How much exactly would you pay for a plain old cup of coffee at Starbucks?
- Nothing, I’ll make may own and I like tea anyway!
- £2.00
- £5.00
- £20.00
Unless you’re particularly desperate, most people will say either A or B. We all have similar ideas of the value of a cup of coffee and so do Starbucks. Charging £20.00 for a cuppa will soon put them out of business, but what has this got to do with betting?
Its All About Value…
Betting has never been more popular and with the Daily Express reporting this week that its likely to get even bigger thanks to Seb Coe and London 2012, more and more people are looking to understand the topic.
Plenty of people therefore are joining us at the Smart Betting Club for help and the biggest change I see in our members is when they stop thinking in just terms of what will win and start thinking about value betting.
Everyone has their own ideas about how to pick out value as some of the tipsters at the Betting Expert site reveal. However when you do pick out a potential bte you like, how do you work out if its a value bet? Let me show you how.
Every bet offered up by a bookmaker or on Betfair has a chance of winning as even the 100/1 shots can romp home once in a while. The trick is to be able to have your own price on something that you can compare to the bookies.
“Price doesn’t matter as long as it wins”
I often read this on certain…ahem betting exchange forums and in relation to laying “It doesn’t matter what price it is, as long as it loses”.
Both of these sentences are utter nonsense. Price is everything.
How To Price Up A Bet
A good way to price up a bet is to convert the odds on offer into the implied probability of that bet winning. Implied probability is how often that bet is expected to win given average luck.
To do this, will take a little bit of Maths, which is fairly easy once you get the hang of it. If you would rather not bother with these calculations then skip past this next bit.
To give an example, lets take the odds on the match between Chelsea and Manchester United this Sunday. You think Chelsea will win and the best odds on them are 13/8 as taken from the odds comparison site Odds Portal. Does this offer value or not?
To first work this out take 1 and divide it by the decimal odds on offer then multiply by 100.
For example a bet at 13/8 is 2.63 in decimal odds.
1 divided by 2.5 is 0.3802
X 100 = 38.02%.
So a bet priced at 13/8 should win roughly 38.02% of the time.
0% means something will never happen.
100% means something will always happen.
Percentage Chance of Winning
The second part of value is to come up with your prediction of its chances of winning. If you think there’s actually a higher than 38.02% chance of Chelsea winning, then you have a value bet.
Let’s say you estimate Chelsea have a 45% chance of winning.
Firstly we convert 45% back into odds, so you divide 100 by 45 = 2.22.
This 2.22 figure we then compare to what the bookies are offering (2.63 is the best price). Therefore you have potentially great value.
You are betting on what should be a 2.22 shot and you’re getting 2.63.
Doesn’t mean it will win, but take 100 bets like that and you will make money.
Naturally this assumes your estimation is more accurate than the bookmakers which is easier said than done.
Here’s some more examples to get you thinking:
- Arsenal are 1.31 vs Blackburn. The bookies imply a 76.3% chance of victory. Is there value there?
- Aston Villa are 3.92 away to Hull. This implies a 25.5% chance of them winning. Is there value there?
- New England Patriots are 1.72 to win the Superbowl. This implies a 58.13% chance of them winning. Is that value?
- Long Run is 3.5 to win the Gold Cup. This implies a 28.5% chance. Is that value?
If you are after further help, try the ‘Beat The Bookmaker’ section from www.football-data.co.uk or also the indepth guide from the excellent Betting Expert blog.
Let The Experts Do It For You
Hopefully the above explanation and examples provides a good introduction to value betting for those of you keen on the subject.
However if you would rather have someone else do all the hard work and pick out the value bets for you – help is at hand courtesy of our Smart Betting Club Tipster Profit Reports
Published each month, these reports list the 40+ top tipsters and the accurate, proofed profits they have made for followers each month via their own value betting methods.
Some of these experts are simply outstanding at picking value bets so there is no harm in sitting back and letting them guide you. We do!
Pick up a Smart Betting Club membership today to start value betting.