80% of profits come from 20% of bets, the rest are either trash or break even bets, or low yield bets with high variance. So the path to riches is keeping meticulous records, identifying the 20% and then having the discipline to bet nothing else. 99% can't do that.
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With a good enough sample size you can tell which bets are better than others. If you make a bet believing you're probably on the right side, it's probably not a very good bet. If you make a bet knowing you're on the right side, that's a good bet. But of course the latter are harder to find and require skill and patience. When I know I'm on the right side I disregard everyone else's opinions because I know they're wrong. And then my bet wins.Comment -
I "know" I was on the right side for a lot of losing bets :\.Comment -
Well of course even when you know it's great value, it's far from certain to win. But when you know a team has a 65% chance to cover the spread for example, that's a great bet. When you think "it's probably better than a 50% chance" then it's a gamble. Also you get bad beats when being on the right side. E.g dog wins for 85% of the match then blows the entire spread.Comment -
I can do even better. I can identify 100% of my 'good' bets and 100% of my 'bad' bets after the game. Too bad I don't know which is which before the game starts...Comment -
Sorry I'm not trying to be a D... (but here goes anyway)
The "identifying the 20%" sounds nice in theory, but that's exactly what betting is. Obviously there are plenty of people out there just making objectively 'bad' bets making crazy parlays and whatever, but any serious bettor is in theory only making bets that they think will win (i.e. the "20%" bets). I guess if your point is to not make the 'dumb' bets like longshot parlays, then I can agree with that but...
Keeping records and looking back on your bets to just subjectively say to yourself "This was a good/bad bet and that's why I won/lost." isn't useful for 2 main reasons.
1. Assuming even you are 'right' about identifying your "20%" bets, how is that predictive for future bets? How do you then use that information to make the next bet?
2. Subjectively identifying your "20%" bets is similar to playing blackjack and standing on 16 and then seeing a face card come out and thinking to yourself, "See! I knew it was a bust card! I am a genius!"Comment -
Most bettors have various confidence levels about their bets, where does that confidence come from? Why do they put 5-10 units on one spread and 1 unit on another, even though they have the same odds and are equally likely to win according to the market? If someone makes a maximum confidence bet, it's probably because they have data that says similar bets tend to win a lot.
Strong beting angles are very much predictive of the future. Similar teams in similar form and similar situations with similar odds and market support yield similar results in the long run, why wouldn't they? You don't analyze every player of each team before you make a bet, you use heuristics.
I'll give you an example. One of my new angles for good favs is currently 45-18 on ML if the price movement is positive or neutral. If the price movement is negative, the winrate drops to 12-15. Call it a sample bias if you want, but I'll go ahead and assume that favs like that are trash if the price movement is negative, because there's a good reason for that price movement. Now the disciplined thing to do would be a no bet in the latter case, a gambling approach would be to bet on the dogs based on the small sample size. Because when favs win 12 out of 27 games they are probably not very good.Comment -
Maybe I just misunderstood your original point, but what you just described is completely different than retroactively identifying the "20%" bets.
I would also argue that varying units due to 'confidence' is a bit of a mathematical fallacy. Either a bet reaches your confidence threshold to become an actual bet or it doesn't, and if your 'system' is truly profitable, all of your bets that meet that threshold should be equally as important to winning in the long run. Your unit should be determined by your bankroll. I understand in reality where bankrolls are limited, varying your bet sizes may actually be a good idea, but only if whatever is determining your confidence level is actually accurate, which again is really difficult to do.
I totally agree the key to winning at sports betting is finding/creating a system that is based off actual data analysis and having the discipline to stick to it. Now, that is obviously easier said than done. Also when I say "system" I don't really consider trend betting to be a true system. Very few trends have any predictive value whatsoever and its actually really really difficult (mathematically/ data analytically speaking) to determine which trends or data in general has predictive value.Comment -
I feel like we got off topic a little bit. I actually do agree with you in principle that discipline is a huge factor in being profitable or unprofitable in sports betting.
My main gripe with your original message is I feel like its implying that people are losing bettors because they aren't sticking to their 'best bets' and betting too many things. In reality the 'best bets' never existed in the first place other than in their head in an "I knew it!" after the fact kind of sense. If they could have identified their "20%" best bets then they would have done that in the first place.Comment -
absolutely so - I will take a return of $6.60 on a $1 bet to guess the roll of a dice. I will lose 83% of those bets in the long run, but will have been on the right side on every bet. Successful gambling 'merely' requires you to always get back (if you win) more than you deserve for every bet you make, the number of losses doesn't matter. And of course bet more if you will get back much more than you deserve (which is probably the OP's point)Comment -
The vast majority of bettors have no clue what their best bets are because probably 90% of them don't keep a spreadsheet with their bets. And even if they do keep a spreadsheet, it's usually too basic to find any patterns. Of course it's a ton of work to keep very detailed records but it pays off in the long run.Comment -
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Liars figure, figures don't lie.Comment -
if you're betting long term, the 'right side' is the only side, regardless of the outcome. I suspect most people on this site are long term bettors, so they should only want to be on the right side. Of course wanting and doing are different things.Comment -
Depending on the site, like if there’s a rewards program or if you’re trying to disguise your sharp bets with mug bets, aren’t the breakeven bets still worth placing?
What about a coin flip (eg. Super Bowl coin flip), which we assume is 50/50? If a book offers you 101, you would bet it for say 1 unit. Heck, people even bet at -110 and -115 on the Super Bowl coin flip. But what if a book offers you 110? wouldn't you want to bet more units on that than a book that offers you 101?
Obviously a book would never offer +odds on a coin flip, but that same principle applies if you identify a no-vig line of 100 and one book is offering 101 while another is offering 110. Or, maybe it's not on the same game, but if there are multiple games that you assess are true toss up, you would want to bet more on the game that is offering you 110 than the game offering you 101.
Unit size should depend on bankroll for sure, but I think you can increase or decrease the number of units depending on the perceived edge. Billy Walters talked about in his book how he used 1% of bankroll as his unit size and how his partner limited him to max 3 units (3%) on any one bet. I think 1% per unit is quite high, I use 0.5% as a unit size so that I have 200 units to bet with. Also, you don't have to go in 1 unit increments, you can increase/decrease by half or even a quarter of a unit.Last edited by EnTaroTuna; 02-10-25, 11:07 AM.Comment
