How do YouBet: Sports betting strategies with Torrence Williams

Louisville resident Torrence Williams eagerly anticipated the moment sports betting would become legal in Kentucky. A passionate fan of college football and basketball, the NBA, NFL, tennis, and recently Formula 1, Williams not only attended his fair share of sporting events over the course of his lifetime, but in the past decade, he capitalized on a new and exciting way to jump in on the action — sports betting.

No longer does he need to drive across the bridge to place a legal sports bet in Indiana. Now Williams can submit a wager from anywhere in the state of Kentucky, whether on his phone, his computer, or at a local sportsbook. But Williams was ready for the moment long before the first legal bet was accepted in Kentucky.

As sports often teach us, practice makes perfect, and sports betting is no different. With nearly a decade of experience wagering on sports, Williams has celebrated both huge victories mixed in with some occasional bad beats, and now has a working method that’s helped him net some mega-cash just a month into football season.

YouBet caught up with Williams to learn more about his involvement with sports betting and uncovered a few of his top tips and strategies for winning big at the sportsbook.

What first got you into sports betting?

I got into it because one of my college roommates was into sports betting, and it quickly made watching sports even more fun. I started making little $10 and $20 bets. ... Mostly just football and basketball … and mostly spreads. ... I didn’t start with a lot of parlays. Really kept it simple.

Did you follow any betting blogs or books to develop better betting strategies?

No, I mostly talked to friends who were already betting, learned and picked up a little bit more from them, and then just tried to use the knowledge that I already had about different teams and different strategies, and really kind of learned by fire. Things didn’t go very well early on...

What betting sites/apps do you use?

I mostly use DraftKings, and my backup is FanDuel just so I can make sure I’m utilizing as many of the boosts and promos as possible.

I also have an app that I track my bets on (for ROI purposes).

What is the current betting strategy that you follow?

I’ve curated different strategies and tested them and try to see what works, what doesn’t work.

I don’t bet as many games as I used to. The way that you really give money away is by betting every opportunity that you have. So, keep it simple. It’s really easy to get sucked into betting when you’re first starting by betting multiple games, multiple things every week. … You’re just not going to be right every single time, so you want to be able to pick your spots and make sure that you also understand what your units are. So, if you’re comfortable putting down $10 a bet as your one unit, when you’re really confident in something you want to put down five units and, say, $50. Stay there. Make sure that you know that, make sure that you track it.

Don’t get frustrated with your units. If you notice that, hey, I’m winning my one-unit bets, (say you’ve) won eight in a row, and then you take that $100 or whatever else that you’ve won and you put it on one bet and you lose, then you’ve changed your unit from $10 to $100. Then you lose three in a row, and now you’re down $300.

Staying disciplined is really the big thing.

Do you have a specific bankroll you play with each week?

Absolutely. That goes to the discipline aspect.

What’s your strategy with parlay betting?

I like making sure to take as many favorites as possible, so I do multi-leg parlays of like 12, 13, 14, even 15 or more games where I think that certain teams are going to win, and then I’m able to put a smaller investment on that for a larger payout.

For college football, I like taking the moneylines, mostly because you can’t get smaller spreads. I do like teasing lines further into my favor, so if there’s a team that’s going to win by 14 and I think they’re going to win the game, I’ll try to take them by 6.5 or take them by 7 by teasing that spread. Or if the only thing available is taking the super-juiced moneyline, I’ll take that.

I typically avoid road ranked teams in college football just because it’s so tough to win on the road. The only exception to that is when I believe a team has a strong quarterback, because I think that matters so much, and has a decent enough defense. And knowing what the strength is of one team versus the weakness of another.

What about live betting?

I like live betting when you’re getting better odds than when the game started. So if there’s a touchdown favorite and they get the ball, they punt, the other team gets the ball and they score a touchdown, then that favorite now you’re able to get them at maybe -4 or -3, and that’s better than (the spread) before the game.

As a rule, it’s really hard for me to take a live bet that is worse than the line that you could have gotten before the game, unless you truly, truly believe that the tides have turned and that the game’s completely different.

What's one of the biggest lessons you learned either from a big win or bad loss?

Not letting myself get emotional. For example, on Sunday, if you’re really big into the NFL, you’re going to watch the NFL all day. You may have three of four good bets that you’ve made the whole day. When they lose, you get frustrated. And then you get pulled into (this mentality of) I’ve got to get it back.

I know that I’m not going to hit every 10-plus-leg parlay that I put out there, but I want to be able to hit one out of every five, one out of every eight or so. If I’m only investing $50 or $100 into that parlay, and it’s going to pay out 10X, 20X, if I lose seven of them and I hit one, I’m still winning by a lot.

That’s not to say I won’t spot bet. Every now and then, I will take a single game, or I will take a smaller parlay for a little bit more money, like a two-leg parlay or a three-leg parlay that I feel pretty confident in, but I’m not here making 30-plus bets a week or anything like that.

Really it's about being disciplined. Not making a ton of bets because that gives you more risk to be able to lose more money. Not getting emotional about it. Not betting money that you can’t lose. And just making sure you have fun. The whole idea of betting is that it’s supposed to make things more fun. If you lose that, you really lose the reason that you’re doing it in the first place. It should not be super stressful. I can honestly say after eight years of betting, I’m still having fun.