There is no single winning strategy when it comes to gambling, whether you are betting on your favourite slot machine, a baseball team, or joining your friends in a game of poker.
Yet there are ways you can increase your odds of winning, leveraging collective knowledge, mastering your bankroll, and minimizing potential losses. This applies to any game, the strategy needs tweaking, sure, but the core concepts remain.
Specialists Beat Generalists
When it comes to gambling, whether it’s in sports or a casino setting, it pays to become an expert in a collection of games, leagues, sports, or even individual players.
You see, betting strategies work best with specialists, with generalists not having intimate knowledge of anything in particular. For example, in a casino environment, perhaps focus on table games, leaving slots for the occasional play-for-fun session.
You can use online operators like SkyCity Casino to practice with virtual games first, of which there are plenty to choose from. This gives you more time to make a decision, granting you ample chance to perfect your gameplay. You can then use this practice with live casino games and sporting events, which require quick thinking.
The same idea of specialism applies to sports. It’s much easier to leverage your knowledge in smaller leagues, like the Serie B compared to the English Premier League. In tennis, following individual players will help you identify good odds for certain matchups. When an injury report comes out for the team you follow, you should innately know how this affects the odds (and how you can maximize your chances).
Bankroll Management
Every single successful gambler, at least in the long term, practices effective bankroll management. Key phrase: in the long term. Yes, some can hit a hot streak without looking at their balance. Some will leverage their knowledge of a particular game to build a decent profit.
But, in the long run, you need a bankroll management strategy to survive, let alone win. Managing your bankroll needs a subjective approach, with your strategy being exactly that, yours.
Only you know how risk-averse you are, how you handle pressure, whether you’re the type to chase losses, and how much you can use as your initial cash amount.
But, there are a few ‘rules’ that apply to bankroll management. First, the game doesn’t matter. Whether you’re betting on whether a ball will land on red or black, playing a hand of blackjack, or whether the Yankees will beat the Red Sox, your bankroll does not care.
And neither should you. You need to think of the games in terms of the mathematics, the odds, and your bets not as dollars or euros or pounds, but as units, measured in percentage values against your entire bankroll.
In general, never bet more than 2% of your bankroll on a single bet. If you’re more conservative, go for 1%. For those who are a little ‘out there’, you go for 3% bets, but no more.
Understand How Odds Work
Odds seem pretty simple to understand, at first glance. For blackjack, the house edge hovers around 0.5%. That seems low, and most people interpret that as blackjack being a 50/50 game.
However, that’s not the case. First, to get to that low house edge, you need to be in command of basic strategy. This is how you should play based on the cards you’re dealt. Even if you lose, following a basic strategy is the right call in the long term.
RTP (Return to Player) is another concept you need to understand, and it applies to slots. This is the amount that you should expect to ‘get back’ overall. If RTP is 95%, you should see $95 back in your account after gambling through $100.
For sports, odds change depending on the event. You should become familiar with how odds are structured, and the types of bets where you can gain an advantage. The main draw events, like the Lakers vs. the Celtics, will be finely tuned, but a WNBA regular season game will not get the same attention.
For a true grounding in the math involved, consider taking a probability course to sharpen your knowledge. It will help you digest odds more easily.
Know When to Walk Away
The best gamblers know when it’s time to take a breather, whether you’re on a hot streak or facing mounting losses. Don’t follow the Martingale Strategy when you’ve hit multiple reds, or when you see Haaland failing to score in yet another match. Chasing losses will only lead to an evaporating bankroll.
Learn to take the hints you’re giving yourself, and when it’s just not your day. If you hit your win goal, be happy with the result, even if it’s early in your casino session. If your horse doesn’t win and you’ve spent your limit, don’t bet on the next race.
Gamblers who don’t know when to quit never last long. Good bettors set limits, stick to their rules, and take the emotion out of it. It’s the only way to play, the only way to win.
Hey Stefan, I wasn’t entirely sure how you wanted to include that RTP section and SkyCity, but the writer provided us with that section as per my instruction. I’ve left the SkyCity integration as it is (in the paragraph above) but if you want me to re-jig it to be in this one, please let me know.
Related: Understanding the Maths Behind Betting Odds (Explained)