How to Bet on Football Tips – The Betting Tip Guide

Football is, as the old cliché goes, a game of opinions. There are millions, maybe billions, of fans around the world and each one of them has one. Many are only too happy to offer their tips on the next match, the next transfer, the next best bet. With so much noise, it can be hard to know who to trust.

As the home of one of the most vibrant communities of football tipsters around, we know a thing or two about betting on football tips. We’ve seen every shape and size of tipster, and we’ve learnt a thing or two along the way.

Following someone’s football betting tips can be a great tactic for new bettors and more experienced punters alike, but there are some golden rules we would always advocate you follow:

1. Turn your filter on
2. Check their record
3. Do your research
4. Define your tactics

Anything that can make your betting experience easier and, perhaps more importantly, give you a better chance of winning is always going to be welcomed. There are many smart people out there sharing their tips and winning regularly on the Premier League and beyond. You just need to know how to find them.

So join in the latest of our blog series, as we lift the lid on the process and do our best to explain smart football tips tactics once and for all. After reading this guide, you should be able to filter out the good tips from the bad and hopefully have some success along the way.

1) Turn your filter on

We’ve all experienced the salesman who over-promises and under-delivers, and it’s never fun to be on the receiving end of it.

Just because somebody has a tip to share does not necessarily make it a good one. If you were to bet on every suggestion that came your way, you would soon be walking the road towards financial ruin.

Maybe you’re unsure what a realistic success rate looks like in football betting? Taking a look at a league table of tipsters is a good place to start, especially if it’s by market. But in short:

• If a tipster is offering a tip which delivers a £100,000 return from a £1 wager, the reality is that it’s highly unlikely to come in.
• If they’re claiming to guarantee returns, they are being deliberately misleading.

Football’s famously unpredictable – that’s why we love it. Anyone claiming that they will never lose isn’t to be trusted.

So the first rule is to get smart and avoid tips of this nature. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

2) Check their record

Any credible tipster will allow you to see their betting history – where they’ve won, where they’ve lost and what their profit margins have been.

You first need to find a tipster that you can trust, and this trust usually comes from observing their track record beforehand. Past success doesn’t guarantee winners in the future, but it’s as good an indicator as any.

The more regularly they have won in the past, the greater likelihood of success further down the line. Our all-time leaderboard is testament to this.

KickOff’s leaderboard is full of smart bettors with defined strategies

Go deeper than just their profit. If a tipster made won big backing PSG to lose in Ligue 1, Real Madrid to lose in La Liga and Bayern Munich to lose in the Bundesliga in a single weekend their profits could be sizeable, but how smart is their betting really? Are they likely to repeat that trick any time soon?

The hunt for value is considered the holy grail and punters not only want tips that are going to be winners, but they also want ones that will maximise their profits.

Look a little deeper. What’s their strike rate, their return on investment (ROI), which leagues or markets do they specialise in? Maybe they’re only good at Both Teams To Score, maybe it’s the Champions League they’ve got worked out.

Know who you’re backing and what their strengths are before you spend your hard-earned money following them.

3) Do your own research

You do not have to use every tip that comes your way and with many different people or companies offering such a service, conflicting opinions are likely to appear.

For example, if Arsenal are playing host to Liverpool in the FA Cup at the Emirates, one tipster could back Liverpool to pick up a win and another may back Mikel Arteta’s men to come out on top.

This doesn’t mean that they’re both bad tipsters, just that their opinions are different. As we’ve said, football is a game of opinions.

Clearly both cannot be right, so you may have to exercise your own judgement too. Take a look at the tips you’ve been given and evaluate the strengths of them yourself.

Make us of stats, algorithmic predictions and all the other tools you have to hand. KickOff is a great resource, as are the likes of WhoScored and Squawka.

Following tips does not mean going in with blind trust. It’s about being pointed in the right direction and using your own skills and knowledge to evaluate the right move.

4) Define your tactics

This may be the most important step, as it ultimately defines the type of tips you’re going to follow. There’s tons of help on this to be found in our blog and other smart betting guides, but we’re going to cover the very top level here.

Some football bettors want to place a £1 bet each week at high odds, hoping that one day they’ll get hit the jackpot.

Other tipsters are looking for steady, incremental wins over a long period of time. Aiming for a 10% return on investment is not uncommon in these circles.

Neither approach is wrong. In fact, there’s a lot of wisdom in both. The point is to work out what you’re after, and to manage your money and your expectations accordingly.

If you’re regularly placing 5000/1 bets on a selection of League Two matches, you’re going to lose more often than not. If you’re happy with that, believing one day your big payout will come, follow other tipsters doing the same.

Football’s a game of tactics, and football betting is too. Be betting’s answer to Pep Guardiola. Do not err from your philosophy and your aims.

Examples

To finish off this guide, we’re going to take a look at a couple of examples of tipsters and their tactics. If the steps above haven’t quite helped you find the approach you want to take with football tips, we hope these will.

Frankie Loves Betting On The Favourites

Tipster A – Frankie Favourite

Now Frankie has a habit of offering tips that have rather short odds, the kind of prices that will do little to excite most punters. If there is a 1/5 shout for a home win in the Bundesliga, he is putting it straight on the betting slip.

Of course, a 1/5 tip is not going to make the bookmakers sweat and is likely to get over the line more often than not. A £10 bet is going to return £12 if it wins. A bet that not really worth the stress and not really worth the reading of Frankie’s tips.

However, Frankie’s method does return a higher percentage of wins and for those who do not dive deeper, an 86% success rate might lead you to follow his tips or maybe even subscribe to his weekly tipping service.

Six wins from every seven tips may sound good on paper, but every loss is going to wipe out a considerable amount of the small profit he has and therefore, the ROI is never going to lead to an early retirement. Which ultimately means Frankie’s tips do not offer good value.

Vincent Can Sniff Out The Value

Tipster B – Vincent Value

While Vincent is a tipster that has a nose for value and although he may not have as much success as his colleague above, he is certainly putting more of a dent in the bookmaker’s bank balance – something that they are not too keen of.

Whereas Frankie is offering the tips that even non-football fans would probably agree with, Vincent has a more measured approach and with his tips being never less than Evens in terms of odds, he aims to find the perfect balance between risk and reward.

He may not be delivering the goods all the time, but his legion of tipsters do not mind. Because when they win, they win big and although he has a 40% success rate, his stream of value bets have generated a far greater ROI.

Which is exactly what any good tipster should be displaying and if you also hunt out the value bets, you give yourself a much greater chance of success in the long run. Therefore, Vincent’s tips are certainly the ones you should be making note of.

This blog was written by Dan Tracey for KickOff.co.uk. We make smart betting easier than ever, with algorithmic predictions, in-depth statistics covering the biggest leagues in the world and in-play tips. Our ever-growing community of tipsters is making hay thanks to our Pro offering, and you can join them by claiming our introductory offer today.