It depends on who you consider as a professional bettor. Most bettors who have been in the betting scene for years still don’t have a clue on what they are doing.
Being a professional bettor takes a lot of hard work. A pro bettor goes through lots of data available to him before deciding on whether the bet before him is the best offer out there or not.
There is a common perception that any bettor who has a win percentage of 60% or more can be termed as a professional. But in truth, a high win percentage doesn’t mean that the person is making a profit.
Let’s look at it through the use of an example:
Consider two bettors A and B.
A is relatively new to the betting scene so he decides to place only 5 bets on the first day.
In all five of them he bets 110€ with the hope of getting a winning return of 100€. (If he wins then total = 210€ per bet).
He manages to win 3 out of those 5 bets so a win percentage of 60%
In total he gets 300€ as return, and 220€ gets noted as a loss.
That is a net profit of 80€.
Now let’s look at B.
B has been in the betting seen for decades now, so decides to mock bettor A and place 14 bets for the day.
He bets 110 in all 14 matches in the hope of getting a return of 100$ each.
B manages to win 8 out of those 14 bets so a win percentage of 57% which is slightly lesser than bettor A.
So bettor A has the last laugh right? After all, he did have a better win percentage than the cocky bettor B. Let’s look at the numbers and see things as they are:
Bettor B won 8 bets so in total he got 800€ as a return, and lost 660€ and that means a net profit of 140€ for the day. Not bad, eh?
Even though bettor A managed a better win percentage, it was ultimately bettor B that made more profit by the end of the day.
This is exactly what happens in the betting scene. The goal of almost any bettor is to make money, so you can’t really judge whether a person is a professional bettor or not by the win percentage he may boast, but he should be judged on the money (profit) he has made till date.
A word to rookies
If a rookie bettor is reading this, please don’t get the idea of betting on random matches just for the sake of betting on more matches. Betting on more matches does mean you have a good chance to make more money, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do research on these bets before placing them. As stated before, being a successful bettor is hard work and when the number of bets increase, the work you have to do also increases.
It’s simple logic when you think of the fact that you can earn more from a pool of 100 bets having a chance of 53% to succeed than from a pool of 20bets with a 57% chance of success.
Diversify your bets
A professional bettor places more bets than the average rookie, but he risks lesser amount on each bet while the rookie usually risks a lot on only one or two bets. Spreading your bankroll among a number of bets is the key to being a successful online bettor.
Finally, always remember – Never ever bet more than 3% of your bankroll on a single bet.
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