How To Get Better Value Bets in Football

How To Get Better Value Bets in Football
For many people, football betting is just as big as football itself. The Premier League isn’t the same without a 5-fold accumulator, and some cannot imagine watching their team without something more at stake.
But, betting on football is truly difficult, and getting better at it means only one thing: Understanding value. Live betting is a good way to highlight how quickly odds can change – but many forget they change during the build up to a game, too…
Table of contents
Understanding Probability and Odds
Odds represent probability… Or do they?
Bookmakers set odds reflecting what they believe is the likelihood of each outcome, and these are then influenced by the demand of a bet. This means that the moment the odds go live, the value is set by the bookmaker, but the reality may change towards the start of the game, which according to Wisdom of the Crowd, is a truer representation of outcome likelihoods.
Of course, they include a small profit margin too, but we can’t really do much about that besides knowing it exists. This is why odds are never 1/1 for home team or draw, and 1/1 for the away team – this would mean taking no profit as a bookmaker. Instead, both odds are slightly shortened and thus never add up to any immediate, internal arbitrage opportunity.
In-Depth Team and Player Analysis
So, how do you find good value? Through research, stats and general knowledge, you need a good way to determine the likelihood of outcomes. This means getting out of the mind frame of “I think X team will win”, and instead thinking “X team has a Y percent chance of winning”. Of course, luck will always play a role, so there’s that to consider too…
Stats, team form, expected goals, injury news, past performances vs a certain manager/team/style – or even what the players have been posting on social media are all variables to consider. There’s also nothing your with your own internal intuition, either.
Generally, momentum is massive in football. For example, Arsenal currently have zero momentum with scoring from open play, and so any team they play which are good at defending set pieces will likely cause Arsenal problems, and potentially be a low scoring game.
Spotting Market Inefficiencies and Biases
So, the value part comes from identifying the odds of a bet which seem better than the odds do. One way to really leverage this is by looking at the odds early on, because this is before the demand for the bets (wisdom of a crowd) begins to take shape. In this time, odds change, and they change even more during live betting when a game has already started. When you’re in a position of having gained value, you’re experiencing positive expected value. Here, you can either see it out, or hedge against it by now laying the bet.
Conclusion
Finding value bets is all about taking your time and having a long-term outlook. Even bets that you don’t truly believe will happen (i.e. a 10% chance of happening) may be well worth it, because you found it for odds that suggest it has a 5% chance of happening. That is the difference between casual betting and value betting…
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