Eat better and lose weight? Bah. Finally learn French? Not this year. Keep your Jane Fonda workout tapes in the closet (no, really, you don’t even have a VCR anymore; why are you keeping those). Our entire plan for self-improvement is to make New Year’s resolutions for sports bettors.
In 2024 let’s commit to something we know we won’t bail on by February. This is the year you raise your game, from exploring new markets to getting in the weeds on bottom-up betting. Here are five resolutions you can plug in today to make you sharper in the coming 365.
1. Bet More Props
No doubt many of you are already playing in props markets. But if you’re not, this is the time to jump in with both feet. Operators have shown more willingness to take action on props, and it provides ample attack surface for bettors.
Just make sure first you’re looking in the right spots. There’s one common trap inexperienced prop bettors tend to fall into: using mean instead of median to project player performance.
Once you understand that, you’re read for the new Unabated Essentials. It’s the perfect entry point for bettors who want to really get after prop betting, with several tools that are invaluable for anyone looking to put in volume on props.
It offers access to our Prop Odds Screen and in-line simulator so you can choose from preloaded projections or bulk upload your own prop projections and quickly find which plays grade out as plus-EV opportunities.
Or run your numbers through the Prop Simulator and get entire distributions of player performance results based on 10,000 simulations. See the results as a table or a graph and use that to find numbers at the books that are going to be in your favor. You could probably spend the entire year on this, but we promised you five resolutions. So let’s keep going.
2. Focus On What Matters
Sports betting is hard enough without going down blind alleys. There’s a lot of advice that gets thrown around on social media or on websites that might be well-meaning, that might even be partially true, but doesn’t tell the full story.
Your most important job as a bettor is to focus on making plays with positive expected value, using the best tools available for the job.
Sometimes that means calculating and documenting your closing line value along the way, but don’t get too caught up in the CLV race if it isn’t appropriate for the markets you’re betting. If you’re exclusively a prop player, or you bet in smaller, less-efficient markets, don’t waste your time. Zero in on making the best bets you can possibly make instead.
Likewise, don’t get hung up on things like bet sizing if you’re not already beating the market. You can’t bankroll manage your way out of bad bets. Bankroll management shouldn’t be complicated, but it also isn’t one-size-fits all.
Stay grounded, stay focused, and use your time as efficiently as possible.
3. Use Every Market
The NFL regular season is just about over. With the playoffs come sides and totals that are going to be harder to beat. The NBA crossed the Christmas Day threshold, and it’ll only get tougher in the meat of the season.
When your regular spot is fished out, the smart angler knows it’s time to set sail for blue ocean. There’s more to bet than just football and basketball, and the dough spends just as well whether you cash in on the U.S. Open or the NFC Championship.
This is the year to master another market.
You want the country club sports? We can help you get your start in golf or tennis. If those aren’t bloody enough for you, start finding your spots betting UFC. There’s money to be made in NASCAR. Jump right in at Daytona in February. And if you don’t want to give up on team sports entirely, go after the WNBA.
These smaller markets have big advantages. They’re less efficient. Good numbers can last longer. It’s harder for books to gauge whether your action is sharp or not. This is real in-the-trenches betting. Roll up your sleeves in 2023.
4. Focus On Process Over Picks
Speaking of fish: don’t eat for a day, eat for a lifetime.
Learning how to put in place a system, a process, is going to serve you infinitely better than living off the table scraps of other people’s picks. There are plenty of reasons you shouldn’t be paying for picks or blindly following plays.
Instead, put your energy building out your process. We’ve talked about this quite a bit on the Unabated Podcast with everything from the best time to bet to how to handle tilt; and on our Premium Livestreams. It’s going to be a recurring topic in the new year. (And probably every other year, honestly.)
Subscribe to the podcast now and fill your earholes with all the process advice you can handle. We’re up on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere else you find your podcasts.
5. Learn to Model
Building your own models is the last big step a lot of sports bettors have yet to take. And we get it. It can be daunting. But you can dip a toe in without needing to learn Python or R to start building models.
You can begin modeling using just Excel or Google Sheets. We’ve got two video series on building models for baseball and football learn how to gather and analyze data to form your own projections.
Once you’ve built out your projections you can take them back to the Prop Simulator and see how your numbers stack up. Use the results as feedback to refine your models. It’s the circle of sports betting life.
Bonus: Network More
Sometimes you can’t stare at an odds screen all day. Take a break. Stare at a slightly different screen for a second.
We have a thriving community of like-minded bettors all trying to learn and improve at the game. Learning from your peers is one of the best tools you have to improve, and there are no better peers to learn from than the crew in the Unabated Discord.
Plus, you can talk directly with Captain Jack, Rufus Peabody and Peter Jennings. Don’t get stuck beating your head against the wall when there are other bettors out there who’ve gone through exactly the same things you have. Lean on their experience. Or hang out and share dog pictures. Sometimes, we do that, too.
