Why I Started Tracking My Sports Bets in a Spreadsheet (And What Changed After 47 Days)
Last Updated on 13 November 2026
I’ve been betting on sports casually for about 2 years now. Nothing crazy. Maybe $20 here, $50 there when I felt confident about a game. But I noticed something weird around March: I couldn’t tell you if I was actually up or down overall.
So I started tracking everything. Every single bet went into a Google Sheet with the date, amount, odds, and outcome. I used YellowBet as my main platform because the interface doesn’t make me want to throw my phone across the room.
What happened next kinda surprised me.
I Was Betting Way More Than I Thought
First shock: I’d placed 89 bets in those 47 days. That’s almost 2 per day. In my head, I was a “weekend bettor” who maybe threw down 3 or 4 wagers when games were on. Nope. I was betting Tuesday morning tennis matches I didn’t even watch.
My average bet was $31.20. Again, way higher than the $15-20 I thought I was risking. You know how it goes—you win a couple, feel good, bump up the next one to $45 without really thinking about it.
The “Sure Thing” Bets Were Killing Me
I broke down my bets by odds range. Bets under 1.50 odds (the “safe” ones where you risk a lot to win a little)? I won 64% of them. Sounds good, right?
Wrong. Because when those lost, they wiped out 4 or 5 wins at once. I lost $127 total on heavy favorite bets, even with that 64% win rate. My brain had convinced itself these were smart, low-risk plays.
But here’s the weird part. Bets between 2.20 and 3.80 odds? I was up $89 on those. Smaller stakes, better risk-to-reward, and I actually researched them instead of just hammering the favorite.
I Stopped Chasing Losses (Mostly)
The spreadsheet made it really obvious when I was chasing. You can see the pattern clear as day: lose $40, immediately place a $65 bet 18 minutes later, lose that, place an $85 bet.
Just seeing those timestamps next to each other was enough to make me pause. I started adding a 2-hour rule: if I lose a bet, no new wagers for at least 2 hours. Sounds simple, but it worked. My impulsive loss-chasing dropped by maybe 70%.
My Actual Win Rate Was 51.7%
After all the tracking, all the “analysis,” all the time spent reading previews and checking injury reports? I won 46 bets out of 89.
Pretty much a coin flip.
And I was down $76 overall for those 47 days. Not catastrophic, but definitely not the “I’m pretty good at this” narrative I’d been telling myself. Once you strip away the selective memory and look at cold numbers, most of us are way more average than we think.
I bet less now. I actually enjoy it more too, and I’m not kidding myself about being some sharp bettor. Sometimes you just need a spreadsheet to tell you the truth.