Betting only mma for living

[turbozed]

ROI is Return On Investment as a percentage.

Starting with an initial bankroll of $1,000 and profiting $100 is a 10% return on investment.

There are a lot of smart and talented people in the world. Hugo is one of them. I've seen others doing things similar to what Hugo does with investing and sports betting.

I used to be active on a bitcoin forum where a guy posted a history of his altcoin investments, like how you see people here in this section post plays in their threads. What days he bought a quantity of altcoin, and what days he sold. He had a pretty impressive daytrading ROI. It was higher than 500% - 1000% if I'm remembering right. That type of thing is much more common than people realize. There are a lot of smart and talented people making money in places you wouldn't expect, doing things you wouldn't expect to be profitable.

For most of the bettors that I know, including myself, our definition of ROI isn't return on initial investment, it's return on each dollar invested. Everytime you place a bet at risk, it's an investment. So the difference here is time horizon. Your definition is just the risk of initial bankroll. The other definition is calculating risk of money continuously. This makes more sense to me because if you double your initial investment, it's now part of your bankroll, and you can cash it out whenever you want. If you continue to play, you are now risking your money, which is doubled. Under the "initial bankroll risk" definition, anything above your initial BR is free money and not actually risked.

Under the continuous definition of ROI, 10% for each dollar wagered is very, very good.

[ichiro4thehall]

I'm guessing it's around 12-15% which is about as good as it gets.

I can personally vouch for a 10% ROI over the course of 3 years from a less successful bettor.

I'd guess Hugo's ROI to be 1-2 percent tops - which is very, very, very good.

As you note as well in your last post what people understand by ROI here is confusing things. I agree with you that most gamblers define it as return on each dollar bet.

I personally have never seen, nor believe I will ever see, proof of any longterm gambler with a double digit ROI. Simply playing around with numbers would show that anyone with this longterm ROI would quickly become one of the richest people in the world.

[Sanity Check]

For most of the bettors that I know, including myself, our definition of ROI isn't return on initial investment, it's return on each dollar invested. Everytime you place a bet at risk, it's an investment. So the difference here is time horizon. Your definition is just the risk of initial bankroll. The other definition is calculating risk of money continuously. This makes more sense to me because if you double your initial investment, it's now part of your bankroll, and you can cash it out whenever you want. If you continue to play, you are now risking your money, which is doubled. Under the "initial bankroll risk" definition, anything above your initial BR is free money and not actually risked.

Under the continuous definition of ROI, 10% for each dollar wagered is very, very good.

Hold up. Let me get this straight.

Under your definition, if Valentina Shevchenko fought Liz Carmouche 10 times in a year, with Valentina being a -900 favorite in every fight. And a person max bet that -900 and won 10 times in a row. That would be close to your definition of 10% ROI. And you would consider that to be a very good record with very good results?

Then ichiro4thehall might roll up and say its impossible for a person to max bet Valentina Shevchenko multiple times at -900 to break double digit ROI. And that the best a gambler could hope for was 2% ROI.

Added to that would be all of the time people spend chasing odds, comparison shopping at different books to generate a small edge. Plus hedging and attempts at arbitrage and prop betting. That's a lot of time & effort to achieve an identical result to betting -900 plays on favorites.

I couldn't even imagine calculating my ROI that way. Not with the thousands of plays I make every year. Why not just bottom line to keep things simple?

Simply playing around with numbers would show that anyone with this longterm ROI would quickly become one of the richest people in the world.

You'd hit a max bet bottleneck long before you became a billionaire.

Compounding interest is an amazing and beautiful thing though.

[Sanity Check]

.

The Gambler Who Cracked the Horse-Racing Code

Bill Benter did the impossible: He wrote an algorithm that couldn’t lose at the track. Close to a billion dollars later, he tells his story for the first time.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-03/the-gambler-who-cracked-the-horse-racing-code

Posting this up for those who claim its "impossible" to make $$ gambling who think 2% ROI is "good".

Its a story about a guy who devised a system that won him a billion dollars gambling on horse races in hong kong.



(Still not posting actively on here for awhile, just stepped in for a sec before I forgot about this.)

[Stin]

IMO, betting mma professionally is 100% doable. There's so much MMA available now with UFC, Bellator, DWCS, PFL, Combate, LFA, One etc., and the action is year-round, not just limited to a few months.

10% ROI over long term is definitely possible. 15%-20% might even be possible with optimum bet size and strategy.

Pinnacle gives only ufc, dwcs and Bellator.
That’s it.
If u want to bet other u have to use recreational bookie, so get ready for problems if u win consistent. So u have to learn how to create a lot of accounts and so on. I don’t like this way.

[bjpenn85]

Pinnacle gives only ufc, dwcs and Bellator.
That’s it.
If u want to bet other u have to use recreational bookie, so get ready for problems if u win consistent. So u have to learn how to create a lot of accounts and so on. I don’t like this way.

Thats not a problem. the problem is that pinnacle doesnt offe livebetting, thats where 50% of your revenue will stem from....THAT IS A PROBLEM.

Pinnacle will also have the same issues as the other bookies, when you start to play big sums, they have limits in terms of liquidity, they dont limit you, but they will say...ok you can only bet 1500 dollar on this bet or 2000 dollar, still decent amount of money on one bet. But if youre a pro, and you need to get down more, you run into problems and have to put the rest down on some other clown bookie.

[Stin]

Thats not a problem. the problem is that pinnacle doesnt offe livebetting, thats where 50% of your revenue will stem from....THAT IS A PROBLEM.

Pinnacle will also have the same issues as the other bookies, when you start to play big sums, they have limits in terms of liquidity, they dont limit you, but they will say...ok you can only bet 1500 dollar on this bet or 2000 dollar, still decent amount of money on one bet. But if youre a pro, and you need to get down more, you run into problems and have to put the rest down on some other clown bookie.

For live betting I use offline local clown book. I hope they will going to offer live next year , at least between rounds.
If u bet just before fight starts limits starts from 3000$ on early prelims fights. Good amount. And u can bet multiple times if u want.

[bjpenn85]

For live betting I use offline local clown book. I hope they will going to offer live next year , at least between rounds.
If u bet just before fight starts limits starts from 3000$ on early prelims fights. Good amount. And u can bet multiple times if u want.

I struggle with limitations in regards to livebetting, which bookie do you use for livebetting? What is the name of the clown bookie haha

[Stin]

I struggle with limitations in regards to livebetting, which bookie do you use for livebetting? What is the name of the clown bookie haha

Fonbet.com, it’s Russian book.
What about sbobet? They offer live for ufc. Did u check their limits?

[bjpenn85]

Fonbet.com, it’s Russian book.
What about sbobet? They offer live for ufc. Did u check their limits?

Never heard about these bookies. How is sign up process, and most importantly payout process? Limitations?

Looking at the bookies as we speak

[Stin]

Never heard about these bookies. How is sign up process, and most importantly payout process? Limitations?

Looking at the bookies as we speak

Fonbet is the best rec Russian book , always pay, limits u if u bet small markets or surebets. Or if u won more than 10k$ on big markets.Sbobet is ex professional book, now very low limits prematch like 20usd for ufc. But live bets may be still good limits , never check.
They both have country limitation, both in SBR rating.

where u bet live?

[bjpenn85]

[QUOTE=Stin;28871014]Fonbet is the best rec Russian book , always pay, limits u if u bet small markets or surebets. Or if u won more than 10k$ on big markets.Sbobet is ex professional book, now very low limits prematch like 20usd for ufc. But live bets may be still good limits , never check.
They both have country limitation, both in SBR rating.


Exactly, so no point then.

Multiple eurobookies. Bet365 is the gold standard, they are the best, but they will limit you fast.

[turbozed]

I'd guess Hugo's ROI to be 1-2 percent tops - which is very, very, very good.

As you note as well in your last post what people understand by ROI here is confusing things. I agree with you that most gamblers define it as return on each dollar bet.

I personally have never seen, nor believe I will ever see, proof of any longterm gambler with a double digit ROI. Simply playing around with numbers would show that anyone with this longterm ROI would quickly become one of the richest people in the world.

I would bet -200 that Hugo's ROI is in the double digits over the past 4 years.

I've seen proof of a double digit ROI return over 2.5 years. I have a spreadsheet in front of me which says so.

MMA is tough because you can get huge value on openers and props, but the liquidity is terrible on those. A casual bettor will have a great ROI on these betting $50, $100. However, as bet sizes increase, you need many more books and are limited to playing MLs. Right now, you can easily get down $10k on a UFC main event fight if you have access to Bookmaker, BetOnline, and Pinnacle. That should be good for unit sizes upwards of $1-2k.

The problem is that you can't shop around for the best lines, and that will cut into your ROI by a couple of %. The professional or semi-professional bettors I know of spread their action around multiple accounts and are very on-the-ball about sniping the best lines.

[turbozed]

Hold up. Let me get this straight.

Under your definition, if Valentina Shevchenko fought Liz Carmouche 10 times in a year, with Valentina being a -900 favorite in every fight. And a person max bet that -900 and won 10 times in a row. That would be close to your definition of 10% ROI. And you would consider that to be a very good record with very good results?

Then ichiro4thehall might roll up and say its impossible for a person to max bet Valentina Shevchenko multiple times at -900 to break double digit ROI. And that the best a gambler could hope for was 2% ROI.

Added to that would be all of the time people spend chasing odds, comparison shopping at different books to generate a small edge. Plus hedging and attempts at arbitrage and prop betting. That's a lot of time & effort to achieve an identical result to betting -900 plays on favorites.

I couldn't even imagine calculating my ROI that way. Not with the thousands of plays I make every year. Why not just bottom line to keep things simple?




You'd hit a max bet bottleneck long before you became a billionaire.


Compounding interest is an amazing and beautiful thing though.

10% ROI is very very good considering people have more action down than they think. A guy betting $500 unit sizes can get down a quarter million of action if he has bets on a few fights on every UFC/Bellator/DWCS/etc. card in a year. 10% ROI on a quarter million of action is $25k, or 50 units profited.

If all you do is bet $900 on Valentina 10 times at -900, your ROI will be $100x10 profit / $900x10 wagered or 11.11% ROI. That's 11.11% being 9/9 on Wins. If you just lose twice, and go 7/2, your ROI is now -12%. Just last year, I was on the dog side of -1000 favorites that got cracked. So good luck finding and implementing this gameplan.

Let's say you bet $110 on 100 fights, with -110 juice. You win 55 and lose 45. That's a respectable win rate. The ROI on that will be (55x$100 - 45x110 / 11,000) = 550/11,000 = 5% ROI. In order to get to 10%, you'll need to win over 58% of your bets. 58/42 means that you have to win around 28% more bets than you lose. To keep up that sort of consistency over years is very difficult.

However, if you can do it, you can make a good $100k a year with $2k unit sizes. That's 200-500 bets of various unit sizes per year and a 10% ROI. So to bring it back to the original topic, those are professional MMA bettor levels. I only know a few guys making more than $50k a year doing this. But consistent ROI over time is the important figure. If you can continue to get over 10% ROI, the only thing stopping you from 6 figures profit every year is bet size, bankroll, risk tolerance, and psychological factors.

[Baraldsson]

.

The Gambler Who Cracked the Horse-Racing Code

Bill Benter did the impossible: He wrote an algorithm that couldn’t lose at the track. Close to a billion dollars later, he tells his story for the first time.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-03/the-gambler-who-cracked-the-horse-racing-code

Posting this up for those who claim its "impossible" to make $$ gambling who think 2% ROI is "good".

Its a story about a guy who devised a system that won him a billion dollars gambling on horse races in hong kong.

Excellent article, nice to know the bookies don't always win.

[PaperTrail07]

Is good for sure-the amount of $ and brainpower it took to do it is shocking lol

Excellent article, nice to know the bookies don't always win.

[Baraldsson]

Is good for sure-the amount of $ and brainpower it took to do it is shocking lol

No doubt. And patience too.

[ichiro4thehall]

.

The Gambler Who Cracked the Horse-Racing Code

Bill Benter did the impossible: He wrote an algorithm that couldn’t lose at the track. Close to a billion dollars later, he tells his story for the first time.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-03/the-gambler-who-cracked-the-horse-racing-code

Posting this up for those who claim its "impossible" to make $$ gambling who think 2% ROI is "good".

Its a story about a guy who devised a system that won him a billion dollars gambling on horse races in hong kong.



(Still not posting actively on here for awhile, just stepped in for a sec before I forgot about this.)

This is a puff piece with many factual errors. I don't doubt the guy made a lot of money betting in Hong Kong. Pooled betting is definitely beatable. I wish it was used in more sports than mainly horse racing. A 17% take is pretty hard to beat. I bet his ROI was still single figures.

It is noticeable from the article that he did not beat baseball which you can't bet on in pooled markets. And also, when he came back to the US and bet there, he only bet at tracks with pooled markets.

[Smoothieopath]

Multiple eurobookies. Bet365 is the gold standard, they are the best, but they will limit you fast.

I've been with bet365 for 8 years now. Biggest withdrawal at once was 15k, multiple withdrawals of a few K's here and there. They haven't limited me as of yet. Most of my bets are on hockey though, would that matter? what you are saying is worrying to me, as this is the best bookie for live betting in the world.

Do you know what exactly would cause them to limit me? Is it the fact that I am dropping large amounts per bet, or is it the fact that i would withdraw large amounts accumulated over time?

[turbozed]

I've been with bet365 for 8 years now. Biggest withdrawal at once was 15k, multiple withdrawals of a few K's here and there. They haven't limited me as of yet. Most of my bets are on hockey though, would that matter? what you are saying is worrying to me, as this is the best bookie for live betting in the world.

Do you know what exactly would cause them to limit me? Is it the fact that I am dropping large amounts per bet, or is it the fact that i would withdraw large amounts accumulated over time?

They limit you when they identify you as a winning bettor. They will do this even in the span of a few months and after only winning a few K if they have identified you as sharp (has happened to a few people I've heard about).

If you have been even or have been losing money in the long run, they will not limit you (obviously).

[bjpenn85]

They limit you when they identify you as a winning bettor. They will do this even in the span of a few months and after only winning a few K if they have identified you as sharp (has happened to a few people I've heard about).

If you have been even or have been losing money in the long run, they will not limit you (obviously).

Bet365 limit me after a run of winning 2 month this year, 2 month. Thats it. A friend of me that tailed me was also limited after 1 month.

They limit anyone who wins. Its not a debate. Obviously they will let you play if you loose, why wouldnt they?

When you win like turbozed said, you can start a timer...tick tock, and before u know it there the fakking pathetic email from the risk department.

Game over

[Smoothieopath]

Not to brag or anything, but I haven’t had a losing season with them yet. Granted that 15k was my best one, so maybe that’s just not big enough for them to flag me.

[bjpenn85]

Not to brag or anything, but I haven’t had a losing season with them yet. Granted that 15k was my best one, so maybe that’s just not big enough for them to flag me.

If you played on a bigger market then MMA, which is small, due to larger liquidity, youre able to longer stay out of the limelight, but your day will come, very soon, if youre winning in this tempo.

Although the owners are billioners, they dont alllow a single customer to win more than 4-5K dollars on average.

Killem all.

[ichiro4thehall]

Not to brag or anything, but I haven’t had a losing season with them yet. Granted that 15k was my best one, so maybe that’s just not big enough for them to flag me.

They limit people for winning 3 figures sometimes. If you are winning over a long period at bet365 and have not been limited then it is very likely that other books have a better price on your picks almost always. Do you line shop or just always take bet365 price? If you are winning longterm and not betting the best lines, that shows you are a very good capper of hockey.

[Smoothieopath]

They limit people for winning 3 figures sometimes. If you are winning over a long period at bet365 and have not been limited then it is very likely that other books have a better price on your picks almost always. Do you line shop or just always take bet365 price? If you are winning longterm and not betting the best lines, that shows you are a very good capper of hockey.

Yeah, not shopping for best lines. Probability of something hitting is more important to me than which odds that prop is at.

Thank you for the comments.

[1122]

Sports betting + Swing trading crypto/stocks is the way to go.