What is Value Betting?

Published on 4 February, 2009 | Leave a comment from N Todorov

Value betting

Most of the bookmakers have quality staff which is working with odds, their forming and changing – in other words, the odds you see for a particular game are modified and calculated by them. But there are some bookmakers that just take the odds and sometimes modify them a bit. Anyway, the forming of an odd is a very complex statistical process depending on a lot of elements (form of the team, motivation, goals of the team, condition of the pitch, attendance and many others).

The odd for 1×2 is compiled by dividing 1 because the exits cover all the probability for the particular exit and adding the so called bookmaker`s margin (from which the bookmaker is making profit).

What actually is Value Betting? There are punters that calculate the probability of an exit and the odd for an event by themselves and then they compare it to the one of the bookmaker. In other word – they are looking for a difference in the probabilities. If they find such one the bet is considered as value. The other aspect (the more simple) is that the punter estimates the risk and the probability for a exit of an event and decides whether it worths betting on the odd or not. For the first example you can find a really nice developed system called “Football Betting Spreadsheet” in Goonersguide.com. On the base of a rating system containing different element such as the form of the teams, past events etc. the systems calculates the probabilities of the exits and compares them to the bookmaker`s trying to find values.

How to calculate the real probabilities of an event you can find here – Probabilities based on the odds.