How to search for high value football bets?
What a lot of punters don’t realise is that successful betting takes a lot more than picking as many winning bets as you can. Instead, it’s about finding bets where the odds are in your favour, so that you can cash out when probability turns out to be right. To do this effectively, you will first need to understand the meaning of value. Finding value in the odds is in fact the most efficient way to make money from betting on football. We would even consider it the only way to be profitable in the long run.
Nevertheless, most punters tend to bet on whatever outcome they think is most likely to occur. While this sounds like a logical way to win, it leaves a lot of space for errors. Although you’ll most likely win a lot of your bets by simply picking the most probable outcome every single time, it won’t automatically lead to an overall profit. High value bets do however and that’s why we’ll teach you how to identify high value football bets. Let’s start improving your chances of being profitable in betting on football with our complete guide of value bet tips.
The importance of odds
One of the hardest things to learn in sports betting, is the concept of value. Developing a proper understanding of value isn’t easy and requires both time and effort. When talking about value we need to start with the importance of odds. Like in daily life, value can be either positive or negative. Positive value in football betting exists when the probability of a winning bet is greater than the probability shown in the odds. Or to say it in a different way, wagers become of positive value when they are more likely to win than the odds of the bookmaker suggest. As a consequence, wagers have negative value when they’re less likely to win than the odds as shown by the bookmaker. In order to make money out of your bet, it is your job to find bets with a positive value.
Let’s illustrate this with a short example:
Everybody knows that the toss of a coin has 2 possible outcomes: heads or tails. Each of these outcomes is therefore equally likely. There is a:
- 50% chance of heads.
- 50% chance of tails.
Now, let’s imagine that someone gave you the opportunity to bet on the outcome of a coin toss, at the following odds:
- A £20 wager on heads would pay out £40 if successful.
- A £20 wager on tails would pay out £30 if successful.
We are quite sure you would bet on heads. It’s a clear pick. You have got a 50% chance of winning either way, but the potential payout is a lot higher for heads. Why would you want to win £30 instead of £40?
Beating the bookie
In other words: a bet on heads gives you a positive value. Betting on football, however, is a bit more complicated than the example mentioned above. Unlike the coin toss, we don’t know the exact probability for a given outcome, as they’re a lot of factors that play a role in a football game. We can only try to estimate which team will win, score the first goal, or lead by half time. And this is where successful football betting begins. Successful punters are able to find value bets by estimating the chances of given outcomes better than bookies do.
Example:
In order to illustrate this we would need to have a look at a match between, let’s say, Wolverhampton and Southampton. In this example we will be looking at Wolverhampton’s previous 15 home games and Southampton’s previous 15 away games which lead up to:
- Wolverhampton’s last 15 home game form:
- Won: 7.
- Drawn: 5.
- Lost: 3
- Southampton’s last 15 away game form:
- Won: 3.
- Drawn: 5.
- Lost: 7
This would subsequently lead to the following equation:
- For Wolverhampton’s home price: you would take Wolverhampton’s 7 home wins and add them to Southampton’s 7 away losses = 14.
- For the Draw price: you would take Wolverhampton’s 5 home draws and add them to Southampton’s 5 away draws = 10.
- For Southampton’s away price: you would take Wolverhampton’s 3 home losses and add them to Southampton’s 3 away wins = 6.
For the percentage chance we would divide each team’s individual score by the 30 games played so far:
- For Wolverhampton’s percentage: we divide 14 by 30 = 46.66%.
- For the Draw percentage: we divide 10 by 30 = 33.33%.
- For Southampton’s percentage: we divide 6 by 30 = 20.00%.
For the odds we simply divide 100 by the percentage which leads to:
- Wolverhampton 100/46.66 = 2.14.
- Draw 100/33.33 = 3.03.
- Southampton 100/20.00 = 5.00.
If we would compare this with the odds of the bookmaker we could see the following example:
- Match Odds:
- Wolverhampton: 2.20.
- Draw 3.30.
- Southampton: 3.40.
Comparing your odds with the bookies’ odds:
- Wolverhampton odds are set 2.20 (which equals up to 45.45%), but we believe they should be 2.14 (46.72%). We might just consider betting on them as we believe they are more likely to beat Southampton than the bookmakers do. The difference between our odds and the bookie’s odds in this case are a +1.27% difference.
- Southampton’s odds are suggested at 3.40 (29.41%) while we believe they have a 5.00 (20.00%) chance of winning. We would most likely not bet on Southampton as we believe they stand -9.41% less chance of winning than the bookies suggest.
- The draw is quoted at 3.30 (30.30%), while we believe it only offers a 3.00 (33.33%) chance. We could bet on the draw as we believe there is +3.03% more chance.
Becoming an expert in football betting
Unlike other games of chance, football betting gives specialists a lot more probability to win a wager than those who aren’t aware of the rules, results and form of the team. Let’s not forget that there are a lot of people in this world who really wouldn’t have a clue if AS Roma, Napoli, or Borussia Dortmund are top teams or not. The football fans who are aware of this would definitely know that it’s more likely that Borussia Dortmund wins Arminia Bielefeld than the other way around. By becoming an expert you can recognise high value football bets and earn money in the long run. In order to do so you can decide to focus on a certain niche:
League
Football means tactics and strategies and that’s exactly why Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool, Pep Guardiola’s City and José Mourinho’s Tottenham Hotspur all play a different sort of football. The strategies and tactics as shown on the field should make a difference on your betting style on your screen. The same holds for betting strategies that are based on football leagues. Football in the Premier League is completely different from football as played in the Italian Serie A, for instance, while league football differs a lot from cup football. There is a huge difference between Chelsea and West Ham meeting for a reguler league match than playing each other in the quarter final of the FA Cup. By specialising in a certain league it will be a lot easier to pick out the high value bets.
Team
You can even narrow this down by focussing only on one or a few teams as betting on the bigger clubs can be a lot different than betting on the mid-table teams. The latter will show a lot of inconsistency, leading to volatile odds, and requiring a complete other approach every match they play. In order to lower down the risks you can concentrate on a small selection of teams you follow closely, possibly even a few teams playing in different leagues, if preferred.
Football tipsters
Learning of experienced football tipsters is becoming more and more common as reputable tipsters share their knowledge with other bettors. Although not all of these tips come for free, tipsters do usually share free information to a certain extent which can be very useful for beginning bettors. In order to pick the right football tipster to learn from you’ll need to take into account factors such as the winning percentage, ROI, and mid term/long term profits.