to bet these days is over the internet, however, we’ve also produced a section dedicated to betting online. Check out our page that discusses both methods.

This section covers each of the following topics, and also includes a step by step guide to joining a sports betting site and placing wagers.

• Advantages of Betting Online
• Choosing Where to Bet
• Getting Started with Online Sports Betting
• Bonuses & Rewards
• Using Multiple Sites

Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, we also recommend the top sports betting sites in several different categories. We’ll help you to find the very best sites that are the most suitable for any personal preferences or requirements you may have. Each one of our recommendations is reliable and trustworthy, so you can be sure of a safe betting experience.