What is Value Betting?

Value Betting is a betting technique where players bet when a bookmaker offers much higher odds than the real probability of an outcome.

The player has to come up with certain criteria to define the correct odds of an event. In reality, he has to do a bookmaker’s job to compile his own odds and then search the market to see who is offering higher odds than these and bet on them.

The proper calculation of own odds is highly connected to value betting. Probability analysis is a prerequisite to deciding if odds are “fair” and correspond to the real circumstances or are inaccurate. These calculations pose a difficult task for most punters because they require a strong mathematical background. In this context, some bettors who are familiar with statistical modelling have developed their own techniques or even software to estimate odds and discover Value Betting opportunities.

Value Betting services

Already, some of the alert services that detect arbitrage positions or arbs also offer Value Betting services. These techniques and software programs receive many factors as inputs, which affect the outcome of a game. The appropriate weights for each factor are estimated based on historical data on each league.

The “accurate” odds serve as the output of an internal process. Some of these techniques and services simply involve comparing the odds between soft bookmakers and sharp bookmakers and exchanges to identify value, based on the common notion that sharp bookmakers (Pinnacle) and exchanges (Betfair) reflect the true and fair odds for an outcome.

However, this is not always correct and could lead to losses because oftentimes a bookmaker can have very strong and reliable information that is not available to the general public, thus creating a value trap for the value bettor.

Robots, aka bots

Many software developers have developed Value Betting Bots that detect value and place bets without human intervention. These bots operate in a variety of ways, often focusing on just one bookmaker. More sophisticated bots focus on markets as a whole, covering 5-6 or even 30 bookmakers at the same time.

The most sophisticated and successful bots use solid filtering to maximize performance and avoid the value traps often set by bookmakers. The proper filtering of odds and events is the cornerstone of the operation of each bot.

Manual and Automated?

One of the biggest dilemmas in Value Betting is to choose between manual and automated Value Betting (bots). It is our firm belief that bots operate better than humans. We have risked our own hard-earned capital to test all reliable projects and services, and we are confident about what we say.

We believe that technology helps to achieve optimum levels of value betting without posing an unaffordable cost that could make the whole plan useless. However, every player operates under specific circumstances, and these circumstances are the very factors that determine the answer.

Also, we believe that manual Value Betting is also profitable, but not to the degree of a good and reliable bot.

Value Betting and Arbing

Value Betting should not be confused with arbing. Many people believe that a Value Bet is already an arb, but this is not true, especially when we talk about early lines when the only odds to be compared are the own odds. The calculation of own odds is a prerequisite; however, it is not the only prerequisite for Value Betting.

A large number of qualitative and quantitative factors may affect the outcome of a sports event. Statistical modeling can be implemented to weigh the most important variables and receive ‘accurate’ odds. Staking is another important factor of Value Betting because even the best system can be crashed by a wrong staking plan.

“I can’t give you a formulaic approach, because I don’t use one. And I just mix all the factors, and if the gap between value and price is not attractive, I go on to something else. And sometimes it’s just quantitative. If you want a formula, you should go back to graduate school. They’ll give you lots of formulas that won’t work.”

Charlie Munger, Berkshire co-owner.