How To Start Betting On Football In 2021
If you want to spice up a regular game of football, there are few better ways to do so than to place a bet. Whether you’re doing so for real money or just for fun, nothing alters your perception of what’s happening during a football game in a moment-to-moment sense than having stakes on one of the teams. You can bet on match outcomes, goals scored, or even plays made, but all of these bets have one thing in common: they’re available online, and you can place bets with a number of different platforms. Here’s how you can start betting on football in 2021.
Pick the right platform
It’s important to make sure you’re placing your sports bet on the right platform. While most platforms will be completely above board, some are potentially unscrupulous, so make sure you’re doing your research when it comes to placing your football bets. Big, trustworthy platforms will have plenty of aggregate reviews on Trustpilot or similar sites, so you should be able to find plenty of user testimonials for those sites. If you can’t, then you might want to ask yourself why that is. Betting with real money means there’s a lot at stake (literally), so make sure you’re not being taken for a ride!
Get some casino practice in
You might not think online casino platforms would have much to teach you about the art of sports betting, but that’s where you’d be wrong. The truth is that placing a few wagers on an online casino site could help you greatly in aspects of sports betting like bankroll management and understanding when to bet and when to walk away. Platforms like OnlineCasinos can help you to differentiate between casinos that are worth your time and sites you shouldn’t bother with, so just like when you’re picking a sports betting platform, be discerning!
Pick a team and follow them
If you try to bet on every team in your chosen league, you’re quickly going to become overwhelmed. It’s a good idea to select a single team and follow their fortunes. Don’t make the classic mistake of picking the team you support, either; involving emotion in your decisions is only going to make you slip up, and when you do, you’ll be sorry you weren’t more dispassionate. If you really must bet on your team, make sure that if they’re tipped to lose, you make the logical decision and bet against them, because that’s how you stand to potentially make more money (although this is never guaranteed, of course).
Learn betting terminology
Do you know the difference between an outright bet and scorecast betting? Are you familiar with wincast betting, and do you know what a three-way handicap is? These are all important terms you need to familiarise yourself with if you want to start betting on football. There’s also a range of sports betting-specific nomenclature and jargon that it’s worth knowing, because this will help to inform your decisions. What’s an accumulator? When is it time to place bets according to AET odds? The more terminology you know, the more well-informed you’ll be when it comes to making betting decisions.
Start with a decent bankroll
Your bankroll is your primary resource when you’re sports betting. It’s the money you’ll dip into when you make bets, and it’s what dictates your hard limits so that you don’t overspend. It’s important to go into sports betting with a reasonable bankroll, but we can’t tell you what that is; you have to make the decision based on your own resources and preferences, as well as the scope of the bets you want to make. Just remember that your bankroll should be totally separate from your main reserve of money, because betting should only ever be a hobby.
Make smaller bets
Trust us when we say that making smaller bets on football games is a better way to enjoy betting than making big, risky decisions. When you make smaller bets, you may be limiting the amount you can win, but you’re also cutting your losses, so if you find yourself on the wrong end of a losing streak – as can frequently happen – then you won’t give in to gambler’s fallacy and make even more reckless decisions to recover. Bet little and often rather than big, because that’s how you look after your bankroll. It’ll make sense in the long run.
Learn more about football
It’s essential to have a good degree of knowledge about football before you start betting. Chances are you’re already a fan, in which case you’ll already have a good bank of information readily available. However, if you don’t know anything about football, it’s worth brushing up before you start betting, because many of your decisions will be made according to what happens on a day-to-day basis in the league. Whatever your chosen level of football is, try to amass an encyclopaedic knowledge of the teams, players, and fixtures within the league.
Develop a strategy
Successful football betting is all about spotting trends and phenomena that others may not have noticed. For example, if you notice a certain player always plays in a particular way or performs to a certain standard under specific conditions – home advantage, for instance, or when taking penalties – then you can incorporate this into your strategy and use it to inform your betting decisions. This is also why it might pay to pick a less popular league, because there will be fewer people betting on it by definition, which will give you more room to stretch your wings and develop a strong strategy.