There are some sports bettors who will tell you that you shouldn’t ever hedge your bets. These bettors will say that, if you felt confident enough to make a bet on the outcome of a sporting event in the first place, you should stick with that bet and see it through to the end.
But there are also other sports bettors who will tell you that you should absolutely kick the tires on the idea of hedging sports bets when you’re taking part in sports gambling. When you hedge your bets while gambling on sports, you’ll put yourself in a position to guarantee that you win money in the end.
So, what exactly does it mean to “hedge your bets”? Well, it essentially means to put down a sports bet that goes directly against an original bet that you made. It’s a way to ensure that you walk away a winner at the end of a sporting event, even though you’ll win a little bit less than you anticipated.
Here are some instances in which you should think long and hard about hedging a bet.
When You Have a Big Futures Bet at Play
There are a lot of sports bettors who have started to place futures bets in recent years now that sports betting is legalized in a number of states. These types of bets give sports bettors a chance to bet on who they think is going to win the Super Bowl, NBA Finals, World Series, etc. every year.
Oftentimes, futures bets offer great odds to sports bettors. If they put down, say, $100 on an NFL team to win the Super Bowl at the start of the season, they can turn it into $2,000 or more if that team actually goes on to win.
You should mull over the idea of making some futures bets as you move forward. You should also mull over the idea of trying to hedge your bets if you ever have futures bets that have a good chance of hitting.
If, for example, you place a futures bet on an NFL team to win the Super Bowl with +2500 odds and they make it all the way to the big game, that would be a good time to hedge your bets. You might want to plop down a big bet against the team that you bet on originally to guarantee a victory for yourself.
This way, you’ll win your original bet if the team that you placed a futures bet on is victorious. But you’ll also win a big bet if that team isn’t able to pull out a win in the Super Bowl.
As you can see, it might make all the sense in the world to figure out when to hedge when you have a futures bet on the line.
When You’re Down to the Last Leg of a Large Parlay
Over the last few years, there have been quite a few stories about sports bettors hitting huge parlay bets for ridiculous sums of money. This story about a sports bettor turning $25 into more than $100,000 by hitting a 20-leg parlay comes to mind.
The chances of you hitting a parlay like this one are slim to none. But there might come a time when you put in a multi-leg parlay and find yourself in a spot where you only need to hit one last leg to win it. If you do, that would be another good example of a time when you’ll want to try to hedge your bets.
You can make a bet against the last leg of your parlay so that you’ll be able to win some money even if your parlay doesn’t come through for you. You might be able to win a lot of many in some instances depending on how much money you put down on your original parlay.
When You Made a Bet on a Game and the Betting Line for It Changed Dramatically
Many sports bettors wait until the very last minute to put their bets on sporting events in. But there are also some who will put their bets in hours and even days in advance.
If you’re someone who does this, there might be times when you notice that the betting line for a sporting event will change dramatically in your favor. It might play out a little something like this:
- You place a point spread bet on Team A to beat Team B as a big underdog
- Team B’s best player gets injured in the week leading until to their game against Team A
- The betting line on the game between Team A and Team B shifts with Team A becoming a big favorite
In this case, you might choose to leave your original bet as-is since there is a decent chance of things working out in your favor. But you might also want to hedge your bets by placing a point spread bet on Team B in this instance.
This will guarantee that you win at least one of your bets. And in this particular case, you might also be able to win both of your bets at the same time because of the dramatic betting line change. It would be worth considering hedging your bets as an option.
You should make sure you’re monitoring the betting lines on betting sites at all times to see if hedging sports bets in these kinds of cases would be a possibility for you.
Consider Trying to Hedge Your Bets in Each of These Situations
If you try to hedge your bets all the time, it’s probably going to backfire on you. Each time that you hedge your bets, you’re going to cut into your potential winnings just a little.
But there is nothing wrong with thinking about trying to hedge your bets every so often. It could be the best move you can make in the situations that we just laid out for you.
Get more great sports gambling tips and tricks by browsing through the other sports betting articles found on our blog.