When betting on your favorite sports, it literally pays to play it safe. If you aren’t making safe bets, you won’t just lose money but you could also fall into negative behaviors that have serious ramifications on your life. Check Below 10 Tips For Safe Sportsbook Betting.
With that in mind, here are ten tips for safe sportsbook betting, so you can be confident that you’re avoiding a lot of the risk that happens when you put your money on the line. If you’re looking to get started with sports betting, you’re doing yourself a service by looking at safe betting tips before you’ve even started. If you’re looking for a sportsbook, you can find more here.
10 Tips For Safe Sportsbook Betting Step by Step Guide
1. Have Clear Intentions
First, your approach to gambling needs to be fully thought out. Are you looking to become a pro gambler or are you doing it for entertainment? For the overwhelming majority of people, gambling should be seen as entertainment. If you win, great! If you lose, it’s no big deal because it was all in good fun and you wagered cash that you can lose.
Your mindset will dictate a lot of your betting behaviors. For example, a pro is going to be a lot more analytical than a casual bettor, and they’ll have no team affiliations either. When betting for fun, you may bet on your favorite team to show support or because you’re confident they can win.
2. Only Bet What You Can Lose
Having alluded to it in the first tip, it’s worth mentioning again – only bet what you can lose. You can only lose what you wager, so the simplest and easiest way to bet safely is to only gamble with disposable income that isn’t earmarked for bills, rent, groceries, or any other major financial obligations you have. Budget yourself and stick to it, which requires some willpower. If you don’t think you have the willpower, reconsider if betting is for you.
3. Set A Loss Limit
This is an advanced budgeting strategy that’s often used by the pros. Once again, it requires some willpower to work. When you set a loss limit, you decide on an amount or a percentage of your allocated betting fund. Once that is gone without making a profit, you stop. Let’s say you clear $200 for betting, setting a loss limit at $50 means that you’ll walk away if you lose 25% of your cash with subsequent losses. This enables pros to minimize risk while making their money go further.
It also disincentivizes chasing losses, speaking of which…
4. Don’t Chase Losses
Many bettors chase losses without even knowing this term, it’s a part of human nature for us to get optimistic (and greedy) when the odds are against us. Chasing losses is where you take some losses and then think ‘if I double my wager for the next bet, I can make that money back!’ You won’t. Even if that does end up happening, it’s an unhealthy mindset to have and it’ll catch you out more often than not.
5. Set A Time Limit
Along with limiting your cash, limiting your time is a great idea too. The longer you’re at a betting site, the more you’re going to play. Taking things like the house edge into account, the more you play, the more you lose! Set an alarm and, when it rings, stop.
6. Leave Your Bank Card
This one is simple enough and will help those who have poor willpower. Take only the cash you intend to use, don’t allow yourself to access any bank accounts to spend on betting.
7. Check Your Emotions
Gambling provides a rush that can form harmful behaviors if you’re in a bad place. If you’re feeling depressed or experiencing other negative emotions, gambling can give you a boost and quickly turn into a bad habit. Your decision-making is also harmed when upset, so you won’t find the best bets.
8. Take Breaks
Don’t get caught up in the action. Stop and think about your bets and use those opportunities to decide if you want to stop gambling too.
9. Do Other Things
While entertaining, gambling shouldn’t be the only fun activity in your life. That increases the risk you’ll get attached, learn bad behaviors, and lose money in the process.
10. No Drugs
Do we really need to explain this? Recreational drugs aren’t known for promoting a clear and rational mind in those that take them. And yes, alcohol is one of those drugs.