How do you win at sports betting?

The number you have to beat

At -110 you risk $110 to win $100, so you have to win 52.38 percent of your bets to break even. Picking winners half the time loses money. Over 100 bets of that size, 50 winners leaves you $500 down and 55 winners leaves you $550 up.

Five games in a hundred sounds small. It is the whole difference, and very few people find it season after season.

Luck hides it

Here is the part nobody selling picks will tell you. A bettor with no skill at all, a pure coin flip, wins 55 or more of 100 bets about 18 percent of the time. So a good season proves very little, and neither does a bad one. I've watched plenty of players mistake a hot month for a talent and raise their stakes just in time for the luck to turn.

What the winners do

They work on the price before the pick. A bet at -105 instead of -110 drops the break-even to 51.22 percent without knowing anything more about the game, so they keep accounts at more than one book where that is allowed and shop the line on every bet.

They stay narrow. One league, or one kind of bet, known better than the book knows it, beats an opinion on every game on the board.

They stake the same amount every time, 1 or 2 percent of the bankroll, and never raise it to win back a loss. That won't make a loser win, but it keeps a winner alive through the bad runs.

And they write everything down: the bet, the number, the price, the stake, the result and the closing line. Whether you keep beating the closing number is a quicker test of skill than your win rate, and the record is the only way to know. If after a full season it says you are losing, believe it.

The honest answer

For most people sports betting is entertainment that costs money, and that's fine if you set the cost in advance. I'd decide what a season is worth to you, bet it in small pieces, and treat any profit as a surprise.

If you want to try to be one of the few, the sports betting strategy page is where to start, and betting systems is where not to.