Value Betting: General Information on how to Deal with this Phenomenon

Betting has become a rather popular activity throughout the whole world. With this, there are a lot of beginner gamblers who consider betting as a kind of entertainment, rather than a professional occupation. Thus, it is rather important to understand that betting success does not only depend on finding a team or a player who has better chances to win. The key question here, however, is to find a team that has the better chances compared to the betting odds offered by a bookmaker. In other words, it can be said that any betting success can be achieved if you are constantly finding the better chances represented by value bets and placing wagers on them.

Every experienced gambler knows that finding value bets is a key phenomenon for achieving the betting success. This is the fact that is often neglected by beginner gamblers who do not want to consider betting as a serious activity. Thus, the main task of the given article is to explain how to find value bets and how to get the most advantages out of them.

Value Bets Explained

Prior to delving into the best ways of how to benefit from the value bets, it is more reasonable to know what value bets are and how it is possible to identify them. To begin, value bets are those bets where the likelihood of a certain outcome to happen is greater than that presented by the odds.

In order to better understand how everything works here, let us consider an actual example with a coin toss. If a bookmaker offered the odds of 2.10 on tails to land, this case would be the perfect example of a value bet. In order to prove it, it is necessary to make the following calculations:

(Implied Probability * Odds) – 1

As for a coin toss, every outcome has the same implied probability of 50%. Thus, if we insert the available data into the formula above, the answer will be 0.05. If the answer of such an equation is greater than zero, it means that we have found the value bet. As for our example, this is the best example of the value odds, which, to tell the truth, is rather rare in the betting industry. That is why it is quite complex to identify sports events that promise value for gamblers. If the coin toss implies the known and clear probability, the situation with sports events is much more difficult. So, it should be mentioned at once that finding value bets is experienced gamblers’ speed only.

How to Find Value Bets?

As soon as you know what the value bets are, you do not have enough knowledge in order to benefit from this phenomenon in the betting industry. Here, there are a few other things that are also important if we speak about value betting. To be more exact, they are:

• specializing;
• understanding probabilities;
• fixing own odds;
• reviewing the betting history; and
• being persistent.

Specializing in Betting

Now, it is high-time to describe each component in detail. So, it is quite reasonable for beginner gamblers to specialize in betting. The best advice is to start betting with leagues or tournaments gamblers have become familiar with long before. As soon as you learn how to identify the value in the sphere you are interested in, you will be able to expand the knowledge to new spheres of the betting industry.

Here, you should not chase the market promising enormous possibilities to earn money. To explain, it is not a secret that baseball provides all the gamblers with almost limitless opportunities to benefit from. However, if you are new to baseball, you will have to waste a lot of time both to understand the general principles of the sport and to learn how to deal with the value in betting. That is why it is highly recommended to start working with value betting on those markets where you know what is what.

Implied Probabilities Described

As you have understood from the example with a coin toss mentioned above, we should know the implied probability of an outcome in order to identify value bets. So, it is reasonable to find out how to calculate this probability according to the odds offered by an oddsmaker. In short, it is very simple because it is necessary just to divide 1 by decimal odds. To put it differently, the formula to calculate the implied probability is as follows:

Implied Probability = 1 / Decimal Odds

As for the same example, the implied probability will look as follows:

Implied Probability = 1 / 2.10 = 47.62%

Here, however, we do know that the real probability of tails to land is 50%. So, it is the best example of a value bet because real chances of the outcome to happen is higher than those estimated by a bookmaker.

Setting the Odds

Here, numerous professional punters state that it is rather useful to fix your own odds if you want to develop the skills necessary to identify value bets. In this case, you should find the list of upcoming events from the leagues or tournaments you are familiar with and develop the odds for each outcome to occur. The most important thing here is not to consult bookmakers or any other tipsters. The odds should be produced by your opinion only.

It is impossible to overestimate the profitability of the given technique for novice bettors. To explain, fixing the odds develops the understanding of how the betting industry works. Moreover, if you are constantly comparing your odds to those published by professional bookmakers, you will notice that your results will gradually approach those produced by betting experts. Of course, it will take a while, but the long-term perspective is worth your efforts and time.

Reviewing the Betting History

If you deal with betting professionally, it is of great significance to pay a great attention to what you have done. In other words, it is impossible to know how much you have learned if you do not understand how much you knew previously. That is why every gambler should create the history of what he has bet on in order to understand the current state of the market. It should be mentioned at once that records will be initially losing, while the results will improve as you gain the relevant experience.

The assessment of your own history can result in numerous benefits. For instance, you can find out that home-field advantage has been overestimated in the league of your choice by numerous bookmakers. Thus, it can be rather important information if you want to deal with value betting.

The Role of Persistency

As it has already been mentioned, finding value bets takes a lot of time and efforts. In this case, it is not effective to rely on intuition or something like this. Everything here should be perfectly identified and calculated. As everyone knows, knowledge is power, and it is necessary to make certain efforts in order to gain this power.

Knowledge is Power

So, everyone who wants to follow the strategy of finding value and benefit from it should understand that it is not an easy path. If one wants to achieve the result, it is obligatory to be persistent in order to make all the necessary steps and calculations. Only in this case, it is possible to properly identify the value bets and earn decent benefits at them.

Conclusion

The given example has presented the general information about value betting and its role for the gamblers. According to the information stated above, value betting can be mastered by professional gamblers only, but it is rather profitable.