Arbusers

After a great 2020 I am down slightly this year value betting in my spare time. I am using Pinnacle as a base book. Betting mostly North American sports as well as some European and Asian pro basketball. Any feedback appreciated.

If you want short answer then yes, Pinnacle lean still works in 2021. But these days you have to apply custom filters to be on top of the game. There are many reasons why you could be in negative, we would need more information from you to help you. Just to name few possible reasons:

1. You are victim of variance because you are not placing many bets.

2. You are betting on low liquidity markets.

3. Your average EV is too small.

4. Your odds feed is not accurate or is delayed.

Those would probably be main reasons why value bettor can have poor results. A more detailed analysis would require a lot more information from you such as do you bet pre-match or in-play, what alert service you use, your average odds, arb percent and EV, what kind of leagues and markets do you bet on, how many bets you place on average per day.

Also you need to take into account time of placing bets too. I mean time before KO. Pinny got low limits for early games, even 100-200 euro mug money can smash odds causing "fake" value bets reported by alert services. Experienced that many times last months, huge swings happens all day and I mean HUGE.

I discovered wagers with <5.0% edge are costing me money this year. However, I have only placed 651 wagers in 2021 so variance could be the problem. For now I am going to reduce my stake on smaller edged bets. The majority of my betting is done 30 minutes before the start of the match. Thanks for the replies.

Take caution on low liquidity markets as there are also people who manupulate matches/odds.

My experience:
Arbing using pinnacle lean in 2015-2017: Bleeding approx. 5% of stakes on pinnacle.
Value betting using pinnacle lean in 2018-2019: Approx. 5% profit on soft books.
Value betting using pinnacle lean in 2020 on some markets and value betting on pinnacle on the other markets in 2020: Approx. 10% profit on soft books and approx. 5% on pinnacle.

So if you value bet using pinnacle lean on every market in 2021, as I did in 2018-2019, you may still be profitable. But it is the sum of the markets where the lean works, deducted with markets where it doesn't, due to low liquidity, pinnacle not being the market leader, manipulation, value traps, etc.

However, since the lean strategy without filtering worked better in the past and the fact that pinnacle has continously lowered the limits on some markets (where they maybe were not making profits) there are reasons to believe that in 2021 the strategy of using pinnacle lean in general, without further customization, will not be profitable anymore.