1. If you cannot afford to lose a certain bet. DON’T PLACE the BET. This is the most important rule of them all.  Any bet can lose, even so-called “locks”, and you could very well go down in flames with your team. Walk away, buy a sandwich and go home. There will always be another day.

2. Use your bankroll wisely. This is referred to in the business as money management.  Bet only a certain percentage of the money you have allocated for gambling on one ticket or team. Some experts recommend betting only 5% of your total bankroll on one team.

Some inept bettors hinge all their parlays on one team and then make a large straight bet on that same team. If that team covers – all well and good, but if said team fails to cover it brings down all the parlays as well as the large straight bet. By using the method of wagering only a small portion of the total bankroll on a team a player may have a bad day but he won’t have a catastrophic one. Remember, the primary goal of betting sports is to make money, and one way of doing this is to avoid losing money foolishly.

3. Don’t chase your losses. If you do poorly in the early college games on Saturday do not ratchet up the stakes on the later games. Many gamblers do this and the casinos love them for it.

4. Look around for the best lines. If you like the Broncos at -5 there may be a sportsbook in town that has them at 4 ½  or even 4 (unlikely).  Find this book and bet the Broncos there. It doesn’t take too long to shop around for a better number but that time well spent could be the difference between winning and losing your bet.

5. Forget last season. With rampant free agency in the pros and college players leaving early many teams are a very different beast come the new season. Make your evaluations on the present version of team not the past.

6. Be very careful when betting on your hometown team. Many sports fans view their favorite squads through rose-colored glasses. This is antithetical to the cool dispassionate reasoning that produces winners. Some casinos in Las Vegas jack up the prices on LA teams a little knowing full well that over-zealous fans from California will flock to the books and play these inflated lines.

7. There are several types of bets – utilize them. Use run lines and moneylines where applicable, you might not get the best payouts but, used judiciously, they can deliver the goods.

8. Research your bets. There are many services out there that will slake the thirst of any data hound. Numerous magazines, web sites or books can provide all the details a bettor needs to make an educated guess on any game. Trends, power ratings, weather and injury reports etc. are all available to the resourceful player. Making the most of such data is another matter entirely. Also, don’t listen to much of the chatter you hear in a sportsbook. In every gaming establishment in Las Vegas you will find someone who will insist that playing such and such a team is a major lock. You will also find his loud and fat twin who will insist, just as vociferously, that playing the other side is the way to go. Ignore these yahoos. 

9. Choose your spots. Most sportsbooks will post lines on just about every game on the board. That means that they have to handicap all those games. You do not. Though you do not have the resources the sportsbook has you can offset their manpower edge by concentrating on just a few teams or just one conference.

10. Its not as easy to beat the books as you might think. All those sportsbook guys are   by definition, professionals. In all likelihood you are not. Remember, all those wonderful casinos you see as you walk down the strip were not built with winners’ money.