@bwin: What kind of sports betting?
I did some as an experiment last year. Snooker and CSGO are two I know particularly well, so I chose those.
I actually expected to have more success betting on snooker given that I’ve been watching it since I was about 5 (it’s one of the only sports we Scottish have ever dominated, after all) and can name pretty much every player in the top 100. I’d called some of the most bizarre and unbelievable comebacks over the years, so I’d intended to try out betting properly for some time, but in practise I found that it’s just so random that picking a winner consistently enough to bank up wasn’t realistic (in hindsight, maybe I was just betting on too many matches and not skipping enough of them).
On the other hand, even though I thought CSGO would be the nightmarish one to bet on, that’s actually where I made a fair bit of cash. In hindsight, maybe that was easier due to the uhm… “Barrier for entry”, shall we say! Finding good odds on snooker is a total nightmare—presumably because folks only bet on a dying old sport like that if they’ve been at it for a decade or two already—whereas CSGO appeared to have a vastly more naive demographic just throwing money at their favourite teams no matter how realistic an upset was (IE: gamblers, not bettors).
I quit back then for three main reasons_:
- Live-betting is definitely my forte, but it’s rather stressful having to sit there with your “finger on the button” as it were… Any kind of hiccup as well like slow internet or a power cut or something can be the difference between hedging and getting stuffed.
- It's so unbelievably irritating watching a huge pot just disappear when a team throws a 0 – 2 defeat at you from 14/6 up in match 1 and 14/9 up in match 2 (this did actually happen… 16th round is match point so my horse crashed out of a semi final 14/16 - 14/16)!
- I got into it at an interesting period where upsets were happening left right and centre, but teams were quickly becoming more consistent and the overall skill level differential in the top 10 was rapidly diminishing as well.
All that on top of how dull it can be when you’re on a really good run and your sport of choice hits a season break for a few months… Really takes the wind out of your sails.
The main lesson I learnt from live betting however is to always, always, always "cash out" / hedge at the end of a successful live bet when the odds tip over no matter how unlikely a throw appears to be. That way you can just go take a break and have a giggle if pigs do learn to fly before it’s over instead of feeling like rolling a grenade under the door 😂