The Psychology of Sports Betting
Sports betting is one of the most brain-intensive exercises we can do. Studying past performances in a horse race, determining outcomes based on statistical information in a football game, and thinking about the strategy a baseball manager will use before they go to the bullpen help our brains. We must use our brains to make winning sports betting wagers.
Unfortunately, there’s this thing called emotion that sometimes screws up our goal of profiting from our sports bets. Keep reading for ways we can control our emotions to make more lucrative, bets.
How to Control Your Emotions and Win More Bets
1. Our brain is designed to help us survive
Our brains have one goal. We create sub-goals, we may want to start a family, get rich, get a better job, make winning bets, etc.
But to our brain, that’s all the same goal, to survive. When the brain loses the drive to survive, we fall into a depression.
We must understand this drive to survive if we are to make winning sports bets. The drive to survive can lead us to making bad bets or to making bets with higher winning percentages. It all depends.
The other thing about the drive to survive is that it is both a logical and emotional response. Emotions, fear, as an example, helps us survive. This isn’t the way our consciousness and mind think but it is the way our brain thinks.
2. Know that our brain’s survival instinct always pushes us toward the negative
The most significant aspect of our brain’s survival instinct is that it always pushes us towards the negative. Why?
Our brains have yet to catch up to advancements in society. We understand blockchain and AI and how our iPhone works. But the survival instinct is more powerful than any of that.
Always remember, that at the end of the day, our brains are built to help us survive. So emotions are always stronger and more difficult to control in the negative because while we know Chat GTP isn’t the Terminator, our brains see Chat GTP as the sabretooth tiger we had to run from when we lived in caves and hunted with spears.
3. When our brain believes there will be a positive outcome, it releases endorphins, it’s important for us to understand this
Endorphins push us to the positive. So we could get ourselves in a loop, meaning we get excited about all the money we’re going to win by betting on the Cardinals to beat the 49ers because the Cards are a +450 money line underdog.
Those endorphins tell us, “Do it! You’re going to be rich!” So, of course, we do it and then, when the 49ers beat the Cardinals by 30 we fall into a survival depression because we realize we needed the money we bet to pay rent.
Doing something like the above doesn’t mean we have a gambling problem. It means we have to understand how our brain works. Then, we have to realize that our brain doesn’t understand things the way our mind and consciousness do.
We can then pull our brain back by saying something simple like, “Brain, calm down.”
4. Set up a bet unit and stick to it no matter the sporting event
To control emotions, we require consistency. The reason many Buddhist monks spend hours meditating isn’t to reach nirvana. In the Buddhist religion, everyone, even Buddha, had or have to go through multiple lifetimes to reach nirvana.
Monks meditate to keep their brains from creating nonsense that infects their minds. The nonsense comes from the survival instinct.
We have to have consistency. Consistency for us is creating a bet unit and sticking with it. Then, when we’ve gotten into a routine, when we’ve trained our brain to see sports betting more logically than emotionally, we can revisit our unit, lower it or raise it, based on reason and not emotions.
Where to Bet with Bitcoin
Sports betting odds are available here at Nitrobetting. Create a Nitrobetting account now to place your stakes on any of the top games every week.
This is just one of the many sports betting guides that you can read here at Nitrobetting news. Stay tuned for more previews, guides and articles.
READ MORE: How to Use Data to Win More Bets
