Here’s how I would learn to bet on sports if I were starting from scratch
For context, I’ve been making a living from betting for 10 years. I’ve earned over £250,000 and continue to make money every month while helping thousands of people do the same.
I made a lot of mistakes along the way, which I’ll save you from with this blog post.
The odds are everything – forget the game
At the beginning, I only bet on events that I thought would happen. For example, I expected Liverpool to win, so I backed a Liverpool win without caring about the odds. I expected over 2.5 goals in a Barcelona match because the previous games had five goals, so I placed the bet.
Now I honestly don’t care at all what will happen in the match. I only care whether the odds offered by the bookmakers are correct or mispriced odds, because, as you know, the cliché is very well: “everything is maths”.
It sounds complicated, but you’ll see now that it really isn’t.
Let’s say the probability of rain tomorrow is 80%.
Someone approaches you and offers you £100 if it rains tomorrow; if it doesn’t, you give them £100.
In odds terms, this is equivalent to 2.00, because you double your stake if you win.
Would you take this bet?
Personally, I might not have before, but now I would take it 100 out of 100 times. Even if it doesn’t rain tomorrow, I’ll know I made the right decision, because the odds being offered are 2.00, which implies a 50% chance, while the real probability is 80%.
80% means that if I place this bet 100 times, it will rain 80 times and I’ll win £8,000. 20 times it won’t rain, and I’ll lose £2,000.
So is it worth it? The fact is, tomorrow it might not rain, but I don’t care, because in the long run I will win.
Going back to odds, an 80% probability equals 1 / 0.8 = 1.25 odds, while the guy is offering you £100 profit and £100 loss, which we said equals 2.00. That’s a bet with mispriced odds.
The lesson I didn’t know when I started is that you shouldn’t care about what happens in the match, but whether you’re making good deals, meaning betting on mispriced odds. Because even if you lose 5–10 bets in a row, by always betting on mispriced odds, you will always, always win in the long run.
Accumulator bets are a trap (and here’s why)
When I started, I only played accumulators, because:
- The potential profit was higher
- I was betting with £5–£10, and it didn’t feel worth betting singles
- The emotion when winning was many times bigger compared to a single
Of course, this is the first thing I would not do if I were starting now. But why?
Because with every added match, your chances of winning drop drastically.
Naturally, I was always missing just one match and wondering how that was possible. The reason is that with every added match, the chance that at least one selection loses becomes higher and higher.
Speaking about accumulators, I’ll show you how bookmakers actually make money – a lesson I understood far too late.
Imagine water flowing through a filter that retains 5% while letting 95% pass.
That filter is the bookmaker’s commission, the margin.
If you add another filter that reduces flow by another 5%, you get 95% × 95% = 90%, meaning 10% of your water is lost.
With three filters, you’re down to 86%.
By adding bets to an accumulator, the margin increases, while by playing singles, the margin stays at 5% per bet.
Now I think you understand why the main donors to bookmakers are accumulator players.
95% of bookmakers’ revenue comes from them.
And if someone tells you they win with accumulators, they simply don’t keep statistics and only remember the wins.
The Champions League? Big mistake
Another thing I used to do at the beginning was bet only on matches shown on TV. Of course – those were the matches I watched, the ones I understood. And having a bet on Liverpool is way more interesting than betting on some match in Morocco, right?
Everyone loves betting on what they watch, but if you want to make money from betting, it won’t happen on the big matches.
I already shared that you need to bet on mispriced odds, not on what you expect to happen.
Well, you’ll hardly find mispriced odds in the Champions League, because everything there is public: line-ups, tactics, strategies, coaching decisions, past events, statistics, and so on. In other words, bookmakers have calculated the probabilities perfectly with their heavy algorithms.
And for your average punter, all that’s left is to drink a beer after losing again.
What I would change if I were starting now is to focus on something the public doesn’t follow as much, like Handball, Volleyball, Football – Second Divisions, or player fouls in the Premier League – lower-profile (props) markets.
But definitely not Champions League goals, Premier League winner, and so on.
Martingale and chasing losses
And how much I loved Martingale… After every loss, I doubled my stake until I won. For example, I bet £10 – lose, then £20 – lose again, then £40 – win. So I’ve won £40 but lost £30, so my net profit is always equal to the first stake, in this case £10.
Later on, I realised this is very similar to chasing losses – emotional betting, increasing stakes when we’re losing.
Both have one thing in common: you always, always lose everything at some point. Because no matter how good you are, even the greatest bettor in the world will have long losing streaks, and your bankroll won’t be enough – you’ll lose it all.
With a first Martingale bet of £10 and 10 consecutive losing bets, your 11th bet needs to be £10,000. And that’s not even counting if the streak continues…
Bankroll management: patience is everything
What would I change if I were starting now? I’d choose my stake based on the money I have for betting. For example, I have £100 and I bet £5 per bet. Regardless of whether I’m losing, whether my bankroll drops to £50 or grows to £200. Until it reaches £500, I keep betting £5. After that, I increased to £10. Patience is key.
Keep track of your stats – otherwise you’re flying blind
The fifth bad habit I had was not knowing what was actually happening. I deposit money, withdraw, bet with another bookmaker, in a betting shop, and at some point I asked myself: am I actually winning, or do I just think I am?
Imagine you’re in a forest and a fire starts a bit ahead of you. You don’t know and you keep walking. A bit later you see it and start running to the right, but the fire has already reached there too.
Now imagine you’re in a helicopter above the forest. You can clearly see where the fire is, right?
That zoomed-out view is what tracking your statistics gives you.
You’ll know whether you’re winning or losing.
What percentage of all staked money are you winning?
Filtering your performance by leagues, by markets, and so on.
For this, again, you need to bet the same amount on every bet. And don’t draw conclusions from fewer than 100 bets – that’s too small a sample, and luck can distort the results. With a larger sample of 150–200 bets, luck evens out, good and bad, and you get fair results that truly reflect whether you’re profitable or not. Knowing this removes emotion from winning or losing streaks, because they’re just a small part of the game.
Bet with multiple bookmakers
The next thing I’d change is the bookmakers.
Before, I only liked bet365 and only bet there, because they have every league and every market.
But I realised that on many leagues, Sky Bet offers better odds.
On the others – William Hill.
And odds are the prices at which we make deals.
If you buy at low prices, you’re getting a bargain, right? In this case, low prices mean high odds.
By betting with multiple bookmakers, you achieve several things:
- You increase your long-term profit by 20%+
- You slow down account limiting
- You see many more opportunities
In Betano, for example, at one point, they had mixed up the names of South American teams. You place a bet, it loses, you message support saying the team name is wrong, and they void the bet, meaning they refund your money. So you had no chance of losing. People in our Discord took great advantage of this bug.
Every bookmaker has different opportunities, bonuses, and so on, because to gain market share, they offer different things and different odds to different target audiences.
If I were starting now with £100, I’d deposit around £30–£35 into Bet365, Betano, and Skybet.
Avoid shortcuts
At the beginning, I often looked for shortcuts.
Casino. Welcome bonuses. Attractive bookmaker offers. Fixed matches. Promises of big profits from tipsters.
All of these are complete rubbish.
You can’t win from the casino. If you take a welcome bonus and win, they’ll limit you, and you won’t be able to clear the wagering and withdraw your money. The more attractive the offer, the more small print it has. Fixed matches are not available online. Promises of big profits or Instagram flexing are scams.
Value betting – the only strategy that works
Honestly, I’ve been in sports betting for over 10 years.
I’ve tried arbitrage, bonus hunting, betting software, and all kinds of other strategies.
And I know, and I’m convinced, which strategy is the best and always works.
That is value betting – betting on mispriced odds.
It’s no coincidence that the owners of Brighton and Brentford in the Premier League became multi-millionaires using it.
I’ve also made a lot of money and continue to do so, but I put my face behind my service, with fully transparent statistics for all bets my team sends on Telegram. And why do we sell tips with subscriptions if we make money from them? Obviously, because we make even more money that way, but also because we help thousands of others earn the equivalent of a monthly salary.
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