I’ve been breaking even (with some nice swings) for 2 months / 1000 bets now. Sucks but what can I do. Start tweaking the settings to find the “optimal settings” for different sports, odds range, and value? Obviously not, I will just skip the bets that have been getting me banned too early (small leagues), and keep on putting the bets in.
I have been banned from quite a few sites and now mostly bet my bets on PAF, Comeon/Bethard, Novibet (with some betsize limitations) and Coolbet. I finally got my Sportmarket account going but have only managed to make a couple of small bets. After 2 days it looks quite clear that the lines for smaller events move way too fast, and that it’s not worth it to try to place bets on nothing but the biggest games.
Is there a way to get directly to the match on Sportmarket? Now the link just takes me to to their frontpage.
Once I got my monies from Betfair I will add quite a few bookies mentioned here List of Clone Bookies Now I just gotta hope that I don’t go on any kind of a downswing because I don’t have a lot of cash laying around.
I used Pinnacle for a while but after I read that users are actually down there I stopped. I haven’t been able to place that many bets on sportmarket which I think would be ok.
Mostly just stick to the major leagues, place fewer bets but been increasing my betsizes. Also makes it more worth my while.
I don’t want to share my settings because they don’t really matter. It’s not like there is some ultimate setting combo that will lead us all to riches. Just place a lot of bets and the results will come.
Also the Kelly % is very personal. I am basically using my current settings (BR 18k Kelly 30%) to get bets that are of good size to me. I could as well be using BR 10k Kelly 55% or smth. I have a lot of experience with swings in the stock market and with poker so I don’t get fooled by randomness so easily, although it does also get to me.
Well some pointers about settings I do want to make. Please correct if I’m wrong.
The software doesn’t adjust to O/U bias so bets on under have better EV than those of over, on average, so adjust your bet sizes accordingly. I personally don’t even bet overs with EV of 2%
The American version of favourite/underdog bias is to bet too much on big favourite wins, hence making AH bets on the underdogs more favourable. As an example I wanted to clear a bonus on ComeOne but they had already limited my betsizes quite a bit so I just bet on NBA (small margins) underdogs (+10, +15,5 etc) blindly maybe just losing 1-1.5% per bet in EV
I recommend reading some books about randomness. Two come to mind right away: Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb (The language is quite difficult) and The Signal and the Noise by Nate “the 538 guy” Silver.
Value: I use min 2% which gives some room for error for the software and helps keep the variance not-bat-shit-crazy.
Odds: I use 1.1 - 4.0. There is a clear bias towards the higher odds thus the bookmakers make up for it by having the lower odds higher than they ought to be. (Combine this with stupid sounding U5.5 goals for football and you’ve found my favourite bets!) Although the software does account for the favourite/underdog bias Im not sure if bettings on odds higher than that is worth the variance. I might be missing out on some value here, though.
Time to start: As far as I know longer time increases variance, and does NOT change the EV (much). I have the setting quite low now because of bankroll issues as I’ve been placing some very large bets on those aforementioned U5.5 and alike and don’t want to run out of money on some site for too long.
I have been betting and testing basketball odds for long time and what i figured out after a lot of
losses is that most value odds are between 1.30 - 2.80. Bigger odds are just pure luck and they are confirmed on very rare occasions. I would close even more that gab between 1.40 - 2.30.
If you ever check the basketball market you will see that most of odds change rapidly the day that event will begin.
So i am beginner on value betting i changed settings based on my betting knowledge and after a few days these are my results. My starting bankroll is 500$ so i test things and also i do around 40-45 bets daily. I will update weekly my results and i would like to hear your opinions.
