So strategies that can make money with trading are not public for obvious reasons. I was wondering if it is also true for betting. Do you think people are creating betting strategies to actually win versus bookmaker? Other then simple ones like arbitrage between 2 bookmakers.
Is OP stupid or something?
s/
On it.
what if it's a draw??
Then don’t bet on it
As others have alluded to, sports betting sites are quick to ban people for "cheating" if they place bets using their brain instead of a Magic 8 ball, like they're supposed to.
It's no different than casinos banning people who count cards.
So while you can win against the bookmaker in theory, in practice you will just get banned.
This is one of the many redeeming factors of financial markets. No trading platform bans you for using your brain to place (speculative) bets.
Someone should create a site where people can bet against each other without restrictions, without bookmacher making money on it. (I don’t know business value, maybe ads) It would be interesting
Is this missing the /s? Otherwise look up Betfair and betting exchanges in general.
Sporttrade, prophet exchange
polymarket
It’s how it works in the UK. There are actual markets and market makers, just like the stock or option market.
In reality though even an options market maker doesn’t have to honor a posted bid, so it’s the same issue.
When you try to arb one bookmaker vs the other, they will both ban you pretty quickly when they notice frequent, precise bets which are required to make the arb work. They want people who, say, place few $100 bets on basketball, not 50 $34.56 bets on Italian table tennis, which are the sort of markets where the inefficiencies will usually be.
However, I think there may be some plays with real-time bets where you can "middle" a bet. Middling means you place two over/under bets on either side, and you win both. For example, on Draftkings you bet on the over 50 points for the game, and FanDuel you bet for the under 55. If the total score of the game is 53, you win both bets. Otherwise, you win one, lose one. The issue is that at a single point in time, DraftKings and FanDuel odds will be so close to each other, that this betting opportunity will never be available pre-game.
So I had this idea: buy one leg pre-game (hopefully +EV but this is of course hard to determine .. what do you know that the bookmakers don't?), wait for the game to start, and live odds shift (hopefully in your favor), then go an hedge with your second leg, and hope for it to revert into the middle. At the time that you place bets, assuming bookmakers know what they're doing, both of your bets will be slightly -EV due to the juice.
If the game never shifts in your favor after the first leg, then you of course can't go into your second one, and you just lost a regular bet. So I think this makes it a volatility play.
There's also r/algobetting but it's pretty dead.
Your suggested strategy is profitably if and only if your initial bet has positive EV. Therefore your strategy is no better than thinking you have an edge on the bookies odds.
For my first bet, I'm getting odds from my counterparty about the end result of the game. But in my case, I don't care about the end result of the game. I just want the live odds to shift up a little bit so that I can secure that "middle" opportunity during live betting. If it goes back down, I don't care anymore.
I was thinking that since the live odds go up and down so often during a game, you can make money on the volatility even with 2 -EV bets, but you may be right, I'm not strong in this stuff.
I’m imagining an ideal game where the odds are constantly mean reverting with high variance. In this hypothetical situation I think the strat would work.
Edit: if you could explain this would be helpful. From my perspective I’m betting on volatility while the bookie is betting on outcome.
I feel like the live betting market is efficient enough to not just have random volatility spikes for no reason
Well it’s the game itself that has volatility. Basketball especially. The prospects of a team winning go up and down as the game evolves and the odds follow. Less so I think for the over/under but you can do middles with spreads too. I haven’t actually measured this of course. Not even sure where to get the historical data.
yeah this is basically my strategy of buying a stock and selling it when it goes up, because stocks go up and down so often during the day. It's a pretty foolproof way to make money if you ask me.
Is it fair to say that for stocks, the efficiency of the market will extract all visible mean reversion, but for sports, there is no market to speak of as the underlying is the game itself? I guess I’m not saying that this will work, I’m saying that if analysis shows some meaningful mean reversion in basketball games, there are no market forces to make it efficient and extract profitability so it could work? Also thanks for the laugh lol
Here's how I think about what you're describing - let me know if I misunderstood you:
So there are two outcomes, right?
The market moves enough for you to lock in your "arb"
The market doesn't move enough, and you have an unhedged position
The smaller the move you are looking for, the more likely #1 is to happen, but also the smaller the profit you've locked in - picking up pennies in front of a steamroller (when #2 happens). The larger the move you look for, the more you'll make, but you'll do so less often. For positive EV, you need to make more from #1 in the long run than you lose from #2. Note, the EV of #2 is likely negative as the bet was made unconditionally, but now you have to condition it on #1 not occurring, which lops off a range of positive payouts. If, for example, you looked for a very small move to lock in the arb, and you don't reach it, the probability of a positive payout is basically 0.
I don't know if basketball games are mean reverting, and I'm also skeptical that mean reversion implies this will be positive EV.
That's basically it! Assuming mean a perfectly mean reverting game, I locked in a position like this near the end of the game:
a. $100 that Team A wins by over 2 b. $100 that Team B loses by under 4
So if outcome is that Team A wins by 3, I won both bets. Otherwise I neither make nor lost money: A +EV position.
So the payout of 1. is a bit different than that of buying-selling a stock but I think your pennies in front of a steamroller (2.) analogy holds, given that the spread to be exactly 3 is small.
What I'm not following is why mean reversion wouldn't mean +EV. Assuming a theoretically perfectly mean reverting game, there is no steamroller from (2.) to speak of right? I can just lock in my position +EV position.
Not really true, I have a friend who works at sport betting firm that do these arbs. They might void some bet sometimes, but have never been banned. Though, he mentioned that it’s only profitable to arb because of the broker rebate they got from giving some much volume
I know they wil ban you quickly or reduce the maximum of a bet (from a friend)
But I think you are right, one could make strategy with cashing out. Based on volatility of which team is favour to win. But in reality it would be hard
This is a solid point.. Want to add further when you are trying to arb to and placing say 50/100 bets the price movement are significant as the market is not very liquid usually which doesn’t make a good case for arbing out
You have a few problems with sports betting strategies.
1) No liquidity, bets where you can have an advantage, minutes played by an individual player, the book will really limit your bet size so you can't go size on bets you could have some alpha on.
2) If you consistently win, specifically in the smaller prop bets, then book can limit your tradable size meaning as you get better your ability to go size will get cut down by the exchanges
3) Arbing book makers is hard if you aren't one of the blessed parties who has better access to the sports book, which means if you are retail then you really can't do arb in any meaningful size
4) Data driven strategies are very hard to model due to small data sizes. All the pitches thrown in MLB over a season is less than one days worth of market data on AAPL so any model you make is based on an extremely small sample size and with ever shifting conditions compared to market data.
ie comparing plays run in the NFL for a season doesn't make much sense when the first string QB is out for 3 games and the star TE misses the first 8 games of the season and you sit your star for rest in the last game and a half.
So any data driven strategy would always be basedon a small sample size with so many other inputs to it that are all constantly changing htat you can never have very much confidence in it.
5) Very few changes to bet.
With the market you can make 100,000 bets a day. With sports betting you can have an edge but really only be able to make 4-5 bets on it, meaning even with a 70:30 odds you can lose money pretty easily.
There's a recent Odd Lots episode with plenty of background on these markets. "Flipping a whale" was described as the holy grail, in which you gain control of a rich, ineffective bettor's account and are able to make a few high-EV bets at high limits.
Coming from regular equity/fixed income markets, this sounds absurd to me, but if it's your bag, good luck.
Yes there are absolutely proper traders (not just arbs) in the sports/racing betting scene. Serious traders bet on exchanges where the odds are fairer and they charge commission on winnings instead of adding margin to their odds. Nobody will tell you their strategy for the same reason as stock trading firms.
You can go to r/algobetting to see more of this, but I think there are definitely strategies that do make money. Many are arbs but others are elo based systems that I have seen do well in off markets (division 3 college sports, Russian hockey, etc) but the details of these systems are never made public for obvious reasons.
The important thing to remember when trying to figure out a betting strategy is that unlike brokers, gambling sites do better when you lose, so they almost never provide tools for developers like apis even just for getting odds. Also, they have a lot of fine print that you agree to allowing them to ban you, void your bets, etc. because of this, half of any sure thing success like arbing is going to require creating enough additional noise to hide the strategy, and this may be necessary with any algorithmic system depending on your bookie as these guys don’t fuck around and are happy to kick you off for winning too much.
Yes it is extremely easy to make money sports betting but they just limit your accounts when you win. Certain sites actually let me and others I worked with win a surprisingly large amount of money before being limited significantly though. I’m considered a professional sports bettor on taxes. The bets I make are usually due to errors in the software where the line is just straight up inaccurate, errors in the actual stats (usually on player prop bets), or just objectively bad lines due to things like the minutes / rotations of players in basketball games. The lines on player props are extremely tight on sites like FanDuel and DraftKings it is essentially impossible to lose money on these bets if you are using your brain and understand how odds work
Also all the bets I’m talking about are live bets I think trying to do arb with pregame lines or find value before the lines move pregame is mostly a waste of time
Would love to hear more about these
What do you want to know
How you find the lines? What sports? Are errors due to the updates being slow relative to the game or moreso like a glitch, or general mispricing? Looking for partnership to check lines etc.?
I only focus on NBA, NFL and College football. They are the only sports I know really well, I’m sure there are probably similar things in other sports but I don’t know enough about them to find them.
‘Errors’ come from a variety of ways. I’ll give some examples. - A player gets injured and it’s not reported yet (i.e a starter in the NBA never returns out of halftime and it is not reported until a few minutes into the 3rd quarter, in the meantime there’s probably like a 95% chance they never return and you can bet the live under on their player props. Or a player gets announced out either on the live broadcast and through Twitter and you bet their under super quick before the line is removed. Or a player gets hurt and they’re limping around and ask for a sub, you can sometimes bet their under if the line is up. Some nuance and judgment comes in to play with some of this stuff but worse case scenario you have like a 50/50 bet.)
A player makes a shot at the end of the shot clock. It is ruled no basket, the broadcast shows he actually got the shot off in time. You can bet his over on points, and potentially the over on assists for the player who passed to him if there was an assist. They will add the stats to the players at the next timeout in the game.
General bad lines happen constantly, like multiple times in every NBA game and here is an example doing some simple calculations. player X over/under on points pregame was 19.5. He scored 6 in the first quarter. Every game he plays the first 6 minutes of the 1st quarter and the entire 2nd quarter (12 minutes). This means he plays 36 mins per game and is projected .55 points per minute. Let’s say after the first quarter ends, his line on points is o/u 19.5. Doing simple math, the number is too low given he will play the next 12 minutes, and should be projected to score around (.55 x 12) points, so 6.66. So you should bet his over on points. Usually you can kind of double dip in a scenario like this as a player in this situation will usually have a larger role on the offense in the 2nd quarter shift, meaning they should be projected even more points.
In NBA, player X is a center. Player Y is the backup center. Player Y is about to check into the game with 6 minutes left in the 4th quarter. He is obviously taking out player X as two centers do not play together. If player X has lines up, you can do simple calculations like above to roughly estimate how much they are projecting player X to play, and then you can bet his under if you deem it to be profitable.
Player X throws a pass that is a clear assist, but the live stats do not credit him with an assist. Usually they will add him the assist in a few minutes, in the meantime, you can bet his over on assists and have a massive advantage.
In the NFL, you can bet player X to get a catch on a certain drive. Let’s say it’s the drive that will be a two minute drill at the end of the half. A certain team always plays their 3rd string running back during this drive because he’s a better pass catcher. The odds may not factor this in, and usually don’t. You can bet the 3rd string running back to get a catch at crazy odds like +400 to +1200 depending on the player / team / etc, because it is not factoring in the scenario correctly. Odds should be more like +100 often times as screens and dump off passes to RBs are likely in these situations.
Team X is blowing out team Y in the NBA. Both teams empty their benches and team X has a way way better bench. Usually this stuff is not factored into the live odds, as they are just based on the pregame odds, which are no longer relevant. Usually the odds will shift in favor of team X a few minutes after / in the next commercial break as I assume action comes in on them.
There some more nuance and scenarios but you should get the idea from that lol. I don’t use any software to check lines, only thing I use is Action Network to see what odds for certain things were pregame.
Great info. What sites are you having succeess on as some are quicker than others?
So all falls into a lot of player props. Ever took a shot at lower college basketball where they might have props and probably are even slower updating in some cases? I guess many of the games won't have player props.
I guess the biggest problem with this is one person can only watch so many games at once would be cool to build a small team and they all share the live plays/updates/info.
I only use the major books like FanDuel, DK, MGM, Caesars. Anything else barely allows you to bet any money it’s a waste of time. All the major books similar enough lines and generally offer the same lines.
Lower college basketball is too obscure, the more obscure the sport the less money you can bet. I’d imagine you’d get your account limited very quickly betting that stuff. But they don’t have college props in my state so I’ve never tried.
I make most of my money in the NBA. The scenarios I’ve described and other similar things occur many times throughout a night of NBA games. Many of the bets are extremely profitable, especially on rebound or assist bets as players typically only get a few a game, so when there is an error it is a huge advantage (especially if there is like a quarter or less left in the game). The problem isn’t finding the bets that is easy atleast for me it’s just getting accounts limited and finding ways around that
Got it. Briliant insight. Ive always wondered to what extent is this stuff live updated or just following pre game with almost. What would be the scenario for a rebound as I get the assist for replay but is this the same scenario? Also the TV feed is slower than live by a decent amount, do you have any method around this ?
Cable and even streaming is close enough to live, you can read all the live data as it comes in as sites like FanDuel have the live play by play feed available to you. Rebounds can be tricky with players tipping them. Nationally televised NBA games are more delayed but regular games prob less than 10 seconds delay. NFL games are prob like 30 seconds behind, most apps have a feature where you can watch the nfl game directly in the Sportsbook app, which is most up to date
you're a legend for revealing your strategies. but you should probably stop before u/joshua9663 starts front-running you lol
Hahahha was looking more for a collaborator
The exact thing I make the majority of my money on is probably impossible to replicate without my expertise
Some people do, have had moderate success in college football in the past.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-03/the-gambler-who-cracked-the-horse-racing-code
This is a great read
Edges in sports betting are very prominent and can come from anything between having better projections/modelling, hitting markets that are off to the rest of the market, or live arbing across books, etc. The real problem in sports betting is figuring out how to scale your operation after you inevitably get limited using any one of the aforementioned edges (usually involves setting up betting partners and finding people to get money down for you to bypass limits).
Simply put, a sportsbook's primary goal is to put out as many markets as possible from anything from mainline NFL spreads to minor league Korean basketball to attract more bets and collect more vig from casual bettors. They can't possibly be sharp at every market all the time, especially books that are considered to be not sharp (i.e. DraftKings, BetMGM).
The odd lots podcast had a pretty good episode on it. Would recommend listening - https://open.spotify.com/episode/6Y9ACQSe31OioDiJg0AqWJ?si=6gkOyXF-Tr-u4ERjHXJ66w
Like people are saying, it won't work with bookmakers. They'll refuse or even cancel your bet when it looks like it's going to pay off.
But, for horses, that's a different story. (You bet vs others and the house just takes a cut.)
Here's a good story about an algorithm that cleaned up in Hong Kong's horse racing scene. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-03/the-gambler-who-cracked-the-horse-racing-code
This post has the "Trading" flair. Please note that if your post is looking for Career Advice you will be permanently banned for using the wrong flair, as you wouldn't be the first and we're cracking down on it. Delete your post immediately in such a case to avoid the ban.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
Check out sites like Unabated, have many articles / tools (some free, some not) about this topic. Oddsjam is another one. It seems like the hard part of winning at sports betting is not finding the opportunities it’s getting the money down over the longer term.
There are a couple of ways people do this. You can do arbitrage between bookies, but you'll get limited real quick. Alternatively you can bet on more obscure sports with smaller bookies, but the issues that arise are the same as before. So unless you're ok with traveling around signing up for different bookies in different states and finding other accounts to bet on, it's not a glamorous lifestyle.
Ofc you can build models and set up a system, and use foreign bookies. The pros are no limiting, and the cons are the sharper odds. There's a lot of detailed live data you can get (free in some cases) of the more popular sports, and that would be your foundation for your models. This can get pretty sophisticated like any non-trivial trading system, and incorrect injury data in some sports can screw your predictions if you don't properly track that, but the necessary data is out there and many are taking advantage of that.
Iirc i read that there Is some short term mean reversion strategies that work well on top teams or players. I never checked the data tho.
Sig does this
Although not hard in theory, it is very difficult to create a computer statistical strategy. This is because the data is very hard to get and you’ll get banned from sports books for using a computer to scrap data or place bets for you. Sports books don’t want you to win so they put in these safeguards to stop smart cs and math PhDs from using computer tools on their websites.
Tbh, bookies are quite simple in some regards and the alpha available to extract is like 1000x higher than in commodities but they reserve the right to ban you or "limit you" which is essentially a ban which is the only reason serious investors arent in sports betting I presume. There are some seriously exploitable strategies, which maybe work if you bet on them once a month per bookie and have like 100 accounts across all the bookmakers you can get your hands on. I know there is a similar issue in crypto so if anyone has info on what specifically it takes to get flagged pls let me know. Making new accs is very offputting.
There are definitely sport betting strategies employed by professional gamblers in various sports.
An ‘obvious’ strategy which worked in NBA/basketball for a while was betting on the tip off. Odds used to be 50:50 but statistically the taller player would get the ball for his team more often than 50% of the time. Betting companies caught on and now its not 50:50 anymore.
There have been successful gamblers with long runs of wins in horse racing. These are guys who are running all sorts of regressions (weather conditions, diet, age, previous wins, weight of jockey, what have ya…) and determining their own probabilities and gambling.
One of the main problems that sport bettors seem to have is that their accounts get limited in terms of size as soon as the company realizes they are having abnormal win rate. Betting companies actually monitor the odds at the moment you place a bet vs the odds at the moment the game starts and if they see you are consistently right way they will limit your account. This type of action is harsher in Europe than in US.
Slightly out of topic, but sports betting is also effectively used to wash money. You bet on close to 50:50 bets, by placing a bet on both sides. You end up losing the spread which can be 5-10% on close calls.
Utilize advanced predictive analytics and modeling techniques with methodologies that are more efficient like uncertainty principles, non-linear dynamics analysis and chaos theory! Use metadata analysis for each type of sports!
You can arb between exchange and bookmaker
As opposed to trading strategies that make money being private as a global conspiracy for the select few that happen to be in on the know and keep it secret?
What
Your first words imply there’s a strategy to make money that the public isn’t privy to
Follow cheat sheets https://discord.gg/FQAyXqvY
sports betting markets are like minecraft servers with anti-cheat plugins while financial markets are basically like 2b2t
You're right, profitable trading strategies are kept secret by those in the know. Makes sense the same would apply to sports betting systems that actually work.
I'm sure there are some smart people out there coming up with advanced models and strategies to beat the bookies. Stuff way more complex than just simple arbing between books. But of course, they ain't making that public knowledge.
Who knows, maybe some legit matched betting sites like outplayed.com have profitable systems behind the scenes they sell access to. But most 'get rich betting' products out there are scams or not worth the money. You gotta be super skeptical of anyone claiming they'll share a winning system with you.
Sportsbooks have massive resources and will adapt to crush most betting systems making the rounds. Beating them long term takes some serious quant skills and always innovating. Not for the faint of heart lol.
I think with sports betting, the vig is killer. Any edges you might get due to information or data mining, will probaby get eaten up by the vig.
But I think fading the public is typically touted as a good strategy. Like going against retail investors, and with the smart money.
You fade by going against the squares (casual bettors) and with the sharps (the smart money, the veteran bettors).
If you want to go with data. I found this article that lists sites with AI based predictions:
https://readwrite.com/gambling/betting/ai-betting-prediction/
Some of those seem pretty expensive though. If you search sports betting on GitHub (https://github.com/topics/sports-betting), you can find some libraries if you know programming. Python seems like the most common language for them.
What is vig
Vig stands for vigorish. It’s the bookmaking fee, or house edge.
Idk about sports betting because well idc abt sports and it’s just to random. Also there are infinite plays so there is the possibility that the event you’re betting on never happens. And payouts are just too random as in this event Doesn’t pay out the same as that event. Because of this martingale wouldn’t necessarily work. But assuming you can figure out every event that can happen and the odds of that event then I suppose you can make a betting strategy.
Just bet on the person who is going to win it’s not that difficult