The best way to increase your winnings from betting is to develop a basketball betting guide. Such a guide will help you cut your losses and increase your profits. This is precisely how professional bettors operate. They do not bet on whims and fantasies as is often believed, but after considerable work. On the contrary, amateur bettors are carried away by the mood of the public. They gain some and lose more. So if you want to win you must have your own betting guide. This guide should include the following details:

1. Know your teams. Carefully read the newspaper reports. Also listen to the analysis of the team made by professionals on television. Make a list of the strengths and weaknesses of the players on each team, and the performance of the teams at home and away. A good guide should cover at least two, if not three, seasons. Check which players are prone to injury and are likely to miss big games. Calculate the impact of your absence on team performance. Use an excel sheet and write down team ratings in different newspapers, TV channels and websites. Based on this, arrive at your own rating.

2. Team Motivation – Several bets go wrong because the bettor has not evaluated the level of motivation of a team to win a match. A team that has already qualified will save the best for the final. He would rest his key players or experiment with new team formations. These are useful strategies that coaches adopt. Conversely, a team facing elimination will go the extra mile to win, even if the opposition is star-studded. Team performance is also affected by consecutive matches. A team may be too exhausted to perform at their best when forced to play a game the next day and end up losing to a weaker team. Your guide will alert you to these possibilities.

3. Follow a match closely: Your guide should have a column that describes in detail why your team won or lost. Very often the final scores do not tell the correct story of a match. A team that may have lost may have played better basketball. These match descriptions will help you form a better opinion of the teams and their players.

4. Public opinion: Strong public opinion in favor of a team leads to strong bets on it. Everyone wants to bet on a team that is winning. This causes the bookmakers to reduce the odds. Even if you win, your winnings are meaningless. So stay away from those teams or be low on them. Put your money into teams that are dark horses or strong fighters.

5. Make more straight bets: It is better to win four straight bets and lose two in a week, than to opt for two accumulator bets and lose both. Parlays can make a lot of money, but the stakes are high. Even one wrong result can undo your good work.