With 38 states (plus Washington, D.C.) joining the fray, sports betting is just about everywhere. 

If you’re new to the game, there’s a dizzying menu of options every time you open the sportsbook app of your choice. It can be overwhelming. Sides, totals, props, futures, in-game bets, parlays, teasers. It’s a lot to figure out.

It’s even harder to figure out how to actually make money doing it. 

All sorts of snake oil salesmen are out there trying to get you to buy their tips. Sportsbooks themselves push pre-made single game parlays on customers as soon as they open their app. 

So how do actual, professional sports bettors make money betting sports? Here are a few tips to help you avoid traps and actually learn how to bet profitably.

Line Shop 

“The single sharpest thing you can do as a bettor is to line shop,” Captain Jack Andrews of Unabated Sports is fond of saying. 

If you want to bet on the San Francisco 49ers to beat the Dallas Cowboys and one sportsbook has a line of Niners -3, and the other has Niners -4, clearly, you want to take the one where you give away the fewest number of points. 

But that also applies to the price of a bet. If one book is Niners -3 at -110 and another is -3 at -115, take the -110 even if it means opening an account at a new book. 

It’s exactly the same principle as shopping for sales and buying a TV for $175 instead of $200.

Small Edges Matter

That’s because sports betting, despite what high-profile stories would have you believe, isn’t about turning $5 into $500,000 on some longshot parlay that needs 20 bets to hit. It’s about taking small edges and stacking them up over time. 

If you’re flipping coins against someone for a buck a throw and they offer to pay you $1.05 when you win, those extra nickels add up if you flip enough coins. You’re guaranteed to win in the long run. 

But if someone else is offering to pay you 95 cents every time you win, in the long term, you can’t help but lose. After 20 flips, you’re down an average of 50 cents. After 1,000, you’re down $25. You could never catch up. Take your business to the first coin-flipper. 

Line shopping works the same way in sports betting. To do it quickly and efficiently, pros use what’s called an Odds Screen to find the best price on bets. This screen shows the various lines and prices of bets on each game stacked up next to each other at different sportsbooks. 

In one quick glance, you can see the numbers on Ravens-Steelers at FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM, ESPNBet, Caesars Sportsbook and more.

Use Market-Making Books to Your Advantage

One thing sharp sports bettors have in common is they know how to figure out when a book is offering a good line, or a bad one. 

Typically, this means using information from a “market-making book.” There are a few of these kinds of sportsbooks. The gist is they take action from all players, including the sharpest handicappers, and use that information to adjust their lines on games. 

When a market-making sportsbook says a game should be lined at -3 and the “recreational” sportsbooks – those that may not accept action from sharp bettors – like DraftKings, BetMGM or Caesars Sports are at -2.5, you can reasonably infer -2.5 is the better bet. 

Get a taste of what it looks like when you put all that information together, for free.

Use Promotions Wisely

Some books offer huge bonuses when you sign up, promising up to $1,000 “risk-free” bets. It’s a little more complicated than that, but smart bettors know how to maximize the benefit of those promotions. 

(Hint: It’s not by taking heavy favorites and trying to lock up a win.)

Arbitrage and Hedging

“Arbitrage” in sports betting is a relatively simple concept. If you see different prices on a game at different sportsbooks, you can play both sides and do no worse than break even. For example, if the Bills are +120 at one book, and the Chiefs are even money at another, you can play both. If the Bills win, you’ve bet $200 combined and returned either $220 or $200.

Along with hedging bets, where the price of a bet has changed in a way that allows you to bet again to guarantee a profit, these are strategies to lessen your risk, but be careful – they could also eat into your winnings.

Prop Betting

Betting props – that is, bets on individual player performance – is seen by some pros as a more beatable bet to make than on sides or totals. Betting props requires acquiring or crafting accurate projections, then using simulators to find the best prices based on those numbers.

Daily Fantasy Sports pick’em sites like PrizePicks and Underdog Fantasy offer another way to use individual player performance. The right tools can help you find lines with the best edges to them if your projections are on point.

Network More

No one learns in a vacuum. Communities and networking are essential to bouncing ideas off other, experienced bettors – or just picking up new information and following sports news. Plenty of communities exist on social media, and in the sports betting world, they thrive in particular on Discord. 

Look to the Future

Finally, futures bets – where you can bet on season-long outcomes like who will win the Super Bowl, the National League pennant, or how many wins the Lakers will rack up in the season – can offer tons of value. 

Bettors can use power ratings to enable powerful, season-long simulators to find the best value spots on the board. Around Week 11 of the 2023 NFL season, the Baltimore Ravens were 10-1 to win the Super Bowl. Heading into Week 18, they were as low as +300. With the right ratings and good simulation, you could have seen there was great value on Baltimore.