When it comes to sports betting, some people will try to offer you a magic solution. The Sports Techie community blog implores you not to spend money on sport gambling that you cannot afford to to lose, if you have a problem please seek help. There are some sports betting strategies and tactics that proponents will present as some kind of magic bullet: they will essentially promise you that if you use their approach, you will be guaranteed to win. This, of course, is simply untrue.
Although there is no magic bullet when it comes to sports betting, and like any form of gambling there is never a guarantee, there are a few strategies that can increase your odds of winning, if you understand them and apply them correctly. One of the best known and probably most reliable of these is basic value betting. So what is basic value betting and does it really work?
Do any Betting Strategies Really Work?
At this stage, the cynics among you will be asking whether any betting strategies really work or if we’re just fooling ourselves if we think we can play the odds. It can’t be emphasized enough that there are no magic bullet solutions to winning at betting, and if anyone promises you one that would be your cue to stop reading! However, there are strategies and tactics that can allow you to increase your odds and improve your chances of winning, and/or increasing your losses.
However, all of these strategies come with certain caveats:
1) Nothing is guaranteed: increasing your chances of winning means that there is still a chance that you will lose. This is the nature of betting. For this reason you should always use safe gambling practices and never bet more than you can afford to lose.
2) They take work: if you want to apply a real betting strategy you need to have a certain level of knowledge and expertise. This means putting in the work and applying your time and energy to research how the strategy works and usually also researching stats and news about the sport and teams. Again, if anyone promises you a strategy that you can pick up easily without putting any work into it, they are likely lying
3) Results will be long-term and big picture: increasing your chances of winning means your chances of winning over a series of bets. This means that you will still be likely to lose sometimes, but you can expect to see better results overall, across multiple bets. Well, probably. Remember that nothing is guaranteed: refer to point #1!
If you understand those caveats and can accept them, you can move on to learning more about the basic value betting strategy.
What is Basic Value Betting?
To understand what basic value betting is, first we must know what is a value bet. A value bet is when a bookmaker offer odds at a lower probability than the actual probability of that result occurring. To take a very simple example, let’s look at a coin toss.
We know that when we toss a coin, the chances of heads or tails landing face up are 50% each.
In decimal odds, the system used by bookmakers, 50% odds is 2.00. This is calculated by dividing 100 by 50 (ie. 50 per cent), with a result of 2.0.
However, if a bookmaker offered you higher odds on a coin toss, such as giving you 2.15 odds on heads, this gives you a value bet, where the odd are higher than the actual chances of that outcome.
In fact, you can calculate the actual value of that bet as follows:
(actual odds in % x odds offered) – 100 = value of the bet in %
Or in this case:
(50% x 2.15) – 100 = 7.5%
You can therefore calculate that the value of this bet is 7.5%, and we have a 7.5% chance of getting a return on our bet. This may not seem like a lot, but this is pretty significant when it comes to betting.
Of course, no bookmaker is likely to give odds on a coin toss that is anything other than 2.0. However, you can apply the same principles to
How Does Basic Value Betting Work?
The same principles of the value of the coin toss bet can be applied to sports betting.
To give a sporting example, on an upcoming test match between Australia and India in Adelaide, a bookmaker may be giving odds of 2.2 for Australia to win. This will be a fair assessment of the odds of each team given their performance history, composition, and the fact they Australia are playing to a home crowd in this case.
You then check the latest news on Sports Pundit and find that a key player in the Australian cricket team is injured the day before the test and will not be able to play. The bookmaker doesn’t respond to this and keeps their odds at 2.2. You can therefore place a bet on the Indian team and, if they win, enjoy a higher value return on your bet.
This is where the work comes in: you need to do your research and have in-depth knowledge of competitions, teams and the latest developments in order to make informed decisions about the actual odds.
Therefore, as long as you are prepared to put in the time and effort to do your research, you can expect to get some positive results over the long term, though once more: nothing is guaranteed!
Sports Techie, cricket sports tech has changed the sport for decades.
No industry has changed more because of advanced technology than sports betting. States across America are legalizing it in one form or another to generate much needed tax revenue.
Basic value betting has logic behind it but is by no means a for sure winner.
Best of luck with any sports betting strategy you use.
See you later sportstechie in Seattle, Atlanta and around the world!
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