How I Turned $100 into $12k Overnight w/ Sports Betting | Absolute Beginner
In this video, I try betting on sports.
Most of what I know about sports betting I learned from Adam Sandler. So it’s safe to say I don’t know much. But one thing I noticed recently is a lot of stock traders like to bet on sports over the weekend to get their fix. A few weeks ago on twitter, I saw someone who bet a few hundred dollars on a parlay bet of NFL games and turned that into about $80,000. So, suffice to say, that kinda piqued my interest. The only sport I only kind of pay attention to is pro football, so I’ll probably keep my bets in that realm.
The Basics
So as I mentioned, I know very little about sports betting. I’ve tried it a handful of times like 5 or 6 years ago and broke even, but let’s just go over some basic concepts so we’re all on the same page.
Odds
First, let’s talk about the odds – in this case, American odds. The odds for a favorite will have a minus sign in front of the amount you need to bet to win $100. So you’ll often see minus 110 next to a slight favorite. This means if you bet $110, you’d win $100. If a team is an underdog, you’ll see a plus sign next to the amount you’d win if you bet $100. So obviously, if a team is a heavy underdog you should get a higher payout if you pick them to win and they actually pull it off. Make sense? Cool.
Spreads
Next, you have the point spread, which is a bet on the margin of victory. So here in Week 8 of the NFL with the Dolphins and the Bills, the Bills are a heavy favorite, with the point spread at -14, which essentially means the Bills are expected to beat the Dolphins by at least 14 points. So if you bet on the Bills with the spread, you’d need them to win by at least 15 points. And we can see they covered their spread and won by exactly 15 points.
On the other side of the coin, if you chose the underdog Dolphins, you’d need them to lose by 13 points or fewer – or win the game, for you to win the bet.
Now if the Bills win by exactly 14 points, it’s called a push and the bettor gets their money back.
Moneyline
The moneyline is probably the simplest way to bet on a favorite or an underdog. This is just a bet based solely on which team will win the game. Just like I mentioned in the odds section, you take more risk by betting on a favorite since they are expected to win. Betting on an underdog will give you a much greater reward if they win because they are expected to lose.
Over/Unders
Next, let’s talk about the total over/under. The oddsmakers will set a total number of points scored in a game by both teams combined. You can then bet whether or not the game will go over or under that total amount. That’s fairly straightforward, so let’s move on to parlays.
Parlay Bets
A parlay bet is where you link multiple bets together to create a bigger payout. This is how that one guy on twitter took a couple hundred dollars to $80,000 in one day.
So it can be a good way to increase the win amount without increasing your bet amount, but if just one leg of your parlay fails, then the entire bet is a loss.
Just watch as I add bets to this parlay how a small bet compounds to a huge potential payout.
Getting Started
Alright, so that’s my brief summary covering what little I know about betting on sports. As always, treat videos like this purely as entertainment. Do a deeper dive for yourself to make sure you have a firm grasp on everything before you put real money on the line. And remember, this is straight up gambling so treat that as entertainment as well. Assume you will lose 100% of the funds you wager. And if you have an addictive personality, this may not be a good idea.
I deposited $200 into my sports book account. My initial thought is to place a $100 bet on college football for Saturday and then one more $100 bet for pro football on Sunday.
BET 1
Okay, I know absolutely nothing about college football. Nothing. So probably not a great idea to put money on it, but here we go. While browsing through twitter, I came across this 11-game parlay bet from a stock trader I follow named Manz. If everything hits, $100 would turn into $236,000. So clearly, it’s a long shot. He also asked his followers what games would cause his parlay to fail, so instead of blindly following this wager 100%, I looked through to gauge some sentiment on what people thought and made a few adjustments. And then semi-blindly entered the wager.
I took North Carolina over Wake Forest, Wisconsin over Rutgers, and Purdue over Michigan State. The biggest underdog Manz picked was Illinois at 520. Remember, this means if you bet $100 on Illinois and they win, it would pay out $520. Taking into account my adjustments, if my 11-game parlay hits, my $100, would pay out $72,000. Pretty interesting.
BET 2
For my second bet, I did some digging around on Reddit, looking for someone reputable to follow into a few NFL bets. I came across George Kent or Bambino Bets and found three plays he recommended for Sunday. Now one thing to note is the odds are fluid – they will fluctuate over time leading up to a game as new information comes out or as more bets are placed… so I ended up placing these bets the a couple of days after he posted, so if you wonder why the odds may be a little different, that’s why.
Also, he does not recommend parlaying these bets, just doing individual wagers, but since I’m only using a little bit of money, I do want to make it a little more interesting by parlaying it, so I’ll only blame myself if one leg of this trade fails. And I was thinking since I am parlaying this, I want to do one my wager as well in case this one fails, so I’m just wagering $50 on this one to win about $300.
Bet 3
For my third bet, I looked at a few different sports betting websites where they have their algorithms and AI and simulations and so on and so forth to find one more free play. I ended up on Dimers.com and again they had three picks, choosing the favorite for two and the slight underdog – the Cleveland Browns for the other one. Again, these are individual picks but I am loading them up as a parlay because it’s just way more fun that way. $50 here to win $439.
Bet 1 Results
I checked in Saturday around midday and the heavy underdog Illinois did end up beating Minnesota, which was great – and every other game seemed to be going my way.
In fact, every single game went my way. But then there was Clemson and Louisville. Clemson took the lead in the last few minutes of the game and scored again to shut down the Cardinals, ruining my parlay… but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back up.
So I had a little dilemma on my hands. After Purdue’s win, I could cash out at $13,300. So, should I cash out at 13.3 or hold out for 72??? I had to go ahead and cash out to take the huge win, and I am obviously glad I did. This had to be the biggest dose of beginners luck I’ve ever experienced. Again, I can’t believe how that worked out and realize that had to be pretty wild probability-wise. So shoutout to Manz on Twitter and those that commented their thoughts – I thank you. But I can’t retire yet – I’ve got NFL games to check in on.
Bet 2 Results
So this is my bet from Twitter’s Bambino Bets. The Browns smoked the Bengals, so that was a loss, ruining the parlay, but if I had done individual bets, would I have still come out ahead? Well, the Saints also lost by 2, and the Packers only scored 7 points, so all three of those plays were losers.
Bet 3 Results
For my final wager, both the Cardinals and Browns won and again, I had a decision to make: either cash out before the final game for about $220, or let it ride into the final game. I think if I didn’t have such a massive win yesterday, I would definitely cash out since it’s a great return on my $50… but for the sake of this video and because I’m already sitting pretty, I decided to let it ride. I needed the Rams to win by at least 8 points… and they sucked big time and lost the game. Bummer.
Total Results
So thanks to that ridiculous NCAA parlay, over the weekend I turned my $200 deposit into $12,936 for a 6,368.00% return on my money. Obviously this kind of result is very atypical – I still have a hard time believing it. I think I’ll withdraw $12,000 of it and just play with the remaining $900 or so… and yes, I will pay taxes on these gains just like I do all of my other realized gains, so... yeah. But if you do have an upcoming play you want me to place a wager on with some of my remaining funds, leave me a comment and let me know!
And again, I don’t really know much about betting on sports, but if you’re interested in doing some mild gambling, make sure you do so with money you can afford to lose.
Thanks so much for watching – I’ll see you in the next one.