When to hedge your bets
Sometimes in sports betting, it makes sense to hedge your bets. I’d like to take a closer look at this topic and show you an example from last night. Before we look at my example, let’s look at the scenarios when it makes sense to hedge your bets:
You have a future bet for a team to win the championship and they make it to the championship. Depending on the odds, it makes sense to bet on the other team in the championship so you profit either way. Ask Kyle Covers about this one - Pats/Eagles.
You have a large parlay that comes down to one game. This usually works out in baseball if you have three or more early games and it all comes down to a late game. Again, depending on the odds, it makes the most sense to hedge your bet and take the opposite team in the last game so you profit either way. This is always a great situation to be in, you just have to weigh out the odds and your options.
You put a bet in and then some sort of breaking news changes the outlook of the game. Example - if you bet on the Yankees and then it’s announced that Stanton and Judge are out of the lineup. It makes sense to bet on the other team to cut your losses and only lose out on the juice rather than the whole bet.
Last night, I had a parlay going with all four VIP picks. I don’t always do this but we have been hot lately (9-2 in our last 11) so I fired on the heat check parlay:
$100 to win $843
Red Sox win, Rockies win, Nationals win. It all came down to the Blue Jays as underdogs. I was feeling pretty good about the Jays as underdogs until I saw that there was a last minute pitching change for the Angels. At that point, I wanted to wait it out a few innings to see how things looked and then I decided to dive into the live betting to hedge my bet after Aaron Sanchez got injured in the first inning:
$300 to win $216 on the Angels
Why does this make sense? That put me in a situation where I would either profit $543 or $116. Either way, I make money - you take that any day of the week. Of course, I could have waited it out and hoped for the $843 pay out on my parlay but I would have lost $100 rather than the $116 profit I ended up making. I always suggest keeping your options open for hedging your bets. Obviously, if you’re super confident in something then you can ride it out but I’m the type of guy who takes a guaranteed profit whenever I get the opportunity to do so.
Like, retweet, and share this article with a friend if you found it helpful.