Staying the Course and Studying Yourself

I have had lots of people over the years ask me the same question "What separates the pros from the amateurs?". There are obviously many different aspects and little details that make a professional in any industry separate themselves from others, but the two that always come to my mind are discipline and being able to study yourself. The next two paragraphs I will elaborate on each and hopefully give you insight in to the way I think as well as how I prepare.

Staying the Course: This term is directed towards both hot streaks and cold streaks. Obviously cold streaks are what worries every amateur bettor and makes them go off the rails. The way this industry works tends to make bad days seem like they last an eternity, and good days go by in the blink of an eye. It is so important to understand that you are never going to gain profits with a perfect steady increase. You must understand things will be great, and things will be really bad. The only thing you can do when either hot or cold streaks are happening is to "stay the course". Whether that means continue taking the same amount of games when you are on a cold streak, or not pressing and getting greedy when you are on a hot streak, simply stay the course. So many people when they are on a cold streak would rather overextend themselves way beyond their normal bet size and try to get it all back in a short period of time. This is a bettors suicide. On the other end, hot streaks can make people react in two ways. One, they either think they are invincible and push their luck straight into a cold streak. Or two, they get timid and pull back from their bet size or bet quantities. Simply put, stay the course.

Studying Yourself: This term can be summed up a lot easier than staying the course, but is a huge aspect that not a lot of amateur bettors think about. As time goes on and your bets are won and lost, its just as important if not more to study your trends and styles compared to the teams you are betting on. Here are a couple things to study over the course of the month or season and determine your strengths and weaknesses. Do you lose a lot of games late? Do you win more totals compared to money lines? Do you have better days only taking a 2-3 games or when you take 6-8 games. The whole point of studying yourself is to understand what makes YOU a a good or bad bettor. Here is my recent example; the 2017-2018 NBA season was fantastic for us and finished on a 9-0 run and finished at 60% on the season. However, November was rough, December was a wash, and January was rough. Rather than getting frustrated and blaming it on the teams and thinking we had bad luck, I evaluated our wins a losses with a fine toothed comb. I suddenly realized the amount of games that we were losing late 4th quarter or in overtime, as well as totals was substantial. My solution, take first half only bets. From that day I think we might have taken one or two totals and only a couple full games. February, March, April, May, and June were all winning months for us. NBA finals we went a perfect 4-0 taking first half bets, had we taken the same bets full game we would have been 2-2.

-Prophet