Sports betting is similar to your journey in life. Everything gets much easier and more successful if you walk on a path that’s already paved. In sports betting, setting a goal is like paving the path of your betting career and helping you increase your profits in the long run. That’s really what everyone wants in betting, right?
Setting Your Sports Betting Goals
Let’s get straight into setting your goals. What should you be focusing on, and why are certain things more important than others? We’ve listed the important questions that you should ask yourself to help you set the right goals and strategies:
Why Do You Choose to Bet?
Some bet on excitement and emotions, while others just want to escape boredom. Some serious bettors also thrive on outplaying the bookie as a professional activity. These bettors mainly do it due to the potential of receiving huge rewards from betting. So, which group do you belong to? Of course, determining which bettor you are may take some time, but this should be one of the first steps before you continue betting on sports.
What’s Your Budget?
Once you start placing your first bet, you need to set your ideal budget. Most importantly, you should bet with cash separated from other needs like your monthly bills, etc. Make sure that your goal of beating the bookie doesn’t affect your personal life’s expenses.
What Approach Are You Using for Your Bets?
Next, you’ll need to determine the kind of betting system you want to use. Do you want to go for flat or other kinds of stake? Pick one before you register an account at a bookie.
Set Your Plan
How much are you planning to make within a set of timeframes? You’ll need to come up with an amount that would be ideal for a specific period. This allows us to make progress and track how far we’ve come from reaching our ultimate goal of beating the bookies.
Check the Entire PreviousSeason
Before you place any bets, look at the entire previous season first. For example, if you want to bet on both teams to score market in football, you need to look at both teams’ performances during the entire league. You wouldn’t want to bet on this market if both teams currently have a low number of goals throughout the season.
Avoid Distractions
Setting achievable goals requires studying your bets and digging into crucial sports betting information. Also, you’ll need to identify your strengths and weaknesses. This means that putting aside your distractions is important. This is because it may be difficult for people to bet on sports while constantly distracted by their wandering minds or other business.
We recommend you start your day earlier by getting up earlier in the morning (before everyone else) so you can dedicate your time and focus completely on sports betting. Also, don’t stay up too late at night so you can have a fresh start each day.
Check the Trends
An excellent way to ensure that you’ll be achieving your goals is by looking at the trends within whatever sport or league you want to bet on. You might find some interesting patterns, like discovering a team that has lost six matches in a row, etc.
If you aim to only win “one more match,” this may become challenging or even impossible, so it doesn’t make sense to set high expectations.
However, your goal might be investing some of your underdog team to win the next match. In this case, even though their previous 5 matches were brutal losses by many goals, they will likely be considered the underdog in the next game. Therefore, you’ll have a better chance for them to turn things around.
Be Ready for Success
When setting yourself up for success, focus on things like: “Are you knowledgeable enough about this sport or league?” or “Should you take the bet if you don’t have much time before the match starts?” These are only some of the simplest questions you should ask yourself to help you see whether your goals are achievable before you take any bets.
Set Your Goals the SMART Way
Now that you’re ready to put your goals into action for your online betting journey, how do you actually do it? What criteria should you use and what goals to set to achieve profitable results? Below are the 5 basic points that your goals must fulfil, which we call the SMART points:
S – specified
The first step is clearly describing your goal and its main focus. You should have a straightforward and unequivocal goal so that you won’t have any doubts in the long run. For example, if your goal is to know more about football, then “get yourself together” seems like an ambiguous goal which you might interpret differently in the future. You can express it better by saying (for example) “watch this a football league” which is much more effective.
M – measurable
Writing down your goal may be an effective and easier way to reach your goals. Adding some measurable value to it allows you to make room for assessment of the progress you’ve made. So, if you look at our example before: “watch this a football league,” it only manages to fulfil the specification criterion but couldn’t satisfy the measurable aspect. To achieve both criteria for your goal, you should rephrase it to the following way: “watch the Premier League and check out the player and team stats.”
A – attractive
This point works to give you that extra motivation and offers the idea of why you really want to achieve the goal. It also bears the events of any challenges and sacrifices along the way, which will make the eventual success even more anticipated. So, do you think a goal like “Look up stats of past 10 matches” is motivating? We don’t think so, but there’s nothing bad you can get out of it. How about if we change it to “Look at past stats of scored goals and bet on most goals market to win $100,” see the difference? It’s an entirely new situation when you set it this way.
R – realistic
You likely won’t achieve your goals when you overestimate yourself and set the bars a little too high. With our lifting examples above, let’s say it would be better to break the goal down into a few stages or stretch the time frame. This will work much more effectively instead of attempting to “win $100 in a week.”
T – time
The deadline is a crucial factor in achieving a goal. We have been dealing with endless deadlines throughout our lifetime, whether submitting your school’s assignment or finishing a task for a client at work or your business. All of which have a timeframe of when it’s due. Like these projects and tasks, you also need to set proper time frames for your progress with the bookie you’re betting on to achieve your goals. Without these timeframes, you’ll likely make your goals less a priority and eventually forget about them.
The SMART Sports Betting Goal
To sum it up with our previous examples, your SMART goal should be as follows: “100kg bench press in 2 months to win $100 in a weight lifting contest.” Applying the same principles to sports betting is easier than you think.
These betting goals may vary based on how good you are at betting and the budget you’re willing to place. But in general, it should look something like:
“Win at least $1,500 within 6 months to pay for a vacation in the Maldives.”
This goal is accurate, straightforward and clear. It’s also measurable with the amount we want clearly written. Is the goal attractive and motivational? We think so unless you’re not into beaches and sunny weather. Is the goal realistic? It seems so, as 1,500 is not a crazy amount, especially since we’re giving a 2-month deadline.
One last point we want to mention is to have fun. It’s not the same as being distracted; as if you enjoy betting on sports, you’ll more likely continue to bet on sports. Therefore, it makes sense that you should feel the thrill and excitement of betting while also setting achievable goals.
You can try setting a goal to bet on every game or research every day to keep up with your progress. If you’re having fun with these kinds of situations, then there’s no reason that you shouldn’t build upon this positive energy like this further.
Also, remember to revisit your goals every week or month. If you think you can achieve the goal or if you’re close to achieving it, perhaps you can set up a new goal that’s even more ambitious. However, if you’re nowhere near achieving it, then keeping track of it will remind you of that and it will help you figure out what to do next.
Hopefully, our guide has helped you set the right goals. Remember to be SMART during your bets and good luck!
