Sports and superstitions have often gone hand in hand for decades now. Athletes will even talk about how they must listen to the same music before every game, or they may have a pre-game ritual involving the release of certain bodily fluids that they must get out of the way before taking the field.
Athletes can be weird, and it only makes sense that fans and sports bettors would also have their quirky, superstitious beliefs that influence how they place their bets.
What are some of those betting superstitions that we wrestle with when playing at the top offshore sportsbooks? We decided to look at the top 5 sports betting superstitions and why they exist.
Don’t Tell Me My Bet Is a “Lock”
Just as a gambler shouldn’t count their money at the table, a sports bettor should never take a win for granted before the final play of the game. Sports are crazy enough that bad beats will happen, and if you gamble enough, you will end up on the wrong side of them in a painful fashion.
Maybe not as excruciating as a certain writer who made his first sports bet as a futures bet on the Falcons to win the Super Bowl in the 2016 season, and he got a little too confident when the score was 28-3 in the 3rd quarter of Super Bowl LI. You know what happened next.
Never count your chickens before they hatch. In fact, not saying a peep about what you bet on sometimes is the best strategy to enjoy the process.
There has long been a belief that if someone tells you “good luck” with your bet or “it’s a lock” to hit, then doom is just around the corner and maybe you should think about hedging. Even a small live bet hedge can often be a smart investment when a big win is on the line.
But this superstition speaks to our insecurities with betting and that we know most bets are not going to be successes. Even when one is looking great, there’s this sinking feeling that something bad is about to happen like a player getting injured just before they secure their over in a prop bet, or a catastrophic turnover that changes the whole complexion of the game.
Betting on a pre-game spread is almost never a lock, and if you bet often enough on NBA games, you’ll know just how quickly runs can happen and a 20-point lead can shrink to single digits.
“The Outcome of My Bet Depends on How Much of the Game I Watch”
Many sports bettors are superstitious enough to think they have control over the outcome of their bet depending on if they watch the game or not.
- If I don’t watch this game, my bet has a better chance of hitting because I’m bad luck if I watch.
- If I watch this game, I just know my team is going to blow it for me.
- If I don’t turn the game on, maybe my bet won’t hit, so I need to see it live for it to happen.
- Watching the game I bet on brings me good luck for my bets.
These are the thoughts that run through the minds of many sports bettors, and they are all a little crazy for it. Believe it or not, but this isn’t The Truman Show, and you are not the center of the universe.
This is in the vein of someone thinking performing a silly dance will make the skies open and pour down rain. Guess what? Someday, a person did a silly dance, and it did rain, but that does not mean they had any control over the weather.
But if a bettor turns a game on and sees the fortune of their bet go from a sure loss to a cashed-out win, that is going to influence their future decisions to watch the game they bet on when they feel like they need to bring the bet good luck.
But you are not good or bad luck to the players in a game played many miles away from your location. You could have spent 3.5 hours playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and the Falcons still would have blown a 28-3 lead that night.
Sometimes, it’s just best to not even watch so you can avoid the first-hand heartbreak live.
“I Won’t Bet on My Favorite Team Because I’m a Jinx”
One of the strongest superstitions for a sports bettor is to avoid betting on their favorite team because if they bet on them to win, they just know they’re going to jinx them and make them lose.
But of all the superstitions we are looking at today, this one is the realest and the best piece of advice to follow.
While you don’t actually have control over what your team does in a game, you can control how much you want to let your emotions get to you so you can best enjoy the game. If that means not betting at all on the game involving your favorite teams, then you should do that.
But if you are going to bet on your favorite team, you should do what is called an emotional hedge. Bet against your favorite team. This way, if they lose the game, you can still be happy because you won your bet. If they win the game, you won’t mind losing the bet – remember to always bet reasonable amounts you can afford to lose – because your favorite team just won the game.
Instead of being a jinx, you can be the reverse jinx. Say your team is going to get hammered, bet on them to lose, and when they win against that opponent you can’t stand (and their annoying fanbase), you’ll still be happy.
Embrace the emotional hedge.
Unlucky Number 13
If a bettor is building a lottery-sized parlay and they get to 13 legs, they better remove one or add another leg to get to 14, because 13 is an unlucky number. Likewise, some bettors may avoid choosing $13 as their stake, betting on the 13th day of the month or Week 13 in the NFL, or betting on any spread or player prop that involves the number 13.
If you bet on quarterbacks wearing jersey No. 13 to win a Super Bowl, you’d be 1-for-57 as only Kurt Warner (1999 Rams) has pulled it off. Meanwhile, a quarterback wearing No. 12 has won 18 Super Bowls as of 2023.
Why do some of us get scared away by a silly number? This one goes back a long time for reasons that had nothing to do with sports.
For centuries, the number 13 has been associated with bad luck. For starters, it is not a pretty number to look at, and it is a prime number, not divisible by anything but 1 and itself. The number 12 always looked like a more “complete” number as 12 is the number of months in a year, the signs of the zodiac, how many inches are in a foot, and the last number on most clocks. Anything over 12 just feels unnatural.
Even before Jason Vorhees started killing unlucky campers in the Friday the 13th film franchise, the number 13 has been linked to misfortune. There are hotels and office buildings that frown upon even including a 13th floor. Judas was the 13th apostle to arrive at The Last Supper before he betrayed Jesus.
While at the end of the day 13 is just another number, ask yourself this. Have you ever seen anyone bet $13 on a 13-leg parlay that hit? Give it a try at your own risk.
No $50 Bills
Finally, this is a classic that doesn’t get as much traction in the era of online sports betting where no physical cash is exchanged between the bettor and sportsbook. But for decades, there was a belief that a $50 bill is unlucky for bettors. Real gamblers don’t want to use them to place their bets, and they don’t want to see them included in their winning returns.
Why would a $50 American bill be unlucky? There are a few ideas on the origin of this superstition. For starters, Ulysses S. Grant is the President featured on the $50 bill, and he infamously died bankrupt.
The curse of the $50 is also apparently a Sicilian myth. The most macabre idea is that the mob would leave a $50 bill in the pocket of a person after a professional hit was carried out. Famous mobster and casino organizer Bugsy Siegel reportedly was found dead with a few $50 bills in his pockets.
There’s also just the fact that $50 bills have been rarer than $20 and $100 bills, so they are more likely to be questioned for counterfeit attempts than the more common bills.
As a sports bettor who had the biggest parlay hit of their career on a $50 wager, this one does not resonate. But when you start invoking imagery involving the mob and listen to the wise bookies from the 1970s talk this one up as being well-known, you have to respect this superstition as one of the many weird things we think about when we place sports bets.
