Beginner’s Guide to Sports Betting

By: Matthew Buchanan | Last Updated: October 30, 2024

If you’re interested in sports betting but have little to no experience, you’ve come to the right place to learn all the basics you need to know to thrive as a novice sports bettor. Among the tips and tricks we’ll teach you in this beginner’s guide, we’ll highlight these critical factors that are a “must know”:

Understanding Odds & Lines
Types of Sports Bets
Choosing a Sports Betting Site/App
How to Place a Bet
Guide to Bankroll Management
Common Mistakes to Avoid

Once you understand the basics of sports betting, you can find good value and many different bets to help you beef up your bankroll balance. Putting best practices into your betting routine will go a long way toward creating slow, steady gains over time as you navigate the wonderful world of online sports betting. Discipline, consistency in approach, and avoiding emotional betting are terrific habits to adopt and will become the keystone for your success.

What Is Sports Betting?

Sports betting is the act of risking money on the outcome of a sports game, match, or event. It’s one of the most popular forms of gambling because it plays off people’s passion for their favorite sports teams or leagues. Sports betting goes far beyond simply betting on the winner or an event, though, and there are ways to bet on sports by introducing odds and handicapping systems to get punters to bet on action on both sides of any given bet.

Sports betting has been becoming increasingly legalized across the United States, but it comes down to laws and regulations passed at the state level. While wagering on sports and other competitions is legal in most of the US, there are places where it’s still illegal. The regulated markets in 38 states and the District of Columbia facilitate sports betting through bookmakers (bookies) at retail sports betting centers and online sports betting sites or mobile apps.

Understanding Odds

Odds measure the likelihood of a specific outcome in sports betting. Online sportsbooks will set up the betting line, the margin between two possible outcomes (the odds-on favorite or the underdog winning). The favorite team or competitor gets assigned a specific set of odds, as does the underdog team or competitor.

Good bookmakers who have spent much time in the industry know how to assign values to the odds they put out correctly. The idea for them is to get the public to bet equally on both sides of a bet; that way, there isn’t uneven action, and they don’t lose a fortune having to pay out bettors in the event of either outcome.

However, there are times when the bookmakers will assign incorrect values to bets, either overvaluing or undervaluing them. It’s the job of any good sports bettor to find these instances of misassigned value—these are the bets where you can make a lot of money. You can get a good deal on underdog odds and win a hefty payout if there’s an upset.

Types of Odds

Many sportsbooks will offer three formats for viewing your odds: American, decimal, and fractional. You can choose which format best suits you. Although certain odd formats are more prevalent in specific countries, you can easily switch between formats using US-based sportsbooks, and these settings will never be restricted based on where you live.

As long as we’re on the subject, American odds are favored in the United States (duh), fractional odds are favored by people in the UK and Ireland and decimal odds are favored by people in the other major Western nations: Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

Reading Different Odds Formats

Keep reading to find out how you read the three significant odds formats and how to determine your payout correctly.

American Odds

With American odds, the favorite to win is shown by a negative sign (-), and the underdog is shown by a positive sign (+). Check out an example of how American odds will look when you view them in your favorite sportsbook:

Falcons

-500

Eagles

+700

The Falcons are favored to win this game, while the Eagles are the underdog team. If you’re betting on Atlanta, you’re staking $500 to win $100 for a total payout of $600. Betting on the favorite is risky, but not really. You’re staking more money on the favorite than you would the dog, but the favorite is likely to win, so you earn a minimal profit of $100.

If you bet on Philly, you’re taking a risk in the hopes that they can pull out a win and cause a significant upset. It’s been known to happen! For this bet, you must wager $100, and if Philly wins, you get a payout of $700 for a total payout of $800! If you play underdog bets right, you can win a lot more than betting on the favorite.

Fractional Odds

People in Great Britain and Ireland are partial to fractional odds. This format uses backslashes (/) or hyphens (-). A fractional odds example would be 4-1 or (4/1) odds, also known as “four-to-one” odds. This means you can win $4 for every $1 your wager.

Falcons

1/2

Eagles

4/1

Let’s say the oddsmakers offer 4-1 odds on the Eagles winning over the Falcons. You bet $20 on the Falcons, and they win the game. You win $80 in profit ($20 x 4) and get your original wager back, so your payout is $100.

Decimal Odds

Decimal odds are sometimes called continental or digital odds, and they are most used overseas in Europe and Australia. These odds are the preferred format for our Neighbor to the North, Canada. They’re called decimal odds because they are used in the numbers the oddsmakers post to the book.

Let’s take another look at the Atlanta and Philly game:

Falcons

1.4

Eagles

3.0

In this example, the Falcons are still favored to win over the Eagles. 1.4 is the equivalent of -250 in American odds or ⅖ in fractional odds. It’s an implied probability of 71.43%. A bet of $100 on Atlanta would result in a profit of $40 ($100 x 1.4) and a total payout of $140 because you get your original bet back.

Those who bet on the Eagles need Philly to pull off the upset for the bet to be considered a win. 3.00 equals +200 in American odds, with an implied probability of 33.33%. Betting $100 on Philly would result in a profit of $200 and a total payout of $300 if the Eagles win over the Falcons.

Wanna dive deeper into this topic? Read our page on Understanding Odds & Lines.

Types of Sports Bets

Part of a good sports betting strategy is keeping your betting portfolio diversified with a good range of bets from various markets that you’re familiar with, but it’s also the type of bets that you place that can impact a well-rounded betting approach. Let’s go over how you can wager on sports—we’ll look at the basic betting formats and the exotic offers that most sportsbooks feature for their customers.

Moneylines: These are bets where you’re trying to correctly predict the winner of a game, match, or event. This can be an entire team or an individual competitor. These are sometimes referred to as “straight bets.” They’re the most common sports bet, and they’ll usually be featured as one of three main options when viewing the lines and odds with any given sports bet.
Point Spread: These bets offer action on both sides, so you can bet just as easily on an underdog as you could on a favorite to win. With these bets, you’re trying to predict (roughly) the margin of victory correctly.
Favorites are represented by a negative number (-3, for example), and the underdog is represented by a positive number (+3, for another example). Using these numbers, a bet on the favorite will only win if that team or competitor wins by more than three points. For the underdog to win, that ream of competitors has to win outright over the favorite (an upset), or they can lose by no more than three points!
Totals (Over/Under): Oddsmakers will try to correctly guess the total number of points scored during a game and let bettors try to predict if the final combined score will come in over or under this number. Again, this is another type of sports betting where it’s easy to bet on the favorite and the underdog.

Props: This term is short for propositional bets, and these are sports wagers that you can place on any number of things that may or may not transpire through a sports game or event. These bets focus on aspects of the event instead of the outcome. You could bet on how many points a specific player will score, who will win the coin toss at the beginning of the game, who will get the most rebounds or assists, etc.
Futures: You can place these bets weeks or months in advance. Future betting has a high degree of difficulty because a lot can happen in a season. An example would be betting on the winner of the Super Bowl at the beginning of the NFL season.
Parlays: These are bets where you combine two or more bets into a single wager. Each leg of the parlay bet must be correctly predicted for the bet to be considered a win and payout. Parlays are tricky to get right, but they are high-risk, high-reward bets.

Pros and Cons of Bet Types

Generally speaking, the less experienced a bettor you are, the more you’ll want to avoid exotic bets like props, futures, and parlays because these bets require more knowledge of the players and teams. Not to mention, exotic bets can result in a wide range of outcomes, whereas straight bets like moneylines, point spreads, or totals generally only feature two possible outcomes.

Moneylines, point spreads, and totals are considered low-variance bets because they only feature two possible outcomes, and they are easy to win, especially if you’re betting on the odds-on favorite. However, these payouts are minimal compared to betting on the underdog or placing exotic bets like parlays or props.

Additional Reading: Different Types of Sports Bets

Choosing a Sports Betting App

There are several ways to narrow down your choices and find the right sportsbook for your online betting needs, but that is if you plan on using a single sports betting app to handle all your actions. Consider these factors as you shop for the right app to use a sportsbook to deliver the desired experience!

Legality and Licensing: Choose a sportsbook that’s available in the state or jurisdiction where you live. This ensures you use legit, regulated platforms that adhere to local or state laws. We advise against using sportsbooks that hold no license or are located overseas—these platforms don’t adhere to US laws and are not obligated to protect US bettors’ private data.
Read Reviews to Gauge Reputation: Check out online reviews using sites like SiteJabber, ConsumerAffairs, or Trustpilot. You can read about other users’ firsthand experiences with the sportsbook you’re researching to become aware of the pros and cons you might encounter.
Mobile compatibility: Check if the sportsbook is compatible with your mobile device. If your device isn’t supported, find out if there’s a website version of the app that you could access with your web browser.

Sports Markets: You’ll typically find a list of the sports markets on a vertical menu on the screen’s left side. Free members can go on any sportsbook and see if the markets they’re interested in betting on are available using this platform.
Odds and Pricing: Free members can view the odds without becoming paid. Ensure the sportsbook you’re researching has the odds you’re looking for on either side of the betting line. Find out if you can buy these odds at a reasonable price. This research will help you find a sports betting app with good bet value.
Bonuses/Promotions: Some bettors are interested in sports betting apps that offer them good welcome bonuses, daily promos, or solid rewards that compensate them for their loyalty. You can check the bonuses a sportsbook offers and use this as one of your primary criteria for finding the perfect betting platform.
Banking Options: Another good way to narrow your choices is to find a sportsbook supporting the banking format that works for your budget and lifestyle. Most sportsbooks offer credit/debit cards, online banking, e-wallets, or the Play+ Card as options for deposits and payouts. Find the banking options that work best for you!
Customer Support: Check out the support options. You’ll want good customer service backing up if problems or issues arise. We recommend choosing a platform that offers support options like live chat, phone support, or email messaging.

There’s a good chance that the sportsbook you settle with won’t have every single one of the features you’d ideally desire, but as long as you can get into the ballpark, you’ve probably made a solid choice. It’s all based on what’s important to you and your desired betting experience.

Learn More: How to Choose the Right Betting App

How to Place a Bet

Once you’ve chosen a sportsbook you can trust that serves your online gambling goals, you can start placing your sports bets. Follow these steps to select your bets and apply them to your bet slip. How this will look from one sportsbook to the next will differ based on the platform, but these are the rough steps you can apply to any platform if you’re unfamiliar with how placing your bet works.

If you’re entirely new to sports betting, we’ll include a few extra steps on the front end to show you what setting up your new account is like.

Choose your sportsbook. Enter your name, email address, and date of birth to begin registering your new account.
Create a username and password to access your new account. You’ll use These login terms to get in and out of the sportsbook safely and securely.
Choose a deposit method that works for your budget and banking needs. You can typically choose between credit cards, prepaid cards, e-wallets, and bank/wire transfers. Enter the amount you want to make for your first deposit and submit it.
Select the sports market and game you’d like to bet on. You can find the markets along a vertical menu on the left-hand side of the screen. The specific games or matches will appear in the middle once you select your market.
Choose the odds on the bets. You can choose between moneyline bets, point spreads, and totals. Click on these to add them to your bet slip.
Next, enter the money you want to place on the bet. Remember the minimum and maximum bets that come with the odds or bet you’re placing.
Confirm your bet before submitting it. Ensure the game, odds, and the amount you’d like to bet are all correct. Once you’ve placed your bet, you’ll get a confirmation that it was successfully accepted.
Watch the game you bet on. See if your predictions were correct. If they were, the money would be added to your account in the timeframes set by your withdrawal method.

If you want a full breakdown of what it looks like to make your first sports wager, be sure to check out our step-by-step guide for How to Place a Bet.

Bankroll Management

A significant aspect of sports betting is good bankroll management. This is where you use your gambling budget responsibly, including practices like staying committed to a budget, using percentage or unit betting to avoid burning through your bankroll and spreading your money over several wagers to minimize losses and enjoy small, incremental gains over time.

Tips for Good Bankroll Management

While making solid betting decisions is essential, the other side of the equation for success in sports betting is managing your finances well. Follow these strategies to manage your bankroll responsibly and to build your balance over time.

Set aside a specific amount of money for your gambling budget. Keep it separate from your regular money, and don’t go over.
Set up the units you’ll use for betting. You can use a percentage of your bankroll or establish a unit size you’re comfortable with. Make sure it’s a smaller amount, and apply this to all your bets, no matter how hot the bet might be.
Don’t chase losses. Either walk away from your sportsbooks and take a break to minimize the money you could lose. Or keep betting using the same unit or percentage. Don’t up the amount of your bets to offset what you lost!
Choose low-variance bets. These guarantee steady returns, though they are smaller than the big payday you could expect betting on underdogs or betting using parlays or props. The idea is to rake in small, steady returns versus a few big, exciting payouts.
Gamble using logic and reason. Don’t bet using your emotions like anger, frustration, or excitement. Stick to your betting strategy. If you can’t, take a break from sports betting to clear your head.
Keep track of your bets. Record the date of the bet, the matchup, the type of bet placed, the odds, the spreads or totals, the amount of your bet, your profit, and the final result. Once you’ve compiled this information, you can review it to see your betting strengths and weaknesses. You can hone your strategy and approach once you discover your weak areas.

Go More In-Depth: Read through our Guide to Bankroll Management.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

To become successful with online betting, you’ll want to avoid the following mistakes at all costs. The more you can learn as a newer bettor, the less likely you’ll be to run into these common pitfalls that novice punters are susceptible to—sidestepping these betting mistakes can put you miles ahead of other bettors who have as much experience as you.

Bankroll Mismanagement: The most important thing to do right in sports betting is to have a tight grip on managing your gambling budget. Set aside a certain amount of money that you can afford to lose. Never use money that’s needed for debts or living expenses.
Changing Betting Unit Size: The best practice when it comes to bet size is to choose a betting unit that you keep consistent across all bets, no matter how good the odds are. It’s best to make your bet size around 1-2% of your bankroll. The bet would only increase or decrease if your bankroll grows or shrinks. Stay consistent and keep all your bets in this 1-2% range.
Having Unrealistic Expectations: You shouldn’t go into sports betting with the expectation that you’re going to make a living on it or that you’re going to make your fortune. The reality is that a slim portion of the population has been able to pull this off. You also shouldn’t approach sports betting thinking that you’ll begin raking in some serious money as long as you make strategic, well-researched bets. You have to look at sports betting as a long-term game—losses are inevitable, and your best approach is to make small, incremental gains over time slowly and steadily.

Betting Without Research: If you’re betting based on hunches or betting solely for your favorite team or players, you’re making a rookie mistake. You want your bets to be rooted in solid research. Keep track of player injuries or suspensions, weather conditions, and line movement caused by sharp bettors or syndicates.
Betting While You’re Under the Influence: Never bet on sports when drunk or high. Your inhibitions come down, and you’ll begin to make bad decisions and dumb mistakes when you introduce alcohol or drugs into the mix. When you bet on sports online, rational, logical thinking is where you need your head to be, and being under the influence undoes all that.
Placing Wagers on Markets You’re Not Familiar With: Typically, the more you know about a team or individual player, the better informed your bets will be and the increased likelihood of your prediction being correct. Stick with the sports and teams you know. Inexperienced bettors make the mistake of betting on markets they don’t know well and end up losing money they didn’t have to lose.
Betting Just to Bet: Every sports bet you make should be with intention. If you bet just to bet, you can run into a lot of unnecessary losses, even if you’re keeping within the confines of your budget. Mitigate your losses by focusing on the quality of your bets and not the quantity.
Betting Parlays Too Early: If you’re a novice bettor, you’ll want to stick with betting money lines, point spreads, and over/under totals because these bets only have two potential outcomes, whereas parlays, or even prop bets, offer more than two outcomes. Parlays are more challenging to get right because they are two or more bets together to make one bet, but you must correctly guess every leg for the bet to be considered a win.
Not Setting Set Up Time Limits: It’s just as important to set up time limits on your sessions as it is to set up a solid gambling budget. Time limits keep you grounded because they ultimately limit the number of bets you can place, and they force you to dedicate time to other things like your family, friends, and interests.
Not Taking Breaks: Even with time limits in place for your sports betting session, you should take breaks during your session to keep your head clear and in a logical state of mind. If you lose a lot of bets, take a break, and don’t let anger or frustration dictate your betting approach. Taking breaks can remind you of your gambling goals and commitment to sticking to best practices.
Betting When You’re Upset, Angry, or Frustrated: It’s essential to bet on sports using sound logic and reason. This keeps you grounded in a firm strategy that makes sense. When you start feeling emotions like the ones listed here, your judgment can become clouded, and you’re more prone to making bad decisions or careless mistakes rooted in emotion. This almost always spells bad news for your bankroll balance and the quality of your bets.

When you can avoid these common mistakes that new bettors make, you will have a significant advantage over most other bettors. We’re not saying that you’ll become some expert right away or won’t experience any losses going forward, but we’re saying that these best practices will pay off over time as you make slow but steady progress on your sportsbook’s bankroll balance.

Legal and Safe Betting

Check your local or regional laws for sports betting to ensure that you’re using a sportsbook or sports betting site within the confines of the law in your state or jurisdiction. Because legalized sports betting has taken hold in the United States since PASPA was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2018, there are 38 out of 50 US states, plus the District of Columbia, that now have laws allowing their residents and visitors to use online sports betting apps to win real money.

The Regulated US Market	Offshore Betting Sites
Regulated US sports betting apps protect their customers’ private data, including personal and financial information. It’s essential to use these regulated platforms because they fall within the bounds of US law and provide the necessary protections so their customers can thrive, spending more time on betting and less time worrying about the state of their private data.	Since some US states don’t have regulated sports betting sites, many US bettors are out of luck unless they use an offshore sports betting site. These real money sportsbooks headquartered in foreign jurisdictions but accept bettors from the US. However, they are not legally obligated to protect their users’ data because they aren’t beholden to US laws and regulations. That’s the risk you run using these platforms—there’s no guarantee that our personal or financial data will be secure.

The Regulated US Market

Offshore Betting Sites

Regulated US sports betting apps protect their customers’ private data, including personal and financial information. It’s essential to use these regulated platforms because they fall within the bounds of US law and provide the necessary protections so their customers can thrive, spending more time on betting and less time worrying about the state of their private data.

Since some US states don’t have regulated sports betting sites, many US bettors are out of luck unless they use an offshore sports betting site. These real money sportsbooks headquartered in foreign jurisdictions but accept bettors from the US. However, they are not legally obligated to protect their users’ data because they aren’t beholden to US laws and regulations. That’s the risk you run using these platforms—there’s no guarantee that our personal or financial data will be secure.

Resources and Further Reading

For additional resources to help your sports betting journey, we’d encourage you to check out some solid betting guides and blog posts that take in greater detail about sports betting strategies or habits that new gamblers should begin adopting ASAP.