I didn’t find the right topic to share some findings and improvement ideas. I came across some “phenomenon” that impacts the efficiency of my ROI negatively and betting strategy in general. I would like to share these items with you and feel free to add your comments. My intention is to bring up the improvement opportunities and discuss about it, and hope the developers will consider these ideas.
1. Some bets remain PENDING however the match had finished
In this tennis match Burrage retired for whatever reason and Jodie Anna was promoted as winner. This kind of tennis match is common and usually gets stuck in my statistics by showing “pending”. I can fix it manually and ideally it should be updated automatically.
Edit: found an E-sport match which had a pending status however it was finished the day before. Not sure why it didn’t get updated in my list.
2. Another bookmaker has higher odds
I woke up in the morning and logged all bets that accumulated while I was sleeping. Then I was about to place the bets at the bookmakers and realized this match has an odds of 2.20 at 10Bet which is still a value bet (Value=0.86% and I go for 2.00% and above) but not as high as indicated in the picture. Out of curiosity I checked this match at Bet365 and the odds was 2.25! In my statistics this bet will belong to 10Bet but it should be Bet365 for above mentioned reason.
It would be great to make this field editable so we can change the bookmaker if needed.
It is very typical and life like that we can’t play the highest odds all the time. If the odds start to decrease after a few minutes and we are not available to act, its gone. If we are lucky we can find the same odds at another bookmaker (example #2 above) but I don’t think this could be an option. The odds that is shown by the software and isn’t available at the bookmaker anymore is not always recognized by the software or minutes later which is too late already.
Edit: today morning I saw a new message for the first time that I didn’t see earlier: “odds change” warning with orange background. If this is a new feature then bravo I still find odds which don’t reflect the reality and is lower than the one RB software shows. I remove these odds and don’t place any money on it either since these are not value bets and typically the value of these is negative. Update: I changed strategy and first I place a bet THEN log it. In this way I don’t have to remove bets from the log, however the RB software throws up odds which don’t exist anymore and warning message is missing.
Thank you for reading it through, please let me know what you think.
Another idea that I want to share with the developers. In below picture we can set several settings just like the bankroll:
It would be super useful to have a separate bankroll for each bookmaker we add under “Filters”. We don’t necessarily have the same amount of bankroll at every sportbooks and bankroll varies over time.
For instance I have $300 in 10Bet and $2200 in Bet365 account. For the time being I can’t afford to pump up my 10Bet bankroll to $2200. Bets are calculated based on the given $2200 and a small variation would kill my $300 bankroll entirely. So I manually recalculate and place the bets at 10Bet.
Because variation is different at each bookmaker bankroll will not be the same in long run. That calls the need to add this feature and would make our life easier and safer.
@Gabor - You should set the total bankroll in “current bankroll”. That is, if you have 300 in one account, 2200 in another and 500 in your credit card ready to deposit to any bookmaker, your total available bankroll is 3000.
Why would you use different staking strategies for different bookmakers based on how much funds you have available in that particular bookie?
@Bjorn - Thanks for your input. The question you asked is great and the answer I have triggers another thought which is the profitability at different bookies. Let me show you my statistics based on 2 months. I am currently unemployed so I have plenty of time to catch the bets and place bet on it:
Nr. of bets: 2298
Turnover: CAD 25.265
Yield: 6.9%
I generated a very nice profit in the last 10 weeks at this bookmaker. Considering that I invested a lot of money (CAD 25k) the profit is better then expected (3%). Maybe in the next 10 weeks yield will be moving down closer to the 3%. Will see.
10Bet
Nr. of bets: 696
Turnover: CAD 5.858
Yield: -1.6%
If you check the graph above it is very flat. No indication of rise. I played these value bets at lower bets (with smaller bankroll) in the past 2 weeks because the trend doesn’t tell me any positives. If I had placed the same amount of bets as for Bet365 the loss would have been more (it is currently -46.41 and it would be around -100 to say at least).
As you can see value bet strategy works differently at different bookmakers so I can’t handle them the same way from bankroll perspective. Otherwise my profitability will pay the price.
I understand that historical data shows that 10Bet should produce profit over a period of time. My data set doesn’t indicate this. Maybe my 10Bet bets will be profitable after 10k bets, which is statistically a significant amount. How long it will take to accumulate 10k bets? Well, with current amount of daily bets that I receive it could be 142 weeks (10 weeks 700 bets then in proportion to the quantities it could be 142 weeks) or 3 years. This is a lot and down the road several threats or risks can influence my “career” at 10Bet Account limitation, business strategy/environment change at 10Bet that I can imagine and maybe there’s a couple of more.
So all in all don’t make me wrong I am a patient user and a big fan of statistics and data driven decision-making and I trust you guys so much therefore I am a loyal subscriber. There is no guarantee that short-term yield must follow the historical yield because a lot of factors can influence the outcome and some are beyond our control.
I could be persuaded upon I am wrong and I am more than happy to change my thinking Data talks and statistically it is hard to prove that 10Bet will turn profitable one day.
Thanks for reading this, appreciate your response.
I understand what you mean @Gabor. But in my perspective, I treat all bookmakers the same. If I know that a bookmaker is profitable in the long run (which 10bet certainly is - see below) then I have the same stakes on them as any other bookmaker even if my personal variance says otherwise.
It’s easy to get confirmation biased - “If I had bet micro stakes, I would have lost just a few cents”. Though the previous statement is true, your results will over time get closer to the expected value. This means that if you are micro staking a bookie that you are experiencing downward variance on, you will never reach your true expected value for that bookmaker. That is why I recommend that you have the same staking strategy for your bookmakers. You don’t want to miss the inevitable upswing using smaller stakes than your bankroll allows.
I’m totally on board with this. I also understand and accept your point of view. What I would like to understand is the difference between your measurement data and mine with respect to Bet10. I believe the truth - or reason of my poor result - lies here.
I captured 700 bets within 68 days and you did 30k bets within 90 days. How could it be?
Since I am at home and actively using the software and I could catch 700 bets only. My settings are the following:
If I increased the variance by changing the widest possible tolerance for value, odds and time I would received more bets for sure. But not 10k more?!
The bottom line in my opinion is that if you developers can capture all possible bets of each bookmaker while we users just a small piece of it (700 vs 10-20-30k) a significant difference in the figures can be observed. If this difference persist in a negative way for a year or more that could be a deal-breaker in our profitability and betting career. I also feel that we don’t compare an apple with an apple and the outcome is that your experience with 10Bet is the opposite as mine.
I will continue to log and play 10Bet bets. I just hope that in a few months my figures will turn around. In the meantime I have several questions, appreciate your response in advance:
1.) What is the process of yours of capturing the 30k bets (automatically or manually collected)? What are the settings (min/max value and odds, markets etc.)?
2.) I still believe that having a separate bankroll for each bookmaker is something that you guys can consider. It’s not comfortable to use my credit card as part of my bankroll, financially its difficult to separate it from other costs and to track. If my bankroll changes by let’s say 25% I recalculate it. If Bet365 has a yield of 6.9% whilst Unibet does -3% I would play a safety game and use different stake% and bankroll management. Even if I will never hit the expected true value. I have doubts that we can ever reach it or how long it takes to get there.
Simon was discussing the possibility of different stakes / bookmaker. This doesn’t fall far from my suggestion above. Some feature suggestions
Well thank you for you all to read this through. Appreciate if some other users could share their opinion with us. The more the merrier.
I think those 30k bets are unique bets logged by all users. Also, 700 bets are still very little and the result can go either way. I have seen this so many times.
I don’t understand why whould you use different bankrolls for different bookies. Your profit will be much lower. If your combined bankroll is 1000€ and you have 200€ on bookmaker your max stake is only 4€ instead of 20€. That’s 5 times less profit.
Tip for bankroll calculation: Profit + Starting Bankroll = Current Bankroll
The main reason I don’t want to use the same bankroll for all bookmakers is simple: bankroll control. Let’s say I have a downswing trend for several days. Since I can monitor the data on RB website plus I can see the trend in my own statistics too it’s easy to see if I am in a winning or losing streak.
You are right if the stake is less my profit will be less too. At the same time my loss will be reduced as well. In my example changing the size of my bet is a temporary thing for a short-time only.
My biggest fear is that the ‘expected value’ sounds like a theoretical number that works on paper and we will never reach it. I would be happy to get rid of this thought and phase this out but the bottom line is that I don’t see what is the winning formula and how long it takes to reach the expected value at different bookmakers. Our time is limited at each (soft) bookmaker before they restrict our account. That is why I feel worried that I ever reach the expected value and stay profitable at the same time.
Absolutely. I just don’t wish to recalculate it every day because to be honest bankroll is a snapshot and it’s a dynamic number which changes from hour to hour. It’s more life like to me if I recalculate it in a regular basis or if my loss is significant and the next 50 bets would possibly kill my bankroll.
If this is the case I would be shocked if there were 30k unique bets and I missed out so much. I am interested in the “HOW”
I just wanted tell to you guys about my fear and concern regarding the expected value and how to control our bankroll when we have a significant downswing. I know that we may have a different opinion and it’s great to hear your perspective. That’s the way to improve our technique and knowledge respectively.
I can rephrase my question: If you knew that you have 6 months at a bookmaker before they restrict you and you can’t open another account what would you do differently? 6 months may not enough to reach the desired expected value.
Nope, doesn’t work like that. Your previous results won’t affect your upcoming result. You can’t know in any way if your next 100 bets will be profitable or not. In that short span, the results are almost completely random.
If a betting strategy is profitable you play as high stakes as you can (with Kelly of course), if it’s not, you don’t play at all. There is no middle ground.
It’s not 100% accurate but you will eventually get close to it. It can take 2000 bets or it can 10 000 bets. Expected value is just something to give you an idea of what to expect.
I would try to turnover as much as possible. Unfortunately, we can never know for sure if we will make a profit. After 1000 bets with a 3% value there still is a 20% chance we are at a loss. But I like those odds We don’t need to be profitable on every bookmaker and we shouldn’t expect to be profitable on every bookmaker in the beginning. If you have 10 bookies, all with 1000 bets, on average two of those would be on a loss.
In summary, you can’t use the results from the previous 700 bets to make a prediction for your next 700 bets. And like Bjorn said, if you have a downswing and you lower your stakes you most certainly won’t have an upswing.
If you do the right thing you should be getting closer to CLV over time (that’s what I read in many posts and I disagree with it) and after a downswing you expect a rise that will bounce you back on track (that’s what I agree with). If you take a look at Bjorn’s diagram above about 10Bet you can see how did the diagram behave after a southpaw.
Look at my diagram which underlines my statement above:
There were two major downswings and it last for 4 and 5 days. Downfall is followed by a rise and assuming you don’t change your betting strategy nor your settings (because they are appropriate) you should get out of the hole.
With some statistical knowledge it is possible to control your loss during this period. I will let you know my experience next time.
The article that you showed me (it’s great stuff, thanks!) highlights that closing line value hypothesis might not be completely correct For the time being I’m concerned about this hypothesis, I would reject it.
I am beating the CLV again and again my ROI has been above 100% since the beginning which is great and shows that I am doing the right thing… I just want to maintain this and improve it
That is why my suggestions are improvement opportunities only, the system operates well and I’m profitable. Eventually the goal is to make the platform more user friendly and build in more features which make sense.
In an ideal world we do want to be profitable at every bookmaker Right from the beginning. Of course this is not the case. 10Bet and Unibet are producing negative yield almost from the beginning. Bet365 and SBO are + yields from the beginning. Hope I won’t be limited anytime soon.
I have problems to deposit money at bookmakers because my bank has the liability to deny my transactions and they do. I can’t even use e-wallets because all transactions are denied (have 2 credit cards both refuses my transactions) so I’m trying to fix my ecoPayz account to use interac e-transfer but these guys are difficult to deal with.
I still find odds which don’t reflect the reality and is lower than the one RB software shows. I remove these odds and don’t place any money on it either since these are not value bets and typically the value of these is negative.
Account limitation, business strategy/environment change at 10Bet that I can imagine and maybe there’s a couple of more.
We don’t need to be profitable on every bookmaker and we shouldn’t expect to be profitable on every bookmaker in the beginning. If you have 10 bookies, all with 1000 bets, on average two of those would be on a loss.
