Originally posted on 09/12/2018:

Books employ specialists to handle events such as soccer. Some use a whole team of people to cover 1 sport. However, even a team of specialists can't stay up to date with every team in 1 country, let alone the whole planet. In England alone there are 4 divisions with a total of 92 professional teams. The lower down you go the less money gets wagered on the teams. Consequently there's less money invested by books on someone to stay on top of things at those levels. Odds compilers have to guess what the odds should be on teams they rarely watch and some they've never heard of. All they can do is use league tables and recent form to 'guess' what the prices should be. They don't know when 1 team has a lot of injuries or is saving themselves for the next game against a bitter rival. Beating the odds is 'comparatively' easy. Lines can be off by a lot and a small amount of expert money will move the line a long way. However, books protect themselves by having very low limits and people who frequently bet this level of soccer are constantly subject to having their accounts closed.