The only way to guarantee a sure-fire win for yourself when gambling is if you could place a bet on a 100% certainty carrying a 100% commitment of being paid when you win. Lets face it though - that scenario will never arise in your entire lifetime!

Now, before we discuss betting to win in more detail, lets begin by examining what a bet actually is. To be able to bet requires two parties: the party placing the bet and the party accepting the bet. A bet is a gamble based on the possibility of a particular event occurring or having occurred. Note that not all gambles are bets. This is because the phrase "to take a gamble" generally means to risk something valuable in order to gain something of even greater value, and where the outcome is uncertain to some degree or other. A gamble need not involve another party, but a bet most certainly does.

For example, you gamble not-so-obviously (and do not bet) whenever you lay out money in the simple hope of retaining your wealth (such as buying a house or putting your savings into a higher paying deposit account) and rather more obviously when you attempt to increase your wealth by investing in shares (again not a bet) or by participating in sports betting. As you can see, therefore, all the foregoing are forms of gambling, no matter that some people may attempt to draw dividing lines between them to make their preferred form of gambling more socially acceptable.

Each type of gamble has its own unwritten rules attached, all of which need to be both understood and followed if the specific gambling objective is to be achieved. The main point here is that a bet is just one particular form of gambling, and its only the degree of risk that varies from one gamble to another.

When it comes to gambling on the outcome of sporting events, every well-balanced person will readily acknowledge that it is not worth risking all their funds on one single bet, as they could very easily end up with no funds at all. This principle applies whether or not the odds are in the bettor's favour.

It seems that a majority of bettors would be happy to achieve a small overall return on their bets by the end of a sporting season, generally because the alternative is to sail too close to the wind too often and be in constant danger of losing their entire bank. The sad truth, though, is that most bettors fail to achieve even that modest aim, mainly because their betting is not based on sound principles.

All too often, bets are placed on "gut feel", and frequently for wildly varying stakes (as opposed to "fixed" (or level) stakes, without proper assessment of the chances of winning, or without adequate consideration as to how a loss will affect the bettor's bank. Consequently, at the end of each season, the majority of football bettors are poorer than when they started. In view of this, I am now going to make what I consider to be the single most important statement in respect to "Betting to Win":

To achieve even a modest return on your bets, you need to develop a worthwhile Betting Strategy for yourself.

A worthwhile Betting Strategy incorporates both a reliable Selection System and a sound Staking Plan. You can't buy a good Betting Strategy, although it may well be true that the individual components themselves can be purchased. Both the acceptance of the need for a worthwhile Betting Strategy and the will to apply it properly must emanate from within you. Once you have acknowledged that satisfying such a need is vital to your betting success, you then have to work hard at (i) finding a good Selection System and (ii) deciding upon an appropriate Staking Plan that best suits your particular style and budget (and which won't bankrupt you - because many have the potential to do so).

As playing roulette will show you (because inherently it doesnt allow the possibility of a Selection System to operate, since any given number or colour can come up at any time), very few Staking Plans on their own will consistently allow you to increase the amount you started with (meaning that you are simply in the hands of Lady Luck on the night).

So that you can emerge as a winner, I strongly recommend that you should approach football betting just as seriously as you would when investing in shares or a house purchase. In respect to the latter, remember that the three prime considerations to ensure a first-class investment are Location, Location and Location. This means that if location fails on any single point, you have not found a "star" property. There is a very similar rule applicable to betting: before you gamble, the three most important considerations should be Selection, Selection and Selection!