Caution! Don't Overlook The Spread/Handicap

A common mistake many of us made when we first started with sports betting is not knowing how to separate our judgements from the reality of the sports which we bet on.

To go into more details, what I am emphasizing here is that when we follow the sports for awhile, we always have a pre-fixed mentality about teams. For example, as a football/soccer fan I naturally think that Manchester United is a good team that can win matches easily, and that will subconsciously make me want to place my bets on them and the conclusion which I drew about them on their actual performance will justify decisions to give away handicap for their matches. In other words, I am actually judging the bet from a soccer fan's point of view than a sports bettor.

Using Man U as an example, let's take a look at their performances this season on both the handicap front as well as their actual match performances:

Handicap/Point Spread
Games played: 30
Won: 15
Draw: 3
Lost: 12
Winning percentage: 50%

Match Performances This Season
Games played: 30
Won: 22
Draw: 4
Lost: 4
Winning percentage: 73%

Spot the difference yet? This is how handicap changes the whole perspective about a team on the betting front. In fact, Man U currently stands in the top of the table in the English Premier League, but on the handicap front they are only in 7th place.

The point which I am driving at is, if you bet like a fan over time, you will lose a lot of money. I have always told people that don't rely on your knowlege of the game alone and put in some hard work analyzing the odds etc. I concluded that there are basically two reasons why sports bookmakers are making a lot of money, first being that the odds are always in their favour and secondly is because of a lot of ignorant fans out there thinking that they can outsmart the bookies with their knowledge of the game. Trust me, if these people run billion dollar businesses taking your bets, they definitely research and analyze tens and thousands of times more than you to open the market with certain handicaps.

The bottom line is, in order for you to start winning as a sports bettor, stop thinking like a fan first!