I would like to share my thoughts from my first 24 hours of using VB. As well, I have a couple of questions.
A bit about me. I have been a successful horse value bettor for about a year. I have three systems which each bring in up to 100 points/months. Obviously there is variance from month to month but the trend is very much positive across all three systems. I am looking to expand into other sports markets for two reasons - 1. To diversity my portfolio and 2. To manage my bookies accounts. It has got to the stage that if my friends or family open an account with some of the well-known UK soft bookies, they spot my betting pattern in about a week and restrict/close the account. There are quite a few bookies which find value on VB which are no use for horse betting (Expekt, betclic, etc). Also, betting on low-value markets carries much less risk for the bookmaker and therefore less likely to get flagged up to their risk management dept. One of my horse systems uses a minimum of 15.00 odds which is hugely profitable but put more than a few pounds on and you get referred to a trader pretty quick. Whereas putting £50 on the favourite in a 1x2 football market is not going to raise many eyebrows.
In order to investigate other sports markets I initially designed my own system. I paper traded it for a while and it works but it is so labour intensive (I’m not a coder) that the time/reward ratio was not worth my while. I then signed up for Trademate Pro’s one week trial. This produced 3% ROI. Now I’ve signed up for ValueBetting to see which system I prefer.
My first impressions are that the Trademate Pro software is much slicker but the number of bookmakers available is less than those available on Valuebetting, which gives VB the edge for me at the moment.
So I sign up to VB yesterday. I have focused entirely on football and tennis as I know nothing about US sports which may or may not be an advantage. Here is a summary of my results so far:
So pretty much spot n in terms of EV.
I have a couple of questions:
It is advised, that in order to limit variance, you should not bet more than once on the same market. But what about different markets within the same event. For example both 1x2 and Asian handicap markets on the same football match - is this something people do, does it have any positive or negative effect on returns?
Using the VB software I managed to arb the AC Milan v Benfica match last night for some risk free profit. Obviously isn’t designed for arbing but I saw the opportunity and went for it. Is there any harm in this?
Are people selective about the markets they bet on? I read on this forum that someone had done well betting on friendly games. For me, the implied probability for betting on friendly game is just not worth it as the coach may be trying a new formation or tactic and not that bothered about whether their team wins or loses. There are some bets this morning on Danish reserve football which I’m reticent about betting on for similar reasons - with players coming back from injury getting a run out etc. I would be interested in hearing people’s thoughts on this?
If people are interested i’ll keep you posted about how I get on with B over the coming weeks.
Tom
thanks very much for all the important information . I am on a week trial on trademate as well . now that I know vb rebel uses only Pinnacle as Sharp bookies to get odds for other bookmakers .
the only difference trademate has is a setting to set the sharp bookies so you can select the sharps with either pinnacle ,sbo etc .
by the way , I am from asia and doing only sbo and ibc .
Hey @thomash. Great to hear that your trying out our service, I hope you’ll like it!
My two cents:
I would only bet once on any given match to reduce variance as you say. It’s enough variance as it is, we don’t need more of it
Can’t see any harm in this.
Personally, I’m not restrictive at all. But that’s just my own strategy. I bet on anything the system tells me to. I trust the math, and I rely on variance to even out. And I trust that the sharp bookmakers generally know more than the softs. So I don’t bother in putting personal preference into the mix, as it might skew results both ways. I just try to roll over as much as my bankroll as possible. Keep the money working for me.
On 3. point. Do you think there is no more risk to limit our accounts, betting on low liquidity games? This games are red flag for them.
I know there is a lot of value there, and trust on the movemente of the sharps, but How can you prevent the bookmaker from limiting you by betting on these types of games?
After the initial 24 hour in which my returns were almost identical to the EV I hit a huge downdraft, going for +£100 to -£300. However, as you can see I have recovered from that to a position that I’m +£300.
As I said before, I’m not new to value betting so I know that the way to deal with variance is to keep your trading volume high. However the downside of this is that I have been restricted with 3 bookmakers in the last few days - Leovegas, Unibet and Novibet. On the plus side I have discovered new bookmakers who don’t do horsebooks, so I have not previously had accounts with them. Gamebookers seems to be goldmine, I seem to be doing really well at getting value on their book. I have also taken @Bjorn advice and changed the options to include all sports in order to increase volume and reduce variance. Baseball has been quite profitable for me in the last couple of days. The fun thing about US sports is that I can put the bets on before I go to bed and in the morning check to see how much I have made while I’ve slept.
I posted a question somewhere else on this forum but no one has replied. The question is - do people bet on in play markets? - I get quite a few in play tennis suggestions and I’m not sure if I should take them or not as the action might change the odds quite quickly - I would appreciate others thoughts on this.
Another question - is there any sort of referral system? My dad is considering signing up, do I get anything for introducing him?
There’s most certainly probably a greater risk on being limited when betting on small markets. It’s just my personal preference to do so as I want to apply a more ‘fire and forget’ approach to my value betting.
