As demonstrated by the experience of many professional gamblers, value betting can yield significant long-term profits—but only when this strategy is applied intelligently.
A Brief Introduction
Typically, bookmakers’ analysts accurately assess the likelihood of outcomes in sports events when setting odds. Moreover, every set of odds includes what’s known as a margin (guaranteed profit), ensuring the bookmaker minimizes the risk of loss. So it’s not surprising that U.S. sports betting industry reported a record revenue for last year.
However, bookmakers sometimes make mistakes and offer odds that exceed the true probability of an event’s outcome. This may happen due to delayed reactions to game developments or other factors.
This is where the value betting strategy comes in — it’s all about identifying these undervalued outcomes with inflated odds.
Finding Undervalued Outcomes
You can either search for value bets manually or use specialized tools. Here’s a brief overview of the manual method:
To effectively identify such bets on your own, you first need to learn how to calculate the true probability of an outcome, excluding the bookmaker’s margin.
There are two key formulas used:
- Calculating the bookmaker’s margin:
(100/Odd1)+(100/Odd2)(100 / Odd1) + (100 / Odd2)(100/Odd1)+(100/Odd2)
where Odd1 and Odd2 are the odds for opposing outcomes. - Determining the “true” odds without the margin:
Adjust the odds by the margin percentage obtained above.
Example of Finding Inflated Odds
Assume we have the following odds from three bookmakers for the outcomes Under 2.5 Goals (U2.5) and Over 2.5 Goals (O2.5):
- Bookmaker 1: U2.5 – 1.67, O2.5 – 2.43
- Bookmaker 2: U2.5 – 1.48, O2.5 – 2.32
- Bookmaker 3: U2.5 – 1.46, O2.5 – 2.59
Using Bookmaker 2 as a trusted reference:
- Margin = (100 / 1.48) + (100 / 2.32) = 110.67%
The margin here is 10.67%. - Real Odds after removing the margin:
U2.5 = 1.48 + 10.67% = 1.638
O2.5 = 2.32 + 10.67% = 2.566
Thus, the most favorable bets are:
U2.5 at Bookmaker 1 (1.67 > 1.638)
O2.5 at Bookmaker 3 (2.59 > 2.566)
As shown above, manually identifying inflated odds is time-consuming and complex. That’s why many bettors rely on specialized services.
Value Bet Scanners
Currently, several value bet scanners are available in the betting community. Betburger stands out as a market leader.
This service allows bettors to quickly access undervalued outcomes for both Pre-match and Live events.
Notably, it scans data from over 400 bookmakers across more than 50 sports, offering a wide array of profitable betting opportunities.
Moreover, BetBurger subscription includes not only value betting tool but also sports arbitrage betting functionality. Arbs betting is also quite a popular and effective system that guarantees profit no matter the final result of a sports event.
Conclusion
Value betting can yield consistent profits over time, a fact supported by numerous experienced bettors.
While it’s possible to manually search for value bets, experts recommend using value bet-finding tools. Scanners like Betburger not only save time but also significantly expand your betting options.