In sports betting, you have to make sure that your bets (and trades) are of good value to make a profit. If you don’t, you will continue to win bets, but the winnings may be more difficult to achieve.

Let me explain this last statement to you. In fact, I lose more bets than I win, but the prices or odds I bet on make up for the losing plays.

If you bet all season on the NY Yankees (US baseball) OR Arsenal FC (English Premiership), to win every game, you will probably end up with a pretty good hit rate, but you are unlikely to make any money. . The odds will be ‘short’ and you’d better try to predict when these teams might fail, and bet against the outrageous prices offered to opposing teams. These rival teams most likely offer the value, as they are not the most popular betting option.

When we toss a coin, we know that the true probability that it will come up heads or tails is 50% or “even” (1/1).

As an example, we organized a “coin toss” betting event. A neutral party starts tossing the coin. With each subsequent roll there is a definite preference per head in betting. The bookmaker or bookmaker takes it easy, they have already set the odds at 10/11 (-110 US) for any outcome that takes your commission into account. You know that this trend is quite common since bosses tend to be favored in these types of events. However, he decides to balance his books a bit by lowering his heads to 5/6 and increasing the queues to 1/1.

Heads is now priced even lower and does not represent any value. Tails is now priced slightly better, but still represents only the ‘true odds’ or the probability of winning by 1/1 or 50% and is therefore not value.

The event continues and the stakes are still favoring heads. Why? Well, the ‘average bettor’ doesn’t really understand ‘value’, they don’t understand that heads could either be a bad bet or have no value. He likes to bet and since ‘heads’ is winning, he wants to bet on heads.

The bookmaker rebalances its books with a dramatic shortening of the odds of heads to 4/9 and a lengthening to 6/4 (+150 US), in tails.

At this point, the professional gambler would step in and start making cross bets. You know it has a value of 6/4 for an event where the “true odds” of success are 1/1.