How to develop a sports betting strategy
Betting without a strategy is a bet for fun, most often not cheap. To start making profit from betting, you need to systematize your betting activity. In this article we will talk about what a sports betting strategy is in the broadest sense of the word, what it consists of. We will also discuss what the creation of your own betting strategy can be based on, we will analyze several examples of the most popular types of strategies.
What does a sports betting strategy consist of?
In the narrow sense that is most often used in everyday life, the betting strategy is the technique of the bets themselves. How, where, and under what circumstances to place. But this is only one part of the strategy, of which there are actually three:
- Betting part;
- Financial part;
- Conditional part.
Now about each part in more detail.
The betting part of the betting strategy
This is just about where and under what circumstances to put. Classic examples are falling odds betting, live favorite betting strategy, soccer corner betting tactics, basketball half and quarter points betting, and so on. At its core, the betting part of the strategy is to identify any patterns in sports and use them to make a profit.
The betting part of the strategy can be based on:
- The results of teams or athletes. For example, you have noticed that Bayer Leverkusen has been playing very badly at a party lately.
At the same time, many of his home opponents continue to give decent odds. Your task is to compare the offered quotes with the results of “Bayer” and make profitable bets when there is value. If you estimate the chances of Bayer's opponents above 60%, and they give 2.00, then this is an obvious value on such an away series.
- Statistical and quantitative aspects of the game - goals, corners, games won, fouls, shots on target, and so on. It is much easier to find patterns here than in the outcomes of matches, because these are bare numbers that never lie. Many mathematical tools can be used, from commonplace averages, to modus, median, Poisson distribution, Bayes' theorem, and so on.
It is also necessary to learn to distinguish ghostly emerging trends from solid probabilities confirmed remotely. If a team scores three or more goals in four of the last five matches, this is just a fragile trend, but an 80% chance of breaking IT (2.5) in the next game has not been confirmed in any way.
But if a tennis player won 500 out of 700 games on his serve on the same surface against opponents from the first hundred, this is a confirmed probability of 70% +. And if an athlete is given more than 1.50 for such a game, then this can be safely taken.
- Trends and trends. It may be some kind of global trend, for example, a general increase in league performance, or it may be a local one - a series of draws for the team. Such trends can be identified as soon as they appear and carried on while they are profitable. Or you can act the other way around - look for a protracted, anomalous series, and play on their interruption. There are no eternal trends, each of them will end sooner or later.
- Odds. That is, on the size of quotes, their ranges, the difference in odds between rivals. There are a number of strategies based solely on odds values, and some of them have been quite successful. One example - betting against odds of about 1.70 in the NBA yields Yield in the region of + 4-5% from season to season.
This also includes the dynamics of changing lines. On this, too, many build their betting strategies. This includes strategies for betting on falling odds, and betting against the load, and Bob McCune's strategy, and many other methods. The essence is the same - if the event line changes in a certain way - we put it this way or that way.
Step-by-step or combined models. For example, catching up with the victory of the underdog in quarters in basketball, creating systems and multi-bets for matches with a potential draw, catching overtime in high-performing sports.
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You can also combine any of these areas, perhaps even all at once. In general, there is no room for stagnation in betting, any trends end, any series are interrupted, any tactics sooner or later stop working. Therefore, it is important to constantly be on the move and develop new betting methods.
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The financial part of the betting strategy
If the first part is about how and where to bet, then this one is about how much to bet. There are many tactics for distributing your bankroll, and we have already covered some of them.:
Etc. There are a lot of them, but they are all divided into two large groups: uniform and progressive systems. Uniform financial management systems - varieties of flat, equal profit, fractional Kelly criterion - are the most adequate and applicable to correct, professional betting.
Progressive systems - dogon, ladder, d'Alembert system, a series of Fibonacci numbers - imply sharp changes in the size of bets depending on the previous results. They are more suitable for entertainment and gambling pastime.
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Choosing a financial betting scheme is just as important as a good bet part of the overall strategy. If you plan to play correctly, then you should choose a conservative bankroll management model, keeping risks to a minimum. The best option is a flat of 1-2%.
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Conditional part of the betting strategy
This part is about betting behavior under certain conditions. A set of certain rules about what to do in a given situation - conditions, prohibitions, restrictions, limits, and so on - for all cases of betting life.
For example:
- Ban on bets under the influence of alcohol or fatigue;
- Conditions under which you cover the rate or take profit on it;
- Limits on the number of bets in one day;
- Rules and procedure for withdrawing funds from the bookmaker's office;
- Limiting the maximum odds that you can afford to play;
- Algorithm of actions when falling into a protracted drawdown.
Etc. So that not a single scenario of the development of events comes as a surprise, so that for each case there is a clear plan that controls everything much more reliably than human emotions. All these rules come with experience of participation in certain situations. The experienced bettor literally overgrows them, making his overall strategy more fundamental and reliable.
A few tips for developing strategies
The main rule is not to put all your eggs in one basket. Not a single betting part of the strategy will work stably and evenly, without failures. And when there are several of them, they compensate for each other's results. On two drawdowns, the rest are profitable. Plus, almost all betting methods stop working over time. The optimal number of different tactics is about ten, but for a start, you can limit yourself to five.
It is best to concentrate on one sport while developing strategies within that sport. Ideally, even choose one or two profile leagues and play only them. This way you can achieve the deepest immersion in the selected topics, comparable to the level of bookmakers. This does not contradict the first point, because there are dozens of individual strategies for each league, and there are a huge number of ready-made ones.
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Try to develop strategies for big markets - the largest markets. It is many times more difficult to beat them than middle and small markets, but you can make money on them by orders of magnitude more in monetary terms. Even Yield + 1-2% on big markets is potentially much cooler than + 20% on smalls. With a good bank, you can make much more money in money, besides, with big ones, you can additionally monetize your skills by selling a subscription to your bets.
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Keep detailed separate accounting in Excel or Google tables for each strategy separately. The more parameters for each bet - date, bookmaker, outcome, result, odds, bank change, sport, bet size, etc. - you will take into account, the easier it will be for you to analyze statistics from different angles in the future. This will allow you to cut off areas that have ceased to work in time, modernize good methods and optimize your betting activity in general.
Bookmaker archives are also a great helper for quickly checking any theory that comes to your mind. With their help, it is possible to analyze retroactively not only the results of the teams, but also the dynamics of the change in the coefficients, to find information about the quotes that were given by a couple of teams in past head-to-head meetings, to assess the level of the drop in the coefficient depending on the change in the balance of power in the match, and much more.
Conclusion
Developing sports betting strategies is fun, but at the same time, quite difficult and time-consuming exercise. This is a full-fledged job, a separate type of activity that takes a lot of time and effort. It is extremely doubtful that you will be able to fully combine betting with some other work.
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This is how sports betting should be treated - like your main job. That is, responsibly, disciplined and with full dedication. Only with such an attitude can you achieve decent success in any kind of activity, including betting.
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