Finding Value in Betting Odds

Finding value when it comes to odds is not just the best way to make money from sports wagering, it is, realistically, the only real way to do so consistently and regularly. If you are not staking for value, your chances of success over the long-term are almost zero.

Bettors, by and large, aren’t aware of this. Instead of prioritising value, they wager on the outcome they think is most likely to occur. But, as logical as this may seem, it is a fundamentally flawed approach. You may even win most of your stakes by always betting on the most likely result, but this is not the same thing as making a profit.

What is Value in Sports Betting?

In sports betting, you can have positive or negative value. Positive value is when the likelihood of your wager winning is bigger than the probability reflected in the given odds. So, stakes with positive value are more likely to be successful that the odds suggest. Negative value bets are less likely to win than their odds indicate.

If you’re interested in making money, you need to find positive value wagers.

Identifying Value in Sports Markets

This is a two-step process, with the first being an assessment of the chance of the possible outcomes. After that, these probabilities are compared to the implied likelihood of the relevant odds. The second step is much easier than the first.

Sporting events are unpredictable, which is why it’s fun to stake on them in the first place. And it is impossible to precisely assign probabilities to the diverse possible outcomes because there are simply too many variables you have to take into account!

All that you can do is make the most accurate assessment you can and trust your judgement. Lots of factors also come into play here, including your overall knowledge of the sports, your recent research, and plain intuition. There’s no real right or wrong approach here because it is more of an art than it is a science. Ultimately, it comes down to not just the quality of the information available to us, but how we interpret it as well.

It’s key that you don’t depend totally on your existing sporting knowledge when you’re evaluating what the probabilities are of the possible outcomes. You must learn how to conduct effective analysis and research if you want to increase your chances of making accurate value judgements regularly.

Top Tips for Finding Better Value

There’s no recipe to follow when it comes to identifying value in sports betting markets, unfortunately. There’s some good advice, though, and we can promise that if you apply these strategies to your wagering, you’ll soon start seeing improvements in your results.

• Bet on what you know
• Consider multiple elements
• Make a probability assessment before you check the odds
• Never ignore heavy favourites
• Shop around

At its most basic level, the idea of value in sports wagers is straightforward. Be sure not to underestimate its importance! While consistently finding positive value in wagering markets is a challenge, it’s more than possible.