This Week: Hansel Wei on Strategies for Success. Read the whole article in Hansel's Zone at GoSportsBet.

  Now that we’ve looked at what kinds of bets should be avoided, here are some general strategies that apply to all sports wagering. While each sport has certain nuances that make it unique for the bettor, the following pointers are part of a winning mentality. There are a few all-encompassing ideas that will improve the quality of your wagers and increase your rate of successes, regardless of what sport you’re betting on. There is a certain excitement that comes from betting impulsively, but every successful sports bettor will tell you that following these rules will pay off in the long run.

Rule 3: [For all of Hansel's Rules, see his articles in Hansel's Zone] Bet selectively.

Not every game in every sport is a “bettable game;” that is, just because Vegas and the local bookies put out lines for it doesn’t mean you have to put money on it. Many novices to the world of sports wagering crave action, and because of this, get tempted into making poor wagering decisions. In the following pages I will delve deeper into what makes a game a “bettable” game, but for now suffice to say that for each sport, a good policy is to pick no more than two or three games to bet on at a time. For the NFL, this means two or three games a week. For the NBA, similar restraint can be exercised by waiting for a match-up you like, such as an underdog with momentum behind them takes on a slumping favorite, for instance. When wagering on baseball, wait until a team has a favorable pitching match-up. Wagering on anything but the most bettable games does not win money in the long term—it loses money. To sum up, not every game should be wagered on. In fact, the large majority of them should not. Think back to the First Rule of sports wagering: treating your wagers as an investment. When you wager on a team, you are essentially “buying” that team’s performance during the game in question. The line at which you bet on a team is essentially the price you pay to buy that team. Just as you wouldn’t buy an overpriced stock, don’t pay more than you feel a team is worth. However, like stocks, lines change, and a previously unbettable game may become bettable later in the week, or vice versa. We’ll explore this in the next section. A second issue to address is the “double or nothing” mentality that many bettors fall into after losses. In an attempt to break even, many reckless bettors will double the units of their bets on the next batch of games hoping that they will balance out or even make money overall. Still worse, some bettors will try to end a losing season on a high note by putting huge amounts of money on a single game such as the Superbowl, or a championship series in other sports. As we will continue to emphasize, such breaks from one's overall...
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