RebelBetting is giving losing picks or unluckiest run ever?

Member Results
1

Hi all,

For context, I have used RB before and i had a winning month with over 90% ROI, i know how variance works and that you need to place more bets. However, it doesn’t make sense to place more bets if you are not sure if your bets have value anyway. 400 bets in this month, and I am already down 40% of my bankroll!! These are my settings, i haven’t touched them since I started:

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I realize I’m using an aggressive staking strategy with 4% max stake but it is what I saw as a recommendation from a moderator after reading these forums. With value betting, you just want to turnover your bankroll as much as possible as long as there’s value. Still, it’s quite an impressive bad run and there’s no sign of it getting better. Although my CLV “technically” looks quite good, I am -800GBP below EV in only 400 bets…

PS: Certain bookmakers like bet365 and Unibet I can’t use because of restrictions from last time i tried RB

2

Out of curiosity, I simulated 10,000 runs with the numbers that you provided. Namely, if you were to place 403 bets at odds 2.19 and your edge was 5.75%, what would be the probability that after 403 bets your yield would be -5.78%.

The answer is: around 0.04%.

But to be honest, such a high CLV probably suggests that the market was wrong as a whole.

The only other thought I have is I think RebelBetting tends to derive their CLV based on the odds of the closing line in the same direction that you bet on (instead of calculating value based on the opposite selection). So I suppose it’s possible you’re betting on markets that have very high margins (e.g. not uncommon to have 9% margin in eSports) and RebelBetting’s value calculation is wrong.
But because of the %, I think it’s unlikely.

2 Likes
3

Thanks for you response and running the simulation! This is the type of answer I was looking for. Is there a specific calculator that you used to check the results? I am familiar with the Primedope poker variance calculator as I have played over half a million online poker hands. With that knowledge, I kind of applied the same concept to value betting. If i have a losing “true win rate” whether in poker or VB there is no point in having larger sample size as I will just end up losing money long-term.

That being said, I’m very curious and slightly skeptical as to how RebelBetting calculates its value as there is not much transparency on this side (I guess they wouldn’t want to give their exact formula away because that’s how they sell their software but a little bit more info would be nice). Right now we’re all just kind of operating on blind faith. Yes, they show cumulative monthly results but they are not easily accessible and no way to filter results by certain bookmakers and/or markets. For example, I’m restricted by bet365 so most of my volume comes from PaddyPower. But from my results/feelings/knowledge/opinion (this is not facts but it could be), it really does feel like the calculations for Paddy are very wrong, especially for its tennis market. I could just be wrong and my sample size is way too small to draw conclusions, but it would be nice if there could be access to more detailed information within the software.

Anyway, thanks again @Anton_Bendrikov for the response. And if anyone from RebelBetting wants consulting on how they can improve their product I’m open to conversations :slight_smile: Overall, I do really like RebelBetting and I have made money from it when I used it in the past, but in my opinion it could be greatly improved and it has great potential, although it also has its very obvious limitations (depends a lot on the availability of bookies)

4

Here’s a small bit of Python code I did the calculations with:

import random
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt


strategy_ev = 0.0575
yield_to_check = -0.0578
stake = 20
price = 2.19
prob = 1 / price
banks = []
num_runs = 10000
num_bets = 403

for i in range(num_runs):
    random.seed(i * 10)
    bank = []
    # cumulative PL for this run
    pl = 0
    for j in range(num_bets):
        # Individual run
        if random.uniform(0, 1) < (prob + strategy_ev):
            pl += stake * (price - 1)
        else:
            pl -= stake
        bank.append(pl)
    banks.append(bank)
    
yield_target = (stake * num_bets) * yield_to_check
pos_banks = len([bank for bank in banks if bank[-1] >= 0])
pos_banks_with_target_yield = len([bank for bank in banks if bank[-1] >= yield_target])
neg_banks = len([bank for bank in banks if bank[-1] < 0])

print(f"{pos_banks} / {len(banks)} positive banks after {num_bets} bets ({round(pos_banks / len(banks) * 100, 2)}%)")
print(f"{neg_banks} / {len(banks)} negative banks after {num_bets} bets ({round(neg_banks / len(banks) * 100, 2)}%)")
print(f"{pos_banks_with_target_yield} / {len(banks)} positive banks with min yield {yield_target} after {num_bets} bets ({round(pos_banks_with_target_yield / len(banks) * 100, 2)}%)")

plt.axhline(y=0.5, xmin=0.0, xmax=1.0, color='r')
plt.axhline(y=yield_target, xmin=0.0, xmax=1.0, color='b', alpha=0.75)
plt.xlabel("Number of Bets")
plt.ylabel("PL (£)")
print(f"[{num_bets} bets per run; {num_runs} simulations] £{stake} stake per bet @ {price} avg price")
plt.title(f"Strategy simulation with {strategy_ev} edge")
for bank in banks:
    plt.plot(range(len(bank)), bank, alpha=0.2)
plt.show()

And a plot to go with that

simulation

5

Wow, sick sim! Could you run 2 more simulations with 4.14% edge and 1.83% edge and see the probability of my results? These numbers are RebelBetting’s actual yield numbers for November and December respectively which are known to the public. It could just be that RB’s software has inaccurate calculations and that in reality there’s very marginal EV…

6

betting way too early pre kickoff imo, get your average time before kickoff under 1-2hours

7

Assuming the same price and number of bets (403), if your edge was 4.14%, after 403 bets the probability of you having -5.78% yield is ~0.42%.

If your edge is 1.83%, then the probability is ~3.6%.

8

That could be the case, but I have the setting set to 24h and I try to avoid any bets more than 12h from kick-off. I’d assume my actual avg. time before kickoff would be closer to 6h. I have also seen on this forum that many people have their setting up to 48h during the week and it has worked for them. I always do prioritize bets that are closer to kickoff tho to just have as much turnover as possible

9

Damn the results are still pretty shocking… I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and just assume I’m super unlucky hahah. I’ll keep placing bets and see how it goes, maybe once I reach closer to 1000 bets we can run the sim again

10

What sport/markets are you betting on?

11

One important thing to mention is that all of this assumes you’re placing just 1 bet per event. If you’re placing multiple bets on the same event, then the bets are not independent and your sample size of bets is smaller.

12

Yes I’m only placing 1 bet per event. I’m betting on all markets that RB offers with my available bookmakers. Although most of the volume only comes from basketball, tennis, football, in that order. I wish they gave more eSports picks (currently very low volume) as I know there’s a lot of value and money to be made in the eSports market. Maybe there is a software out there that specializes only in esports? But a lot of esports betting is done in crypto bookies and the availability in certain countries and legislation etc. becomes more complicated

13

If you’re betting on basket ,tennis and football and your CLV is 5.75% then that suggests more that either the market as a whole was wrong with the odds or just an unlucky streak.

With such a high CLV, you should be able to easily hedge out your value bets. This will reduce your profitability but would have ensured that you have a consistent profit.

14

Yeah that is why I’d like if RB could release a way to filter and check monthly member results by bookmakers/markets, etc… Maybe they would consider that as too much information given out for free… but whatever, I don’t plan on using the software much longer as I was just kind of experimenting with RB. I also don’t think most RB users use the software more than 1-2 months on average, the bookies are quite quick with their restrictions now so I don’t think their product strategy is focused on client retention. I’d assume most people would just use this as a way to get in and get out quickly, but it doesn’t really make sense if it’s negative EV like in my case :rofl:

Out of curiosity, are you also using RB to value bet? Or do you bet on the side on your own, etc since you seem quite knowledgeable?

15

Yeah to be honest I’m surprised when others on the forum mention they manage to place thousands of bets on Bet365 and make thousands over months without getting limited.

I am trying out RB to see if it genuinely has an edge, I do have other strategies aside from that (and some infrastructure around calculating things like my own CLV).

16

Interesting discussion !
to reflect on this from a much more empirical perspective:
I have had similar runs of negative variance twice (over about a total of 4500 bets). The last negative run was very long as illustrated below. That’s 600+ bets going down the abyss during around 4 months. Now I am catching up, but it can take time especially as you get more and more limited on all the bookies (hence less volume over the months).

So my advice: if you are effraid after 400 bets of negative variance, better to stop now (no offense). It happens and may happen again. BUT it will happen also with positive variance (we just tend to overfocus on the bad things, our brain is programmed like that) → I am personnally still in a very good profit position with RB, so I am sticking to the strategy and I am now climbing back on the upwards trend. Looking at my history, I also realize how lucky I was in the beginning with a skyrocket profit. So all in all, it seems that I am just catching up with my CLV. Therefore I stay confident in the process.

Ah and to limit variance, I would recommend lower your max stake: 4% seems very high to me. 1.5 to 2 % seems more reasonable if you want to limit such episodes of variance.
Looking at streak probabilities: it seems that if you have a serie of 1000 bets with around 50% chance of winning per bet (odd of 2), the likelihood to have a streak of 10 losses is about 38.5% as per the second screenshot (I trust the internet to tell the truth on that lol). So in a catastrophy scenario, those 10 losses would occur on bets with max stake size of 4% → you just blowed up close to half your bankroll in 10 bets. But indeed, it could also go the other way around and you make +40%. More risk = more variance, but possibly bigger wins (losses) in a shorter period.

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17

What moderator recommended you to use 4% bets? That’s pretty horrible advice.

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Bad first month. With 3.5% minimum value percentage and minimum odds at 1.60 that are some bad numbers.

19

What bookmakers are you betting on and which sports markets out of curiosity?

20

Unibet,888,betano and Evobet. For sports markets i go for tennis basketbal hockey rugby and american football.