Identifying value bets is one of the hardest parts of football betting, especially for people new to this industry. If you’d like to know how to pick out the best bets for every football match, this article on How to Identify Value Bets in Football Betting can help.
Understanding value is the key to enjoying long-term success in betting. While this skill may come naturally to an experienced bettor, to a rookie it can be harder to master. Learning when to wager and when to hold back even with odds everybody is convinced will win, can feel like going against the world. But at some point, you must trust your research over their opinion.
The real work here is developing a sense of betting value you can rely on. Doing so is not easy, but there are things you can do. This article teaches you everything you need to know about identifying value bets.
Related: The Pros and Cons of Live Betting in Football.
What To Expect:
- What is a value bet?
- Importance of value bet.
- How to identify value bets in football betting.
- How to calculate value bets in football betting.
- Strategies for value bets in football betting.
What Is A Value Bet?
A value bet is when the odds of an event are greater than the odds the bookmaker is offering.
You calculate the true odds of an event happening, then compare it to the bookie’s odds to see if you can make a positive return on a wager. This approach requires you to know the expected value (EV) and the bookmaker margin.
The EV of any wager is the difference in probability placed by the bettor and the bookmaker. The bookmaker margin is the difference between the true probability of an event happening and the odds set by the betting brand.
Importance Of Value Bet
A majority of sports bettors suffer long-term losses. It is estimated that only 2-3% of all bettors consistently win. While punters lose billions yearly to bookmakers, bookies fill their pockets, whether a match turns out how you predicted.
Bookmakers have been known to add their profit margin (“vig’’ or “overround’’) to proposed odds and most have poor value. And the longer you follow these odds, the sooner your betting accounts will be emptied.
By using value bets, you make Accurate Football Predictions every time you wager, but you will also be exploiting those bookmaker’s odds that are often incorrectly priced. Identifying value will help you place bets with better odds than the actual probability.
Furthermore, as you only wager on overpriced odds, you’ll become profitable in the long term. Similarly, you can use multiple bookmakers, to increase the volume of bets you can place, ensuring you get a bigger profit.
How To Identify Value Bets In Football Betting
Before identifying value bets in football betting, you must know the probability of betting. This is the implied probability, which shows the true chance of a profitable bet. Every probability of betting is between 1% and 100%.
We have listed ways to identify value bets when making a Football prediction.
1. Specialise
Start by specialising in football leagues and tournaments you are already familiar with. After you have mastered identifying value bets using leagues you understand, you can branch out to other leagues and contests in this sport.
2. Understand How Probabilities Work
Understanding probability while identifying value bets is important because betting odds represent the probability of a particular outcome happening. This is called “implied probability” and is calculated as:
- Implied Probability = 1/ decimal odds.
If you are using a coin toss, the implied probability for the odds of 2.10 is:
- Implied Probability = 1/2.101.
- Implied Probability = 47.62%.
The offered odds suggest that the chance of the coin landing on heads is 47.62%. But if you estimate that the probability of heads is 50%. That makes it a value bet because the chances of the coin landing on heads are greater than the probability reflected in the odds on offer.
See– 5 Tips On Winning A Football Prediction Contest.
3. Set Your Odds And Price Up
This exercise will help you enhance your ability to identify value bets. All you need to do is select the upcoming fixtures in the leagues or tournaments you wager on and set what you think the odds for each match should be.
That should be done without looking at the odds of any bookmaker, the odds you set is solely your opinion and no one else’s.
Whatever odds you come up with is called “the uncomfortable compromise.” That is because you are not setting the odds you would like to see the bookie offer or you are setting odds that you would not feel comfortable backing.
So if you’re betting on the Asian Handicap market for the match between Brentford and Arsenal, you’d want to create a handicap that if the bookies set it for this match, you would not want to wager on either side of that handicap. Whether it is Arsenal -1 or Brentford +1, or whatever you feel is a fair enough odds for the given match.
4. Treat Football Matches Like A Betting Market
Watching football to identify value bets that’ll make you good money, makes it easy to see every match as part of a much larger betting market. In a betting market, the outcome of a previous match and the number of casual bettors are solid factors that could influence the odds for an upcoming match in a particular direction based on what they’ve seen in a similar fixture.
So, it helps to think ”Will their influence provide value in the opposite direction? “Will the market overreact?” Sure, this thought process will ruin every passion you once had for simply enjoying football, but as a pro bettor, it can help you identify the best value.
Always keep in mind that it is a betting market, and the pull of public opinion is going to sway the bookmaker’s odds.
5. Review Results
Occasionally reviewing your results after you’ve used value bets, helps you understand what’s working and what’s not in your betting strategy.
It is not every prediction you make that will be accurate, so to rectify this, you can review your assessment of the outcome of matches. You could also analyse how teams in your preferred leagues have played in recent years. One factor to look at is their home-field advantage, what it is worth, how the market values it, and if the market has a long-term bias about them playing in specific locations.
How To Calculate Value Bets In Football Betting
Before finding value bets, you must learn how to calculate it accurately. Punters must use these simple steps to calculate when identifying value bet options.
- Find the bookmaker probability percentage of a bet by dividing 100 by 2.4.
- Next, find the true probability by examining various odds and finding the average.
- Minus the bookmaker probability by the true probability, and divided by the bookmaker probability.
This is how it works:
If Arsenal will play Brentford, 1XBet might give the Gunners odds of 2.9 to win in a 1×2 bet. Divide 100 by 2.9 to get 34.4%. That is what the bookie is giving Arsenal to win.
However, comparing the average odds between betting sites like BetMGM, you might find that the true value of Arsenal winning is 2.1. Use it to calculate the true value, which is 100 divided by 2.1, which is equal to 47.6%.
Finally, subtract 47.6 and 34.4 to get 13.2. Then divide this by the bookmaker’s probability, so 34.4 divided by 13.2, which is 2.6. Due to this, 2.6 is the expected value of the match between Arsenal and Brentford.
See also – How To Develop A Winning Strategy For Football Predictions.
Strategies For Value Bets In Football Betting
Developing an effective value bet strategy requires a lot of pre-match knowledge. This means you must understand statistics and regularly track a team’s performance to find the expected value.
Before you calculate a value bet, apply these strategies:
1. Analyse Team Data
Team data you can analyze include past match scores and more detailed figures that can help your true value calculations. Observe team shots, expected goals, possession, defensive performance and key players. Then compare that data with their opponents. If one team is stronger, they can help you identify the true odds quicker.
2. Examine Market Odds
Examine the market odds for an upcoming match before you work out a value bet. Use a comparison checker to see the difference in odds posted by bookmakers.
You’ll often discover a big discrepancy between bookmaker odds for a match. Therefore, you can see which bookie has the best value without calculating.
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