NFL Betting 101: Tracking your Bets, Growing your Bankroll

Sports betting is for individuals to lose and for the house to win. Even the most skilled gamblers struggle to find an edge when betting on the NFL.

Establishing a bankroll is a way of tracking your bets. It's a good idea to establish a large bankrolled for sports betting. If the bank is depleted, it's not for you.

The failure to track one's betting record is the biggest mistake a new sports bettor can make. It is important to be conscious of wagered money won and lost and honest with oneself.

Bankroll management is essential to becoming a profitable bettor. Bet sizing should be proportionate to confidence and should vary in relation to bet type. If one assumes a team to have a 70% likelihood to cover the spread, more should not be wagered than if a probability of 60%.

Kelly Growth Criterion is used to determine the optimal amount to bet on a single game. It grows proportionally to one's confidence of winning the bet.

Kelly Growth Criterion is good practice on the road to profitability. It is based on a formula that the number of units invested should increase as the probability of winning the bet increases.

Line shopping is the practice of checking multiple sportsbooks for odds before placing bets. Different sportsbook offer different prices/odds on a game.