All experienced sports bet traders and betting sites tell us not to bet on the team we support because we won't be able to separate our emotions from reason.
Truth is we can turn that weakness into a strength and use it to win money in our bets.
In this article I'm going to explain how to bet on the team you support to use the profound knowledge you have of the team to win money.
My goal is to show that it's possible to win money with the team we support. In fact, it may even be more profitable than to bet on other teams, because we don't know them so well!
Usually, it's said that we shouldn't bet on the team we support, because: “we won't be able to separate our emotions from reason”.
However, I believe we can turn this weakness into a strength. How? Easy:
The team we support is the one we know best, why not take advantage of that?
How can you control your emotions?
This is the trickiest part of betting on the team you support: when losing we always believe it's possible to tie or even turn the score around.
We usually don't have a solid objective reason to believe so, but as supporters we have full faith on our team.
This is something that you need to work on game after game, that is, you shouldn't expect to be able to think rationally immediately, in the beginning you are bound to make mistakes, that's perfectly normal. The goal is to eliminate emotional decisions step by step and replace them with rational decisions.
When I started betting this was particularly hard, because I watched my team's matches as a supporter and not as a professional. However, I decided I wasn't going to give up on betting on my team, so I worked hard to deal with my emotions.
1st step: watch the matches of the team you support as you would watch any other matches, that is, when I watched the matches of my team I imagined I was watching some other team I couldn't care less about.
This may seem too hard, particularly for fanatic supporters, like me, but match after match we get better at it, so eventually we will be able to enter this betting mode more naturally.
As a positive side effect, this allowed me to be more balanced, that is, I was no longer that fanatic supporter who can't see any flaws on his team, only its virtues.
2nd step: change the team you support during a match, that is, when my team suffered a goal I used to believe, as any supporter, that sooner or later they would turn the score around, I then started to imagine I was a supporter of the other team, that was trying to hold on to the lead, which allowed me to balance my emotions.
This change I made in my mind forced me to analyze the match with no regard to the colour of the equipment. Therefore, I now focused on offensive and defensive positioning, player attitude, etc.
In the end I sometimes had mixed emotions, as when the team I support had a bad match but I made money from it.
Does this mean I will never be able to watch a match as a supporter?
No way! Discipline is important, but every now and then we need to relax and take time for ourselves, or we won't have success as professionals.
When I started betting on my team, I missed watching the match as a fan, so eventually I started making emotional decisions again.
I than decided to bet on half the matches and watched the other half as a fan:
- In home matches I put on my shirt and enjoyed the match as any other fan, drank a beer and hanged out with me friends;
- The following weekend I took the shirt off and bet on the match as a professional.
This way it's possible to balance our supporter and professional side and improve the level of our analysis, since we have an encyclopaedic knowledge of our team.
What are the advantages of betting on the team we support?
Before trading or betting on a team we need to get information.
The team we support is the one we know best:
- we watch all matches and have done so probably since we were children, so we have the best possible database readily available!
- we know which teams are harder to beat and which are easier, in which stadiums we usually score more or less goals;
- we know at which moment of the season the team is in better shape;
- we identify the confidence levels of the players immediately;
- we know the coach and which decisions he is likely to make.
All this will help us make the best decisions during a match, we can predict goals and the stadiums in which the team is likely to struggle, which is obviously an advantage over other traders.
How to deal with losses in this process?
One of the major problems is that testing, learning and making mistakes costs money.
By experience I know that in the beginning you may lose a lot of money betting on the team you support.
The easiest way to control losses is to set a low limit on our budget, for example: if you have 500 Euros to bet, don't bet more than 10 on the team you support.
This way you can evolve, gain experience and make mistakes without losing all your money.
When your feel confidant increase the amount you allow yourself to bet.
Another interesting method is to limit the markets you bet on: start with the odds market and gradually bet on other markets.
In my opinion, it works best if you limit both:
- start by setting a limit on how much you bet,
- bet on only one market.
You can also simulate bets, that is, you watch the match and register what you would bet on and then check whether you would win or lose money.
However, this method has a major flaw, since you are not affected by losses, because they aren't real, so you keep making the same mistakes again and again…
To sum up, as with any other strategy:
Winning money betting on the team you support requires work and patience!
Many try it out and give up as soon as they lose money. Keep in mind this is a slow process that takes time.
Be patient! But also beware that not everyone has what it takes to deal with this. If after a long time you still can't make money betting on the team you support, that may mean you shouldn't bet on the team you support.
Good bets everyone!
