How to make money from sports betting if you’re starting from scratch

There are people who have been making a living from betting for 10 years, earning over £250,000 and continuing to make money every month. In this blog post, you’ll see the most common mistakes beginners make – and how to avoid them.

Key Takeways

• You profit from odds, not from predicting match outcomes
• Value betting is the only sustainable approach in the long run
• Parimatch and Martingale increase risk, not profit
• Popular matches rarely offer real value
• Without statistics, you’re playing blind
• Better odds = higher long-term profit
• Shortcuts almost always lead to long-term losses

The odds are everything – forget the game

Many people only bet on outcomes they think will happen. For example, they expect Liverpool to win, so they back Liverpool to win without caring about the odds. They expect over 2.5 goals in a Barcelona match because previous games had five goals, so they place the bet.

But you shouldn’t care at all about what happens in the match; just focus on whether the odds the bookmakers have set are right or wrong, because as you well know, “it’s all math.”

It sounds complicated, but you’ll see that it’s not at all.

Let’s say the probability of rain tomorrow is 80%.

Someone approaches you and offers you €100 if it rains tomorrow, and if it doesn’t rain, you give them €100.

In terms of odds, this is equivalent to 2.00, because you double your stake if you win.

Will you take advantage of this bet?

Our team might not have advised this before, but now 100 out of 100 times we’ll tell you to take it – and even if it doesn’t rain tomorrow, you’ll know you made the right choice, because the odds offered for this event are 2.00, which implies a 50% chance, while the actual probability is 80%.

80% means that if you place this bet 100 times, it will come in 80 times and you’ll win €8,000; 20 times it won’t come in and you’ll lose €2,000.

So is it worth it? The fact is, it might not come in tomorrow, but you shouldn’t worry about that because you’ll come out ahead in the long run.

Otherwise, getting back to the odds, an 80% chance is equal to 1/0.8 = 1.25 odds, and the bookie is offering you a €100 profit and a €100 loss, which we said is 2.00. This is a bet at the wrong odds.

The lesson that almost no one knows when they start is that you shouldn’t care what happens in the game, but whether you’re making good deals – that is, 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 come out ahead in the long run.

Accumulator bets are a trap (and here’s why)

A huge number of beginners only play accumulators because:

1. The potential payout is higher
2. They bet 5-10 euros per slip, and it’s not worth betting on singles
3. The thrill of winning is many times greater than with a single bet

Of course, this is the first thing you shouldn’t do if you’re just starting out, but why?

Because with every added match, your chances of winning drop drastically.

Naturally, one match always “slips through,” and you wonder how that’s possible, but the reason is that with every added match, the chance that one won’t come through gets higher and higher.

Speaking of accumulators, here’s how bookmakers actually make money: a lesson that, honestly, is learned far too late.

Imagine you’re running water through a filter that holds back 5%, leaving 95%.

That filter is the commission, the bookmaker’s margin.

If you add another filter that retains another 5%, it becomes 95% x 95% = 90%, meaning 10% of your water is now gone.

And with 3 filters = 86%.

When placing bets in a parlay, the margin increases, whereas when playing singles, the margin remains 5% on each bet.

Now you understand why the main source of revenue for bookmakers is parlay bettors.

95% of bookmakers’ revenue comes from them.

And if someone tells you they’re winning with parlays, they’re simply not keeping track of their stats and only remembering the wins.

Шампионска лига? Голяма грешка

Another thing that beginners tend to do at first is to bet only on the games shown on TV, naturally, because those are the ones people watch and understand, and besides, betting on Liverpool is way more exciting than betting on some match in Morocco, right?

Everyone loves to bet on what they watch, but if you want to make money from betting, it won’t work if you only look at predictions for matches in the major leagues.

I’ve already mentioned 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 you should change 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 many gamblers love the Martingale strategy… After every loss, they double their bet until they win. For example, you bet 10 euros – you lose, then 20 euros – you lose again, and then 40 euros – you win. So you’ve won 40 euros, but you’ve lost 30 euros, meaning your net profit at the end is always equal to the first bet, in this case 10 euros.

Eventually, you realize that this is similar to chasing losses – that is, emotional betting, increasing your money or bets when you lose.

Both have one thing in common – at some point, you will always, always lose everything. Because no matter how good you are, even if you’re the greatest bettor in the universe, you’ll still have long losing streaks, your bankroll won’t last, and you’ll lose everything.

With an initial €10 bet using the Martingale system and 10 consecutive losing bets, your eleventh bet would have to be €10,000 – not to mention if the streak continues…

Bankroll management: patience is everything

What would you change if you were starting now? Choose your bet size based on the money you have available for betting. For example, if you have €100, place each bet at €5. It doesn’t matter if you lose, if you’re left with €50, or if you’ve increased your bankroll to €200. Until you reach €500, stick to €5 bets –  then increase to €10. Patience is key.

Keep track of your stats – otherwise you’re flying blind

The fifth bad habit you might develop is not knowing what’s going on – you deposit money, make some, bet at another bookmaker or a betting shop, and at some point you ask yourself, “Am I actually winning, or do I just think I am?”

Imagine you’re in the woods and a fire breaks out a little ahead of you. You don’t know about it and keep walking. A little later, you see it and start running to the right, but the fire has already reached that spot.

Now imagine you’re in a helicopter flying over the forest. You’ll see exactly where the fire is, right?

Keeping track of your stats gives you that “zoom out” perspective.

That way, you’ll know if you’re winning or losing.

What percentage of all the money you’ve bet are you winning?

You can filter this to see how you’re performing by league, by market, and so on.

To that end, we remind you again – you must place each bet with the same amount. And don’t draw conclusions based on fewer than 100 bets, because that’s too small a sample size and luck could skew the results; but with a larger sample of 150–200 bets, for example, luck evens out, both good and bad, and you get fair results that truly reflect whether you’re a winner or not. Knowing this will help you eliminate the emotional impact of losing or winning streaks, because they’re just a small part of the game.

Bet with multiple bookmakers

The next thing you might want to change is the bookmakers.

A lot of people only like bet365 and bet exclusively there because it covers every league and every market.

But it turns out that for many leagues, Sky Bet actually 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:

1. You increase your long-term profit by 20%+
2. You slow down account limiting
3. You see many more opportunities

At Betano, for example, they once mixed up the names of the South American teams, and if you placed a bet and lost, you could tell them the name was wrong and they’d void it, meaning they’d refund your money, so you had no chance of losing. People in our Discord group took full advantage of this glitch.

Every bookmaker has different options, bonuses, etc., because to gain market share, they offer different things and different odds for 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, we often look 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

I’ll leave the final words of this post to the founder of Betinum, Stilian Alexandrov:

“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.

Frequently Asked Questions