Being the most followed professional football division in Ghana, it makes sense for the Ghana Premier League to attract a lot of punters. Whether you place an occasional bet on your favourite team or place several ones every week, we’ve got some useful and actionable tips and strategies for Ghanian football bettors.
Remember that you should only bet what you can afford to lose. Additionally, whilst you may find online courses and systems that offer sure ways to profit from gambling, there is no such thing. All you can do is work towards placing more informed wagers so as to increase your edge and reduce the bookie’s.
1. Regular Smaller Wins > Rare Large Bets
In betting or in any other gambling game, variance or volatility is how much your bankroll swings with a win or a loss. As a general rule of thumb, you want to avoid any strategy that is high in variance (i.e. one in which you win or lose a lot). This is because it is emotionally hard to go through such a rollercoaster and you may not be able to swallow two, or three, losses in a row financially.
The solution here is to bet smaller amounts and win a little or lose a little. But instead of placing one single bet, you can now afford to place several wagers. Additionally, this strategy of placing several small bets can help you experiment more. Try new exotic bets, or try new sports, or try a new league. If you only have one big bet a week, you generally will place it on what you know.
2. Don’t Ignore The Division Two League
A problem with sports bettors is their love for bug games, big leagues. There are incredible value bets every week in Division Two League, or even lower leagues. This is because the law of large numbers simply makes the Premier League in Ghana a very difficult market to beat and find value in. Loads of other bettors are on it, massive bookmakers use their own algorithms to beat punters, and it’s just a very busy marketplace and it is hard to find a good bargain.
On the other hand, in the Division Two League, fewer big industry players are involved so you can face less knowledgeable competition which opens up great opportunities. However, the downside is that lower leagues tend to be less liquid. You will find fewer online sportsbooks offering good odds on these simply because they don’t know the league as well, they have less data to create odds from.
3. Become an Expert at a Few Exotic Wagers
Picking an outright winner in the Ghana Premier League is great and that’s the bet that most punters wager on. By far. The problem is because so many good bettors and bookmakers are involved, the odds even out and there aren’t very obvious good deals to be made.
Exotic bets include:
- first scorer
- half-time exact score
- team to get a clean sheet
- team obtain the most corners
Obviously, these are trickier to reason about and seem more like fun prop bets than actual money makers. Yet, if you put in the work and the hours studying the data of each team over their past games, you will uncover some exciting trends and potentially find great value in some of these exotic bets.
4. Dip Your Toes With Accumulator Betting
Accumulators are types of bets in which, instead of placing a bet on a single outcome, you place multiple bets which need to all be correct in order for you to win. It’s harder to win, but with higher risk comes a higher reward. Each bet inside your accumulator has specific odds and a winning ticket sees a return of the product of all odds.
If your accumulator bet slip contains three bets, with odds of 2/1, 1.5/1, 3/1, a winning ticket would mean you would get final odds of 9/1. For GH₵100.00, you would get GH₵900.00.
Because all wagers within an accumulator must be correct, you do want to be careful in what you bet on. Easy sure bets won’t really be worth it so it is better to mix up a few relatively sure-bets and a single riskier bet. Expect some emotional pain when your ticket is correct except for a single bet… This is just unavoidable!
5. Implement a Proper Bankroll Management
Bankroll management in sports betting is key. It requires you to think about a few crucial financial aspects of your betting strategy.
Budgeting. How much are you going to spend each week, each month, each year? Where is this money coming from? Are you sure you are able to access this amount, legally, and gamble with it? Try to think of these questions without short-sighted thinking.
Spread. How will that budget be spread across different games and bet types? Decide ahead of time how much is dedicated to each sport, each league, and each bet type (1X2, over/under goals, and other exotic bets).
Banking. What are the e-wallets and bank accounts you are going to use to transact and store your sports betting funds? Are they quick deposit and withdrawals methods for sports betting sites? Have you already opened these EMI accounts and provided the documents they require? The last thing you need is not being able to withdraw earnings due to a last-minute thing you forgot to prepare.
Limits. When do you stop gambling, and how much can you lose without losing sleep over? Don’t keep your gambling to yourself, speak about it with your partner or best friend. If you aren’t spending money you can’t afford, and you are treating betting as a science more than a gamble, then you should be proud of your endeavors. People around you will keep you accountable.
Bookmakers. Which betting sites do you want to belong to, what if they lock your account? You don’t want to spread yourself too thinly across too many sports betting sites. But you also don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket in case of an accident or issue.
Review. Record every single bet you make, and why you made it. It will help you review that monthly and adjust the way you prepare and select the matches. Perhaps you bet too much on some exotic bets. Or perhaps you bet too little when odds are high.
Remember that bankroll management is important as it keeps you on track. Create a document and adjust your sports betting strategies over the course of a year to fine-tune it.
6. Keep Tabs On Influential Ghanaian Tipsters
Whether on Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, or on some specific blogs and message boards, you need to stay in touch and follow influential tipsters. Not just about betting, but about the teams or the leagues you are focusing your betting efforts on.
Take a last minute change to a team’s line-up. If you know it ahead of most other punters, you can place smart bets accordingly. It is almost insider information but to get it, you must follow the right people and these depend on what you want to be an expert at.
7. Never Treat a Single Game Any Differently
By a large number, most sports bettors will go ahead and bet whatever budget they have dedicated to betting on one game. Usually, that game is either their favorite team’s, or the biggest game of the week, or both.
The problem with this strategy (if we can call it one) is that the game selection is driven by emotions, not data and opportunities. An experienced trader leaves emotions and feelings aside to study all games and see where value and opportunities lie. And then they study these more, and decide on what bets make sense. If for 10 games straight, a small team in Division Two has scored at least two goals, then you probably should do something with this data-driven trend rather than betting on the match of the week, just because it is the biggest one.
Obviously, if Ghana is playing the African Cup of Nations‘ finale, have a blast and place your bets. But these shouldn’t be considered “smart bets”, they’re just fun gambles.