App To Keep Track Of Bets
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Perhaps focus your betting on less efficient markets. Want to bet NFL or NBA for example? Focus on player props, instead of sides and totals. You're more likely to have an actual edge and are also more likely to find prices way off from the rest of the market. If you do decide to dabble in more efficient (hard-to-beat) markets, keep track. Personal Capital. Personal Capital is widely considered to be the best portfolio tracker available.
Sports betting is similar to the rabbit hole you find yourself in on a random Tuesday night while browsing YouTube. First you play all the old 90's hip-hop jams you grew up with, then you start watching videos about who shot 2Pac and Biggie, then that spirals into some sort of Illuminati videos and so on and so on. The next thing you know it's 4 a.m. and your convinced we are not alone on this planet.
Sports betting is no different. Once you get hooked on the exhilarating ride that is placing a bet, watching the game and rooting for your selection, you are in it for life. The highs and lows of the actual game itself can sometimes be enough to overtake the sheer joy of winning a wager and cashing your ticket. When the picks are winning and the good times are flowing, sports betting can be extremely fun.
However, similar to many things in life, in order to enjoy the benefits and the fun, you must first put in the hard work and show some semblance of dedication to the cause. Sports betting has a very boring side to it that not many causal bettors know about. It's called record-keeping. A successful sports bettor must be brutally honest with himself about whether he is a winning or losing player, and the only way to do so is by tracking each and every single bet that is made. Whether that's a $2 bet on a long shot of 1000/1 or a $1000 bet on a favorite of -1000. Each bet counts the same.
Look at Sports Betting as an Investment
Regardless of if you are betting for fun and entertainment purposes, or if you are taking it more seriously in hopes of turning a profit, it would be foolish of you to throw around your hard-earned money without potentially seeing some sort of return on investment. There are two ways to see a return on your investment. The first is the hard part -- winning bets.
The second way to see any returns is by keeping daily records of your bets. There is no business in the world that does not keep records of daily transactions, expenses, and everything in between. If there is a business like that in the world, chances are it won't stay open for very long.
The whole idea behind keeping records is to help you succeed as a sports bettor. Once you have kept records for a few months or even years, you can look back on them and gain a valuable insight into your betting habits, trends, and win-loss records. Even if you are simply sports betting as a hobby, keeping records will keep track of the one stat that you need to know - your profits or losses.
How to Keep Track of Your Bets
Record keeping can be as simple or as detail oriented as you want it to be. There are several online tools/mobile apps that you can download for free to utilize. The most basic way to keep track of your bets, however, is by hand writing them down in a notebook.
Here is a quick list at how your records might look:
Date: 08/11/18
Sport: MLB
Type of bet: Money Line
Amount wagered: $115 to win $100
Bet: Boston Red Sox -115
Home/road: Home
Outcome: Win - Boston 4. Baltimore 0.
I would advise keeping a separate log for each sport. There are times where you will want to go back and look at your betting history and it will be a lot easier to look through one sport then go line by line and sift through eight different sports. If you decide to forgo the old school pen and notepad (welcome to 2018), I would highly recommend downloading an app or online software that does all the calculations for you.
Pros of Tracking Your Bets
Tracking your bets to find out your bottom line is only half the story. Tracking your bets is helpful because it will allow you to look back at the data you have kept and analyze it to the point where you can learn what works and what doesn't work. Remember, the end game of a betting hobby is to turn a profit over time. This is not a get-rich-quick scheme.
Tracking your bets will also allow you to kick the habit of placing random bets without thinking twice about it. If you are honest enough with yourself and are dedicated to tracking every single wager, you will be hesitant to throw money away on stupid things like the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating contest or a random Japanese baseball game during the midnight hours. Once you look back at your data and see how much money you wasted on events that you have no clue about, you will look foolish and be pissed off that you threw money away aimlessly. Tracking bets keep you honest and it is important if you are serious about becoming a good handicapper.
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Ever wondered how you are actually doing in sports betting?
Just like tracking your finances can be an eye opening experience (I spent how much at restaurants last month?!), tracking your bets can shed some light on your performance.
Download the free sports bet tracking spreadsheet below to get started (available for both Excel and Google Sheets):
Bet Tracker Spreadsheet: Instant Insights
If you want to measure your performance and see where you are succeeding and failing, you need to track it.
With this free tool, you can see your performance broken down by various dimensions.
Have a great ROI on betting NBA 2nd halves? Getting solid closing line value on NFL point spreads? This spreadsheet allows you to answer questions like this and more.
How to use the spreadsheet
While the spreadsheet is pretty straightforward, I’d like to walk you through how it works.
How to track sports bets
Everything lives in the “Bet Log” tab. This is the only place information is manually entered. Once the data is entered there, all other tabs will automatically populate.
In the “Bet Log” tab, blue columns are required while red columns are optional. The more information you input, the more useful the spreadsheet will be.
Entering things like the closing line, while slightly annoying, will also be the most important to your success.
How to analyze performance
Each tab will have different graphs and tables that show your performance. The beauty of this is that you can filter the data by any dimension you like.
Any yellow cell is an “input” cell that can be changed. All of these are dropdowns that are pre-populated based on the information you enter in the Bet Log.
How to add more leagues and teams
To add new leagues and teams, you will do so in the “REF” tab. This tab holds all of the lookup information for the dropdowns throughout the spreadsheet.
App To Keep Track Of Bets
Again, the cells available to modify are in yellow. You can add the following dimensions:
- Leagues (ex: WNBA)
- Teams (ex: Chicago Sky)
- Tags (ex: 2nd half)
Bet Tracker Spreadsheet Metrics
Deciding what to track is important in determining how you measure success. The spreadsheet tracks the following key metrics:
Closing Line Value
Closing line value (CLV) is a measure of how much better or worse the odds you bet at were compared to where they closed.
If you believe the markets you are betting into are efficient (NFL point spreads, MLB moneylines, etc.), then CLV is a great predictor of long term success.
All you need to do is input the odds you placed your bet at as well as where the odds closed. Preferably you use a market making sportsbook like Pinnacle to decide what the “true” closing line was.
Profit
Profit is about as simple as it gets. Are you making or losing money?
While this is the “bottom line”, surprisingly it isn’t always predictive of long term success. Still, you will obviously want to see how much money you have made or lost.
ROI
This is what most people tend to look at. It is a measure of how profitable you are relative to how much you are risking.
While at the end of the day, the money in your pocket is what matters, this metric focuses more on results rather than process and is a measure of efficiency.
ROI isn’t as predictive of long term winning as CLV, but is useful to track to see where you stand.
Risk
This one is simple, yet will likely give you insights into where you are putting your money.
If you have a model, does it consistently value the Dallas Cowboys differently than the market? Thus making many of your bets on the Cowboys? Analyzing your risk by league/team/bet type can give you these types of answers.
Bankroll
Bankroll will track our running total of how much money you have in your accounts across all sportsbooks. You can also see this trended over time to help you see any changes in your betting strategy and how that has affected your bankroll.
It is very useful to see, at a glance, where your money lies. Is 95% of our bankroll at FanDuel? Maybe you should shift some to DraftKings.
Bet Tracker Spreadsheet Dimensions
Having these metrics available is important, but insights really come from slicing the data by different dimensions.
League/Team
Tracking your performance by league or team can give you clues into where your strengths or weaknesses are.
Do you watch every second of every New York Knicks game? Think you have an edge on Knicks games? You can find out using the spreadsheet.
Same goes for leagues. Do you follow NFL closely but use strictly numbers for NCAA Basketball? Compare the performance of the two and see what’s working.
Bet Type
Looking at performance by bet type can also shed some light on your process, especially if it is model driven.
Track your performance by the following bet types:
- Spread
- Moneyline
- Total
- Prop
- Future
You can also use the “Tag” field to designate special types of bets. For example, if you want to see your performance on moneylines for NBA 2nd halves, you would put “2H” (or something similar) in the Tag field and “moneyline” in the bet type field.
Date
A common way to analyze performance is to look at metrics trended over time.
Look at any of the metric/dimension combinations above trended over any time period you’d like.
Want to see your performance over the last 14 days? Or how about the last 12 weeks? Both are possible here.
Google Sheets Sports Betting Tracker
App To Track Phone
The sports betting tracker is also available on Google Sheets. While the features are the same as the Excel file, Google Sheets has some notable benefits:
- Available/online at all times
- Can enter bets on your phone using the Sheets app
- You don’t need to be at a computer to enter your bets
- Google Sheets auto saves any changes
- Allows multiple users to be in the sheet at the same time and make changes