So when you’re looking at betting on something there’s one defining characteristic that you should be looking at which will determine whether you have a good bet or not.
However, when I look at tipsters I always see this critical piece of information missing.
Classic lines of a tipster
People always want to ask one question, what shall I put my money on?
The fact is that you can never tell definitively who is actually going to win a sports event. It’s a graduation of possibilities from never going to win, to quite likely to win.
You’ll hear a lot of things that justify a selection..
“I think it’s got a fair chance”
When you hear this sort of line people are justifying their decision as to why something is more or less likely.
This can be great, as we do need that information to be able to place a profitable bet in the market. However, they are missing lots of critical bits of information.
Obvious advice
If we see a team at the top of a football league playing a team at the bottom, are they going to win? Yeah, most likely, but does that represent a good bet? We don’t know because we need to know what the price is and the chance of that actually occurring.
Therefore, there’s one characteristic that underlines everything that you do whenever you place a bet.
Price.
The price is right
So what is the best advice that you can give to a punter?
My answer is simple: get the best price that you can. It doesn’t matter what research you’ve done, or however you have done it, if you can’t get the best price, then you’ll probably never make money.
The funny thing about most betting markets is that punters, generally speaking, your average Joe gambler; just don’t ask what the right prices are. They just go with their gut and then place a bet based upon something they have predicted is going to happen.
That’s what a lot of the pundits and the tipsters are feeding off of as well.
Don’t think in black and white, think in probabilities
Humans are hard-wired to think in binary outcomes. This can manifest itself in a range of ways. From the more obvious, is this creature going to eat me, to is this team is going to win? This makes it very difficult to get those grey areas in place. However, that’s exactly what you need to be profitable when sports betting.
If you go into a betting exchange, and you see odds of 2.00, that’s basically saying that this event is going to occur 50% of the time.
If you think the event is going to occur more than 50% of the time, you can back it and if it’s below 50% of the time, then you can lay it.
You can basically profit in either direction if you have a demonstrable edge. You can make a judgement on every single price that you see on the exchange.
Where tipsters go wrong
Where tipsters and pundits are going wrong is that they’re not pinning a probability on the chance of something happening. It’s just an opinion. There is no basis for most of those tips to be taken seriously. They need to say something like, I can’t back it at this price it’s a lay. Or they could say, I’m willing to back it above this price.
Of course, on an exchange, you can offer prices to a market. You don’t have to take the price on offer. It’s the perfect way to get value.
So when tipsters tip, a horse, or a pundit says something about a football match you should nominate a price in which you’re willing to back or lay at.
What a pundit and tipster should say and why they don’t
Now when a tipster tips something, or a pundit and a football match says that they think that they’re going to win, what they should be saying is:
But of course, that’s not going to happen! It’s not immediate enough, it’s not thrilling enough and people won’t want that.
When they say the price is crashing in, it’s stepping up in trip and therefore I’m going to have my money on this horse; well that’s exciting and entertaining.
This is called bet stimulus.
It’s something that is mandated by TV’s and periodicals as it gets people to bet. Thanks to commercial relationships between these parts of the industry and sometimes individual tipsters, there is a huge financial incentive to do that.,
I’d love to see betting tipsters and punters, and all of the people within the industry, actually nail their predictions with a percentage probability. But it’s never going to happen.
It’s no good winning frequently if I’m not getting value because over the long term your p&l is going to head off in the wrong direction. But if I can get a decent price in something, then I definitely will win money over the longer term.
So the next time you place a bet, focus on the price. There is nothing wrong with waiting for the right price to come along. When you see it, you just jump on it and take full advantage of it. That’s what I do! It’s made me a lot of money over a long period of time, and you can do the same.
Even if you can’t work a model to price the odds in a market, then just work hard to get the best price you can and that will ensure that, at worst, you lost money at a much lower rate. Don’t expect tipsters to do it for you, as they probably don’t have the right incentive and often can’t even name a price anyhow!
Good luck!
Good day Mr Webb
I have been betting on sports and trying to use a professional approach. I realised that to improve I have to get myself in an environment with professionals. What is your suggestion on a someone starting out and want to take sportsbetting as a career or even venture into the bookmaking work space.
Only just spotted this post. You may be better off working with a bookmaker to learn more about the markets and how they work, as that would put you on the front line.
If you are located near an office of a large bookmaker HQ, that would be a great place to see everything first hand and decide where you want to go from there.
Doing this for a living is actually pretty tough and long road. So start at the basics and keep looking for an edge somewhere and build on it.