Punters' Paradise - The Thinking Man's Betting Website

Using Other People’s Local Knowledge to Your Benefit

‘Specialize in one or two leagues. Only bet on teams and sports you know something about.‘

During my relatively short betting life, I’ve heard similar recommendations many times. And every time I thought to myself, 'Why should I listen to you and make less money?' Ever since the rise of betting exchanges changed the way we bet, even a trained monkey can make money through betting.

Never seen a snooker match in your life or have the slightest idea about how an ice hockey match looks like? Details such as this one are irrelevant when it comes to profitable betting. The almighty market will form an opinion for you.

The point where the back and lay prices meet is, on average, a very good indicator of the true probability of the event happening. As most first grade economy students could probably point out, this is very similar to stock or futures exchanges, or simply any free economy market where the supply and demand curves meet; the prices available at any given time are 'correct' and 'fair' and they represent the opinions of a large number of people. If they weren’t fair with the information available there and then, they’d already be snapped up by someone who knows better. In a perfect market, one could compare traditional odds compilers to communist economy planners; there is need for neither because their job can be done by the market.

Once we know the fair price, all that remains to do is find bookies that have gone out of line with their prices and punish them. The punishment doesn't have to be in the form of placing arbitrage bets; this can in many instances be like picking pennies in front of a steamroll or there simply isn't enough liquidity. Instead, a well thought-out strategy with correct money management will do and your profits will grow.

I can think of many 'offenders' in the bookmaker ranks who sometimes put up silly prices: Skybet, BWin, InterWetten, Betway, Betsafe, Betgun, Astrabet, Globet, Multibet, Eurobet and many other at various local levels all across the world (this would probably warrant an article of its own, any potential readers from Slovakia who are also Formula or Terno customers might have a clue what I am talking about). It comes as little surprise that some of these bookies are renown for their low stake limits, individual limitations to winning clients or frequent odds changes. The opposite side of the spectrum is represented by the likes of 10Bet, PinnacleSports, PointBet, or BetCRIS, who all come across as firms that know what they are doing, bookmaking-wise.

But how do I exploit other people's knowledge if there isn't any liquidity on the exchanges? A number of popular European sports such as handball, volleyball, baskeball or ice hockey don’t have a very strong tradition in the UK, where most of the exchange liquidity comes from. It is still possible to extract bits and pieces of useful information by looking and comparing the prices of various bookmakers (with overrounds taken into account) and knowing their respective strengths. In theory, it should then pay off to bet with some other bookmaker who has mispriced a certain event.

The Lithuanians are likely to have all basketball priced up correctly as it is their favourite sport. One would hope that the Slovaks know their ice hockey in much the same way Paddy Power should know the Irish leagues and Stan James their horses. SNAI are a bible when it comes to Italian sports, especially football. Any important change in the odds on their website is quickly followed by odds changes elsewhere. The gigantic South East Asian market is excellent for Japanese football; some of the Asian operators attract liquidity that even the largest European operators can only dream of and there is usually a good reason to follow the weight of the Asian money and bet with those bookies who are too slow to catch up with the correct odds. Marathonbet know their trade when it comes to Russian and Ukrainian leagues.

Are you inspired yet? I will not do the entire homework for you, but if you are interested, pick a random obscure league or sport, delve into the links below and hopefully dig out some value. Good luck!

The importance of local knowledge