In today's article, we will talk about how many professionals there are among bettors, and what steps need to be taken to enter this coveted cohort.
There is a common belief that 97% of bettors lose overall. However, let's try to figure out what this figure actually represents?
According to probability theory (we discussed a similar example in one of our previous articles), about 25% of players using Bookmakers odds and betting on handicap markets can be in the black even after 1,000 bets. The luck factor plays a significant role – 1% remains profitable even after 10,000 bets, even without using analytics or any specific strategy.
However, in our material we will not talk about the lucky ones, but about those players who win thanks to their own knowledge and experience. They have obviously found a way to constantly extract the so-called expected benefit. So how many of these bettors are there in reality?
There are no unique studies on this topic, so we will try to look at this issue through the eyes of leading bookmakers who adjust their own odds taking into account the bets of professional players.
Bookmakers balancing betting volumes
On numerous forums, bettors actively discuss why bookmakers have chosen certain odds for various popular events. Initially, bookmaker experts determine the probability of a certain outcome of an event in advance, and then adjust their odds taking into account a number of factors.
Before an event, odds on it can change many times, and the more popular it is, the higher the probability of their shift in one direction or another. So, if the volume of bets on the victory of one of the teams in a football match is clearly off the charts, the bookmaker will shift (i.e. cut) the odds on the opposite outcome to balance the market. Then, if customers "swallow the bait" and the betting volumes equalize, the odds can return to the original; otherwise, they will continue to fall.
In this case, the bookmaker's actions are quite comparable to the actions of stockbrokers, who determine the price of a certain asset on the market by the degree of interaction between buyers and sellers. The bookmaker, too, can be said to determine the price of the bet, expressing it in his odds, and replacing the interaction of sellers and buyers with the interaction of his clients, who bet on the victory of Team A or Team B.
So, if teams A and B were bet on 1 million dollars each, then the bookmaker will set equal odds of 2.00 for each opponent to win after adjustments (or more precisely, approximately 1.95, taking into account its own margin). If, for example, another 100 thousand were bet on Team A to win after this, the odds will be adjusted accordingly, and will now be 1.86 and 2.05, taking into account the margin. Then they will also change depending on which way the market swings and the volume of bets increases.
Model for market development
Let's build a model of a certain sporting event with equal chances of each team winning, determined by odds of 2.00 (or 1.95, taking into account the bookmaker's margin of 2.5%). Let's further assume that the odds changed 100 times before the event; in each case, players could either bet on one of the teams to win (a draw in the match we have chosen cannot happen by definition - for example, in a volleyball match), or ignore the current odds.
How advised http://1xbetapp.run at the same time, professional players, knowing the true probabilities of the outcome of an event (i.e. 50% chances of one of the teams winning in our model), will place bets only if the bookmaker's odds are clearly inflated; amateurs will simply follow the crowd.