A tedious, yet important (and maybe boring), part of sports betting involves tracking your bets. If you’re a somewhat serious sports bettor and looking to profit long-term in betting, tracking your bets is a must. Bookkeeping tells you what you’re good at, what you’re not good at, and everything in between. Most people who first jump into sports betting tend to believe they can easily beat the market, but tracking the data can take the emotion and irrational thinking out of it. You may be successful with a certain angle; you may be losing on certain plays that you were unaware of – the numbers are there to show the truth.
Be Consistent
The first point is to be consistent with tracking your plays. You need as many data points as possible, so it’s extremely important to track every bet. Whether it’s a winner or loser, you need to make sure it’s accounted for. The easiest way to ensure this is to enter the bet info as soon as you place the bet. That way, it will already be tracked regardless of the outcome.
What Exactly do I Track?
You want to include all details of your bet: the date of the game, the side/total you bet, the juice, the type of bet made (straight bet, parlay, teaser, etc.), how much you bet, the outcome of bet. These are the bare minimum items to track. Without tracking this information, you wouldn’t be able to draw any conclusions from your betting history.
Other Important Factors
If you want to be successful long-term, there are 2 other advanced items to track: ROI and Closing Line Value. ROI is your return on investment. Simply put, it’s the amount of profit you earned divided by the amount of money you risked. For example, if you risked $100 and profited $10, your ROI would be 10%. In the long run, an ROI over 5% or better is considered good in the sports betting world.
Closing Line Value, or CLV, is a comparison between the line/odds that you placed your bet at vs. what the line closed at. If your bet has better odds than the closing line, you have positive CLV. If your bet has worse odds, you have negative CLV. The actual calculation for percent of gained or lost CLV is complex because you must calculate the implied odds and then remove the vig, but in the most general terms, you want your bet to have better odds than the closing line. If you’re able to beat the closing line consistently, you have a good chance of winning long-term.
Analyzing the Data
You want to analyze the information in a few different ways. The first would be by sport. You may have a knack for the NFL but really struggle with the NBA. You also want to dive in on bet types. In college football, you may do well with totals, but picking sides hasn’t been profitable. Once you have your data, you can decide which type of bets you need to improve on or completely cut back and which ones have been profitable for you.
When analyzing the information, you want to make sure you have an understanding of the sample size of the data as well. If you only have 10 total bets in a category that information isn’t as helpful compared to a category with 500+ bets.
How To Track
The old school days of logging bets with pencil and paper are long gone. Technology has made this process much easier and even automated. The betStamp app allows you to track every bet made and it calculates your total dollar win/loss, your ROI, and your CLV. You can even use the Betlink feature which automatically adds your plays to the app as soon as you place them with the sportsbook. Start tracking your plays today and start learning your edges!