Thanks for all your questions guys. I will (try to) answer them all, but it needs some time.
Since you are earning through gambling, would you say that you are the type of gambler whose aim is just to earn, or do you juat do it for fun? How much time do you spend gambling everyday? Would you give an advice to people who are planning to make gambling a profession.
I started betting for fun in first place. By the time I learned that I can actually make money with this and now the fun and making money aspect have merged.
Measuring the time is pretty hard. I am spending quite some time in front of the computer, but this is not all betting related. I do other things, like posting here, then I would check some news/stats, surf the internet, check some odds - this is all a bit chaotic tbh. I was never the person to prepare a lot for my bets and do extensive research. What takes a lot of time is watching my sports and I watch them a lot ! This is my preparation and the best preparation imo. You can extract many useful information by just watching sports, observing things and building your own opinion by what is presented in front of you.
There is two advices I would give to a beginner. A) There is always someone better. B) See A.
And then:
- Get yourself familiar with the concept of value betting.
- Pick a sport/league/niche and specialize on it.
- Have a proper money management.
- Track every bet in an excel sheet for example.
- Play ONLY single bets.
- Start with very small stakes.
- Always shop for the best odds.
- Don't think in days or weeks. Give yourself and your bets enough time to get rid of the "luck factor".
- Don't expect to win anything for a longer time, but monitor your progress.
It is great to see such a thread with a person that makes a living from gambling.Now it is only natural to me to ask in what markets you have won more often than you have lost as this is the only way to be profitable and of course the odds need to be relatively higher.
In the early days I specialized on cycling bets and made around 90% of my profits with it. I then specialized in winter sports (Biathlon, Cross-Country, Nordic Combined, Ski jumping) too, as it fitted quite well with cycling being a summer sports and winter sports running mostly, when there was no cycling. I would always have some bets with Football (Soccer), Basketball, Tennis or whereever I found some useful and valuable information. And then I always played some bets, that I was given by my little network. I trust those people blindly.
There were always some big events where I put my focus on and invested lots of time. This is mainly the Olympics and the Eurovision Song Contest. The ESC was quite a good event betting wise for some years, but not now anymore (for me). Olympics have always been a very good opportunity to make money in a short period of time. I remember the 2012 Olympics in London, where I worked 17 days in a row for 18h/day, but it paid off very well. Afterwards I was a zombie though and needed some days to recharge my batteries again.
The cycling and winter sports markets have undergone quite some change and are not profitable anymore for me for various reasons.
Struggling with having betting accounts available, I shifted my focus more to trading than pure betting/punting now. You always have to adapt. I am now trying my luck with german Football, german Basketball and looking to do some tennis (trading) as well again when the tournaments are in a more friendly time zone after AO. I am doing around 95% of my trading/bets inplay now.
Main stream sports like Football, Basketball, Tennis are way more competitive and the very golden days in sportsbetting are over imo. So I am making less money now compared to the past.