10 Questions To Ask When Choosing A Paid Sports Betting Advisor

November 17, 2016 Underdog Chance 0 Gambling Services & Products, General,

Before we even start, I will say one very important thing. Never spend money on betting service or betting advisor, if you are not willing to lock your money for the longer time of period (at least 1—2 years). If you are looking for an advice today and you want to put all your money on a winner today, then you don’t need sports betting service. Make your own research, check line movements, read free forums and you will find one good pick, put all in and wait – maybe you win. The bigger problem is to find someone, who can make profit constantly over a longer period of time.

Pay or not to pay for Sports Betting Advice? The answer is a little bit more complex and I will take little bit more time to explain this in another article. Here we will focus on paid betting services and I will look at this if I am the one, who want to pay for advice. There are a lot of Sports Betting Services on the internet and everybody promise profit. So, how to decide which one is good, how to decide which one is for you? Here are 10 questions, you should ask before you decide. If they don’t have an answer on any of my questions, I would not pick that service.

Did they show me their record for at least last 3 years?

I would never pay for the service, which says something like: “we are on amazing run 32—14 in last 46 picks”. That’s bullshit. Everyone can have 32—14 run and everyone can have 14—32 run. Show me your detailed record for the last 3 years. Send me the file with detailed picks, risks and other info, so I can make deeper research. This is the first question and if they are professionals, who sell their picks, then this will not be a problem. Always focus on the bigger picture. Everyone can have one month or even a year negative, but if you decide to invest, then you should see the bigger picture.

2. Did they show me their yield and ROI, or maybe profitability?

Many sports betting services will show you just profit and many of them will show only short period record. That’s red alert. Go away. Why? First of all, profit doesn’t tell anything. What if someone plays 100 games and he lost 70 of them. 99 games he played with 1 unit and one game he played with 100 units. This is just one example. You want to see how good they are and if it is worth to pay for those picks. Read more about Yield, ROI and Profitability here.

3. What kind of sports they bet and what type of bets they play?

I saw on contests and other sites, that some handicappers made a lot of profit betting some sports, that are not that popular and because of that market is a small. It’s nice to someone, who made a great profit in net units on Italian volleyball League. But in reality, can you play those games? Do you even have the chance to play those games on your bookmaker? Will you ever place a bet for the same price? Because if this is a small market and if that advisor or service send picks out, odds will probably drop quickly. If you ask me, I would focus on main sports with huge betting market. As I said, it’s nice, that someone makes a profit on Handball, but can you follow him? Don’t forget, that we are talking about betting services, which you have to pay. The second question in the same topic is what type of bets. If they play always live betting or if they play always some special bets, it won’t be possible to follow them. The best bet types are again, moneyline, totals, 1-x-2, spread, AH,…again bet types, which are popular and you have a real chance to play those bets on your bookmaker and for the similar price.

4. Which bookmakers do they use?

I would ask them, what kind of bookmakers they use. If they always show great odds and they use some local bookmaker, then this will not help you. Professional sports handicappers will always use one of the top online bookmakers if we talk about online sports betting. There are a lot of reasons, why professionals use top bookmakers. Here is the list of my recommended bookmakers.

5. When they release their picks and how many times per day?

There are sites, which provide 20 picks per day with a couple of different sports handicappers. You can not follow them unless you sit whole day in front of computer. But if you sit in front of a computer, then you don’t need to pay for the picks. Do the job and research games on your own. So, what i would like to see from betting service is that they send me picks once or max twice per day. Get email, bet and do your stuff. You don’t want to wait and bet every 40 minutes. You should also ask them when they release their picks. If they release their picks at 2 in the morning and the games starts at 6 in the morning, can you follow them? I don’t think so.

6. Do they use advanced statistics and math models

This would be one of the most important questions for me. Do they use models, do they use advanced statistics. How they find value? Because if you follow one handicapper, who just reads a lot, I don’t think you should pay him. You can do this on your own. But statistics, math models, predictive models will make the difference in the long run. Why do you think all successful business use predictive models? Do you think, that one huge and the serious financial group will make their decisions based only on some information, that are available for everyone? Someone will say, he has some great information about fixed games, etc…Come on guys…Fixed games and stuff like this is cheating. Even if someone fixes games, do you think they will tell you? And even if they do, they are cheaters. They cheat sports, they cheat people and I believe, you don’t want to give your money to those people. Hard work, knowledge, statistics, experience,…this is something that will make your money on the long run.

7. What did they promise me?

“We will make you rich”, “We hit 96% of games”,… come on guys…98% of all people lose all the time. Nobody will make you rich overnight. Nobody! If they have such a information, they don’t ned to sell their picks. If you have 1 million on your account, you don’t need to sell picks for 50, 100 or even 1000 EUR. The best sports handicappers, who are fair and good, will always say you, that you should take an investment approach. The best handicappers will hit only 53—55% of their bets if we are talking about some spread betting, like NBA, NFL. Win % is different by odds (bigger with lower odds and lower with higher odds). They will show their real numbers from the past and they say some realistic numbers, you can expect from them.

8. What is their money management / investment strategy?

They must show you exactly what is the starting bankroll, when was set and exactly what % of bankroll they bet on each game. What are 50 units? What is 5 star play? What is 1 unit? Without very good explanation, information about those units are nothing. They must explain you. If they say play 2% of your bankroll, is this from starting bankroll or from current bankroll. If they use anything similar to martingale, just run away. I would pay for the service, which has strong and safe money strategy.

9. How many subscribers they have?

This is a tricky question, which I would ask them for sure. On one side, they will tell you that they have a lot of subscribers. With that, they want to say you, that they are good, that people trust them. But then ask yourself, if they have so many subscribers, will I get picks for the same price? No. Because if I send one pick out for example to 1000 subscribers and everyone will bet 100 EUR, do you think, that you will get the same price? No. Bookmakers will drop odds and you will get 1.95 instead of 2.05. And this is huge. if you win 50% of games with the odds of 2.05, you will have profit, if you hit 50% of the same bets for the odds of 1.95, you will have a loss.

10. How do you charge your services and how much?

when we talk about profit, yield, ROI, then you should take into account, that you will pay for the picks. If you pay one service 100 EUR per month and if they make 10 units per month and if your unit is 10 EUR (with starting bankroll of 1000EUR), do you think, that you will make a profit? No! 10 units of profit * 10 EUR = 100EUR. Minus cost of the service = 0 profit. You should always take into account what is you budget, what will be your unit and if you will ever make a profit, after they tell you exactly how much money you should bet on each game. I saw people, who have 1000 EUR on their bookmaker account and they are willing to pay 50 EUR for sports betting service. It’s insane. I would pay only if I have 10.000 EUR on my bank account and not more than 300—400 EUR per year. If they make 40 units in one year (let’s say 4.000 EUR), I would pay only 10% of my profit to them. Sometimes even this is too much. Based on current costs of sports betting services online, you should not pay a single penny for an advice until you have at least 10.000 EUR on your bookmaker account.

Some words to you, who decided to find betting service and you are willing to pay for the picks….

You should understand that this is sports betting. It is speculative business and anything can happen. Deal with it!

Nobody can make yo rich overnight and nobody will win all games. Deal with it!

What are you paying is an advice. Some people spend hours and hours to make winning picks. You pay their work, so you have bigger chances to win. Nobody can guarantee you for sure, that he will have a profitable season. Deal with it!

Most of the people who pay for betting advice don’t have a big bankroll. And because of that and because of the cost of the service, they bet with 15%, 20%, 30% per bet. They will be disappointed at the end. You should never ever bet more than 5% on any game. And 5% is the biggest play, which can happen rarely. Most of the bets should be around 1—2% or even less. If you will bet more than that, you will lose and please don’t blame sports betting services. Deal with it!

You should also understand the basics of sports betting. What are odds, what is probability, what is bookmaker and so on? The difference between sports betting investment and another type of investments is that you don’t give money to your betting advisor. They just suggest you, what you should play and how much money you should play. Everything else is on you. This is why is crucial to have some basic knowledge about sports betting. If you don’t find the time to learn sports betting basics, you will lose. Deal with it!

Never blame sports handicapper service if team A has lost the game. Betting services didn’t play that game. Players played the game and they lost the game. There is so many factors, that can happen in one game. If you don’t understand this, then you don’t understand simple basics and it is very likely, that you will lose a lot of money in sports betting. Once someone posted one free pick and the next day one guy was angry, that he lost money on that pick. Sports betting services are not prophets, but advisors. They just tell you what you should play with the offered odds. You can not blame them for short period results. Deal with it!

My personal opinion about paid betting services.

I don’t sell picks and I am not betting advisor. Let’s be clear about that from the start. I bet for myself, I love what I do and I love to play with statistics, data and numbers. I’ve created my math models for NHL and MLB. This is something I do every day and I want to help people with quality betting advice. I also challenge myself in other sports, to see if I can make a profit. You will see a lot of people, who are against those paid sports betting services and you will see betting services, who will tell, you that you should pay their picks. I am on both sides. Both are right.

Betting services will spend extra hours and they will do the dirty job. At the same time, you will do nothing and you just want to pick their advice for free, this is also not fair. Sometimes, I see “heroes” who took free advice and then they are rude / angry if they lost. Show some respect, because someone else made extra work, while you were sleeping. This is why I think that good and hard work should be paid. They will research games for you, they will give you an advice and I don’t have anything against that. The problem is that there are too many very bad betting services, who can not answer those 10 questions above. But of course, there is small number of very good betting advisors out there, who will give you quality advice for a reasonable price.

But, I will also tell you, that unless you have a big budget, you don’t need to pay for the advice. You can find so many good free information and good picks on the net, that this is amazing. There are a lot of free advisors, who will give you quality advice. Most of them do this for fun. I think if you start betting, you should follow those free sports handicappers and you can make nice profit too. The only problem with free advisors is that they don’t owe you anything. They can disappear when they want and then you are at the beginning.

Should you pay for the picks? Depends on your situation. But if you decide to pay for the picks, ask them those 10 questions, believe me, you will have better chance to find really good betting service / sports handicapper.

Underdogchance.com – A Journey into the mind of a successful sports bettor.

The author can be followed or contacted at https://www.betgeeks.com/members/mbunderdogchance-com/profile/