Are You Tracking Your Sports Bets? Why Every Bettor Should
Do you know how much you win or lose on your sports bets?
Data shows that only 2-5% of consistent sports bettors stay profitable in the long run.
So, how do we verify whether we are staying in that small group or whether it’s time to adjust our betting strategy?
We turn to bet tracking, a tool vital to any sports bettor, casual or pro.
Tracking your bets allows you to obtain customized knowledge and statistics for your betting that won’t be available to you any other way.
This enables you to continuously measure your success over the long term, assist in your bankroll management, and help bring into focus your overall sports betting experience through the roller-coaster of variance that is ever occurring in everyone’s sports betting journey.
Let’s dive deeper into the important roles bet tracking can take in your sports betting.
The Basics of Bet Tracking
Simply put, tracking bets involves recording the result of each wager you place.
How you track your bets can evolve in many different ways, both in the way you track your bets and in what data points you are documenting.
It can be as simple as using a spreadsheet, that you having showing the wager you placed, the amount you put on the wager, the result of the wager, and the long-term profit/loss of your total betting; or it can extend to the use of dedicated tools that are widely available, that can not only automate the process of tracking each bet you place, keeping a running total of your profit or loss, but can provide in-depth analysis and data points to help you advance in becoming a better sports bettor, such as closing line value, your profit margin, and percentage of bets won to name a few.
One tracking tool, that I use is Pikkit, which can connect to a vast amount of sportsbooks to automatically track every wager for you.
Another tool that I utilize is the OddsJam Bet Tracker which is very beneficial if you are using any of their other tools to find profitable lines to bet as you can automatically add them to the tracker when you place your bets.
Whether you are just starting in the world of sports betting, or have been betting for many years, the most important thing is to start tracking your bets.
Some basic information that should be tracked, whether inside a spreadsheet, or using a tool is the type of bet (Team, Player, Market), the amount wagered, the odds line, and the outcome.
Benefits of Tracking Your Bets
Some key benefits bet tracking can provide you, that can help assist you in managing your goals to become successful include:
Measuring and Gauging Your Success Over Time
The baseline for measuring success in sports betting is your win/loss ratio.
This depicts the fraction of wagers you have won vs. those you lost.
If you have won 5 bets and lost 10, your ratio would be 5:10, or for every one bet you place, you are losing 2.
To find out your own win/loss ratio, you can use this formula:
Then to reflect that as a percentage of your win rate, you can use this formula:
From our example, the win rate would be a 33.33% win rate.
That may seem like a low rate, only winning a third of your bets, but this is where tracking becomes so important.
It may be easy to find out how many bets you have placed and how many you have won, but in sports betting, this doesn’t tell the whole story of whether you are truly being successful.
When diving deeper into the tracking of your bets, you can determine not only your win rate but the win rate you need to have to be considered a long-term profitable bettor.
This will be gauged based on the average lines that you are betting, along with the wager sizes you use, because unless you wager the same amount on every bet, there has to be some weight given to different bets based on the wager size.
Take our example, with a win rate of 33.33%, though it may seem pretty bad. If you look at the data of this hypothetical, and it averages out to bets being placed at implied odds of 30%, you are actually profitable, even though on the surface it doesn’t look that way.
This also can be true the other way, you may be winning 75% of your bets, but when taking into account all factors, your odds to break even come in at 80%, you are actually losing money.
A positive ROI is much more meaningful in sports betting than simple win/loss ratios and win rates, which lends to the importance of tracking your bets.
Recognizing Patterns in Your Bets and Sportsbooks
The ebbs and flows of sports betting, and the variance within will always be there.
However, as with anything that you do consistently, there will be some patterns that will emerge.
These don’t have to necessarily be bad or good, but tracking your bets allows you to recognize them, and enables you to identify if they are a positive trend or a negative trend.
From that recognition, through your tracking, you can make better decisions to determine if a change is needed or not to improve, or continue success for the long run.
Staying on Top Of Your Bankroll management
One of the most important keys to achieving long-term success in sports betting is putting yourself in a position to be less exposed to risk.
Some of this depends on the bets you decide to place, but a large chunk of it is how you manage your bankroll.
From the bet sizing to the strategies you employ, a vast majority comes down to how much you have to wager safely.
Tracking your bets is the only way to stay on top of this properly.
Helps Maintain Perspective In the Ups and downs
Variance, bad beats, “lucky” win, winning and losing months.
The ups and downs of sports betting is inevitable.
There will be times when you think you can never lose again because every bet you place is winning.
Other times it will feel as if you will never win another bet.
In the thick of these moments, it can be hard to maintain a perspective of what you are trying to do and accomplish.
When your goal is to have long-term success, bet tracking can help keep you grounded and focused.
It allows you to push out the highs and lows, and keep steady, knowing what the long-term results have been, which isn’t to say adjustments won’t be needed.
But it will allow you to look back, and give you the ability to step out of the here and now, to avoid the pitfalls of in-the-moment success or failure.
Common Mistakes When Tracking Bets (And How to Avoid Them)
Inconsistent Tracking
To have the most benefit, you need to track every bet you place.
Any other way, and the data you have on your personal bets will be skewed, and will not give you the full picture of how you are doing with the currently used strategies.
It is also important not to avoid tracking bad losses to make your results appear better than they are.
The best way to avoid inconsistent tracking is to either automate the process, by using a tool such as Pikkit, which will link with your various betting accounts, and automatically track each transaction.
Or, track the wagers at the time of placing them.
It is hard to stay consistent if you decide to wait until after you have placed all of your bets or until all of your bets have concluded with their result, before tracking all of the necessary info.
This will eventually lead to forgetting to track at different times or stop altogether.
Missing Key Data Points
Of course, basic tracking of your sports bets, such as the wager amounts and results is better than no tracking at all.
But the full benefits of tracking are realized when you can do a deep dive into your own betting data, allowing you to have all the pieces complete the puzzle of being successful.
Closing line value, ROI, and Expected Value compared to actual value to name a few, when all combined can give you the full picture of your standing of being successful or not.
Though it can be done manually, it is certainly recommended that you use a tracking tool dedicated to sports betting. This tool will be able to automatically run analysis, and track every single data point for you.
Closing Line
If someone came to you today and asked if you were profitable betting last week, could you answer confidently? What about last month? Last year?
Can you say with 100% confidence that your current betting strategy is setting you up for consistent success?
If the answer is no, it may be time to begin tracking your bets.
Start today to help assist you in your journey to becoming a more consistent bettor.
