Whether you want to consider this as one of the top NBA basketball betting strategies or for other leagues, it doesn’t matter—injury reports are vital to successful basketball betting. These reports come out every day, and they notify the betting public of the health and status of the players on their rosters.

If a notable player is on the injury report, this could drastically change how you bet on the basketball game you’re considering.

To set yourself up for the most success over the long term when betting on basketball, we recommend setting a budget and incrementally wagering that budget.

For example, if you have a budget of $500, we recommend keeping your wagers between 1% and 10% or between $5 and $50. It can be tempting to wager the full $500 on a single wager you feel best about, but if you wager incrementally, you’ll be able to diversify your betting portfolio.

Basketball is quite a cardio-driven sport. With that, players will get tired and this could lead to out-of-the-box betting opportunities. For example, if a basketball team is in the middle of a three-day road stretch, fatigue could start to hit them. When you see this, you can find value.

This is a basketball betting strategy that’s as old as sports betting itself. The concept here is to, generally speaking, bet against the grain. Some online sportsbooks and other services will show how much cash is wagered on a certain team. For example, if a team is receiving 80% of the bets, this could be an opportunity to bet on the other side because the sportsbooks provide better line value.

Sports betting is available in over half of the United States, and most states have multiple sportsbooks. With odds shopping, you compare betting odds and lines between multiple sites to see what provides the most value. For example, let’s say you’re checking out DraftKings Sportsbook and want to bet on the Chicago Bulls moneyline at +120. From here, you can look at FanDuel, BetRivers, and SI Sportsbook to see if they provide better line value. Let’s say that BetRivers is +130—you’ve now found more value.

Odds shopping can also be used as a great over/under betting strategy when you’re looking for a lower point total if you want to bet the over or a higher point total if you want to bet the under.

Hedging is a basketball sports betting strategy to limit your betting losses, break even, or perhaps still turn a profit. This is a fantastic live betting strategy because it can potentially offset your pregame wagers.

For example, if you bet $100 on the Kentucky Wildcats point spread at -5.5 with -110 odds. Still, they’re winning by just two points heading into the fourth quarter; you could implement this in-play basketball strategy to bet the other side to hedge your original wager. This now turns into a basketball fourth-quarter betting strategy too as the game is almost over.

In this example, with Kentucky up by two, perhaps the moneyline for the other team is +150. Well, you could wager $76.36 to have a total bet amount of $176.36, but with the odds, you wagered on, you have a hedge profit of $14.55.

It’s not the original profit you were hoping for, but thanks to this live-betting basketball strategy, you’ve put yourself in a position to win money either way if either bet you make succeeds.

Not only is this a strategy you can deploy, but it’s also a bet type. Basically, you’ll wager on whether or not the final score will finish as an odd or even number. This is somewhat of a “50/50” bet in that the final score is, of course, going to finish one way or the other.

If you’re a massive fan of a single team, it might be best to, at first, focus on one team to bet on. With your knowledge of the team, it provides you with an innate advantage as opposed to trying to predict how a team you’re less familiar with will do.

Whether you want to use the sportsbook tracking system or your own system, it’s important to keep track of your wins, losses, money received, and money lost. Ignoring this could result in you losing more money than you’d like and if you keep track of it, you’ll naturally be a bit more selective with your wagers and how much you want to bet.