Whether it is possible to earn money from gambling and make a living from betting are questions which seem to bother many punters.
To give the short answer…
To be able to make enough money to live off sports gambling as a career, you need a decent amount of capital to begin with. That’s why it’s so important to build a bankroll and to protect it. Without money to. The reality of betting on sports for a living. #FreePicks #MLBpicks #FreeMLBpicks. I met a couple of professional gamblers in a pub once, they bet on horse racing and £500 on a horse was a common bet. But they would have hedging bets on all the other runners and were guaranteed a profit whatever the result.
How to Build a Career Around Sports Gambling. This might be discouraging to some people, but being a professional sports bettor is still a full-time job. Becoming profitable at sports betting in the long run takes time and constant studying. There’s some foundational knowledge that needs to be learned before you should start. Is Your Sports Betting Entertainment or to Make a Living. September 7, 2017 / BRUCE J FRASER / Articles, Sports Betting Systems. Although some bettors bet for fun and entertainment purposes, there are plenty out there that want to make a living from betting.
Yes, it is absolutely possible to make money with sports betting.
Bookmakers make money; sports analysts make a living from gambling by compiling odds for bookies; some of my own income derives from sports bettors using this website. Programmers earn a living from gambling by developing various betting applications. Manufacturers of gaming machines make money from people’s gambling habits.
I could certainly continue this list as the betting business is a big industry providing many, many people with jobs.
But this is probably not a satisfactory response for sports fans who bet themselves and pursue the dream of supplementing their income, or becoming rich from gambling one day.
However, for these hopeful punters, the answer is also clearly positive…
- Yes: it is possible to develop long-term profitable betting strategies.
- Yes: it is possible to find betting odds which hold value and provide a mathematical edge.
Nothing is Impossible!
The big question is whether you will manage to join the minority, the tiny crowd of betting enthusiasts who finally become successful.
Sportsbook Ag Online Betting
Another question is whether you have the patience (and time) for acquiring the necessary knowledge to win more than you lose, because only knowledge is power; without knowledge there is no chance.
Reliance on luck is not a foundation for lasting success. With luck alone nobody can build a house – only a handful of lottery millionaires can claim the opposite.
Successful Sports Bettors – Examples
In September 2005, in “Expert Betting Advice” forum, a young woman named Maria Santonix started publishing horse racing lay bets. I followed her thread at the time, and I must say that it came across as very authentic. She published daily picks (except Saturdays) and in only 303 days, her initial bank of £3,000 increased to £100,603.78.
The thread has since been taken offline by the operators of the forum, but if you google “Maria Laying System” you will find a plethora of articles referring to her experiment. Naturally, doubt breeds skepticism and most of the responses are quite critical.
It is difficult to find really credible information about betting success on the Internet. In the majority of threads you will read statements such as “I know someone who knows someone who makes his living from betting”.
The only website I am currently aware of which has published quarterly betting results for several years is Alan Seymour’s Sports Arbitrage Review. Alan writes about his experiences as a professional arbitrage trader and has been arbing since 2002.
Famous Last Words
If you have anything substantial to contribute to this topic please leave your comment below. It will warm our hearts and be absolutely great!
As I continue to develop betting courses and tutorials, I would be very keen to learn which specific content you are interested in most.
I thank you in advance for you valuable contribution! Every thought helps to develop this website into a sparkling source of knowledge in the often far too confusing worldwide web. 😛
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This is the first out of a three-part article series, which purpose is to investigate how one can make money from sports betting and the requirements of making a living from it.
Part 1: Having realistic expectations AND Different ways to make money from betting
Setting realistic expectations
If you already feel like skipping this part you are the type that would benefit the most from reading it.
First off, it is important to have realistic expectations.
As with anything in life, making money from sports betting requires time and effort.
And those looking for a get-rich-quick solution or minimal work are setting themselves up for disappointment.
Whether you have a job or are a student, things like this start as a side project.
Most of the people who work for Trademate are building their bankroll on the evenings and weekends, while working on Trademate during the daytime.
Whether you are studying, working a 9-5 job or making a living from playing poker, we think this approach makes a lot of sense.
It happens to be very compatible with value betting since that is when the majority of games are played anyway, and thus when the edges occur.
If you don’t need the money from betting to cover living expenses, it also reduces your risk as you have more legs to stand on financially.
It also enables you to reinvest any profits you make and keep building your bankroll. This, in turn, increases your turnover and potential profits.
You can keep doing it this way until you reach a point where it makes economic sense to do it full time.
Make Money Sports Betting
Different ways to make money from sports betting
There are 2 main ways to make a living from sports betting:
The first is being able to pick winners. Which is what 99% of all tipsters and bettors out there are trying to do, and of which probably 98.9% are failing at.
To do this successfully, you would need to specialise in a market, preferably a niche market, where the bookmakers do not have the same level of information and knowledge as you, or where they can not interpret it as well.
If you want to try and create your own odds models, this article can help you get started.
The second way is to find value in the odds. Finding value can again be split into three groups: 1) Matched betting, 2) Arbitrage betting and 3) Value betting.
These can be ranked based on their potential risk and reward. The pros and cons of them are discussed in this article.
Also this guest post examines the pros and cons of arbitrage betting vs value betting.
At Trademate we are all about value betting as this gives the highest potential return of the 3 ways to make money.
The downside of value betting is that the risk is higher than for arbitrage and matched betting. This is because you only bet on one side of the game, the variance is higher. These articles and video explain variance.
Let’s use an example: If one takes a bet with 2.0 in odds, one can only expect to win 50% of the time. In the short run, anything can happen, e.g. losing 10 coin tosses in a row.
But over a large sample size, let’s say 10,000 tosses, the distribution of the number of heads and tails will be pretty much spot on 50/50 (the theory behind it is explained in this article and our big data analysis has shown that it has worked very well in practice for the Trademate users).
In practice, the potentially high variance nature of value betting, means that one needs to be prepared to place hundreds of bets, maybe thousands depending on the average closing edge and odds before one can expect the variance to even out.
One thing they all have in common is that they have hit bad swings, but made it through them.
We have had users who were breakeven at 1,500 bets, before they hit a good run and their profits soared up and past their EV line (expected value).
Before you start you should make sure that you understand the underlying principles of value betting, mainly exploiting market inefficiencies in our case.
It is not for everyone and if you decide that it is not for you, then that is ok. But then you will not be making a living from betting anytime soon.
Next, one needs to have the patience and discipline to stick with it, through both the upswings and downswings.
Reducing variance in value betting
There are steps you can take to reduce the variance in value betting, such as placing on lower odds, only placing one trade per game, placing trades close to kick-off, using a proportional staking strategy such as the Kelly Criterion and limiting it to 30% of the Kelly.
Also, one should apply a max stake size. We recommend operating with 1-2% of your overall bankroll. It is possible to set it higher and also to use a higher Kelly percentage if one wants to take more risk and increase the turnover.
Bookmakers limit winning players and how to increase your lifetime value
Whether it being matched betting, arbitrage betting or value betting, the soft books do not like winning players.
To stop players from winning, bookmakers will impose stake sizing limits on them.
Without getting a solid turnover, making money from either option becomes really difficult.
How long it takes varies from bookie to bookie. There are also internal differences at the bookies.
All of this does not mean that it is not possible to extract good value from them first though!
Also, there are steps one can take to make the accounts last longer before they get limited and thus increase the lifetime value of the soft bookmakers.
A topic we have covered in multiple articles, such as:
Article: How to stay under the radar and avoid bookmaker limitations
Article: How bookmakers track your every move and how to get around it.
Article: How bookmakers profile winning players
At Trademate we are currently supporting 100+ soft bookmakers. Playing through all of them should take some time.
Also, because we have so many different bookmakers and also trades to choose from, the number of people who pick the same trade is not particularly high and thus each individual account lasts longer.
We also switch out a couple of bookies every few months to keep things fresh and have added 10 new bookies this year. So our overall value offered is constantly increasing.
Sports trading
Finally, what about sports trading? Traditional trading involves buying and selling assets. Sports trading involves either placing a value bet, an arbitrage or hedging a bet.
Hedging a bet is basically to turn a value bet into an arbitrage bet. The difference between arbing and hedging is that when hedging, the bets are not necessarily placed at the same time.
For example in an arbitrage you place a bet on the home, draw and away within a short period of time, e.g. 1 minute. When hedging you would first place a value bet on e.g. the home team to win.
Then you can turn it into a sure win or a sure loss by taking a bet on both the draw + away team, or an Asian Handicap bet at a later point in time.
Hedging enables you to reduce your risk, but it also reduces the potential profit. We have covered the topic of hedging a bet in this article.
Ready for Part 2?
In the second part of the article series, we will have put some numbers on the different input factors that affect potential earnings and run some simulations.