by Joe Deluca

Created on: April 30, 2008

The only way to make money betting on sports long term is to stick to straight bets. If you are a parlay bettor, you may hit a few nice ones once in awhile, but you will definitely lose money in the long run. The sports books make their money on parlay bettors, just look around any Las Vegas sports book and you can see stacks full of parlay cards everywhere, especially during football season.

You should probably learn to handicap one sport at a time. The way I went about it was to become very proficient handicapping NBA totals. After that, I moved on to other sports like college football and baseball. During the fall, you have baseball's post season, the NFL regular season, and the NBA regular season in full swing. I advise that you stick to one of them until you are comfortable branching out to the others. There are enough opportunities in one sport to make plenty of plays so no need to spread yourself too thin.

One thing about handicapping sports is that it is a time-consuming hobby, or profession if you decide to take it that far. You must stay abreast of everything happening in order to have the biggest edge you can get. The people that make the betting lines on the games have access to tons of information and you should always try to stay ahead of the curve, if possible.

There are many factors that go into handicapping a game. Depending on which sport you choose, you should find a method that fits your personality. I am a numbers guy and maybe that's why I like NBA totals. I make my own numbers (totals) on the games and then compare them to the numbers that the books have up. If there is a big enough difference, I bet accordingly. There are factors like injuries, coaching and lineup changes, recent form, and revenge situations so these should be part of your handicapping routine along with other information that is available on line such as average points, trends, etc..One of the best sites that I have found for handicapping information is www.sportsmemo.com. If you would like to have someone else do the work, you can sign up for a service like the one at: www.batkings.com. There are a million sports handicapping services on the Internet and you should be wary of anybody claiming to hit unrealistic numbers or percentages. Anybody who claims 87% winners over the course of a season or year is most likely not telling the truth, obviously. Visit my blog at: www.vegasturfandsports.blogspot.com

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