I also ask that those who “play for fun” not take part in the discussion. Such people, in my opinion, have little valuable to say on this topic.
If you take your entire gaming history, would you say that you have learned anything during this time?
In other words, are you progressing as a player? Is your strategy improving? Is the quality of risk management and money management improving? Have you learned to control your emotions? Are your winning statistics stable? Do losses keep you out of the game? Have you learned to recover from losses? Are you getting better at predicting the results of sports matches?
Well, the many things that you mentioned like money management, risk management, control of emotions etc, all these things should be in a gambler no matter he is gambling in a casino or as a sports bet, these qualities are needed in a gambler to have minimum risks and maximum output from gambling.
These are the skills that every gambler should develop and then when it comes to sports betting then you need to further analyse the matches and players before placing bets. Still, with all these analyses you can lose bets but if you have above mentioned skills with you, you will never be in a big loss.