Understanding How Professional Sports Bettors Operate

Posted by Harry Kane on Friday, April 19, 2024

Sports betting remains big business in the UK, which accounts for an impressive 23% of the European market’s total value. Impressively, the value of the sports betting market in the UK peaked above £4.27 billion ($5.40 billion) in 2023, with the vast majority of this being wagered by casual punters.

But what if you want to make the leap from casual sports bettor to professional, you’re aiming to join a much smaller collection of market players. After all, while becoming a professional sports bettor is a dream for most enthusiasts, achieving this objective while continuing to wager responsibly is incredibly challenging. Here’s our guide to professional sports betting and whether it’s a viable option for you!

Explored – The Professional Gambling Mindset

Before we delve into the requisite transition between casual and professional betting, it’s important to explore the mindset of a professional gambler. Ostensibly, professionals treat their wagers and betting activity as investments, which requires them to calculate probability, minimise the risk of loss and analyse mistakes in the pursuit of sustainable gains.

There are myriad similarities between professional betting and investment, while people who practice these disciplines also tend to share several common traits. More specifically, they’re willing to embrace and risk loss in the pursuit of returns, while they also attempt to use logic and reasoned methodology to boost profitability. Here’s a breakdown of the key elements to a professional betting mindset!

• Analytical and Critical Thinking: All professional sports bettors have an analytical way of thinking, both in terms of how they make picks and analyse their individual mistakes. This not only helps you to identify the best value odds and betting strategies, but it also enables you to wager without emotion and based solely on reason. Over time, this will translate into superior results and a much higher rate of return and is capable of benefitting casual bettors too.
• Discipline and Patience: When you wager without emotion, you’re able to operate in a more rational and considered state of mind. This allows for a more disciplined mindset, which makes it easier to adhere to your wider betting strategy, manage your bankroll efficiently and avoid various market pitfalls. Professional bettors must also showcase patience, especially when comparing the market for opportunities that suit your requirements.
• Understanding and Accepting Losses: When betting in an emotional state, you’re more inclined to make ill-informed picks and chase losses. The latter practice can be particularly harmful, so it’s important to accept the inevitability of loss in the realms of sports betting and create a thoughtful strategy that accounts for this. This not only ensures that losses won’t adversely affect your decision making, but it also lets you incorporate average historic losses into your profit calculations.

Understanding Odds and Implied Probability

When you’re able to develop a professional sports bettor’s mindset, you’ll begin to realise that successful wagering isn’t about predicting every outcome correctly or never incurring loss. Instead, it’s built on the premise of minimising loss over time, and of the best ways to achieve this is by identifying value in published odds.

Remember, sportsbooks structure their odds to ensure that they have a competitive advantage or house edge. As a result, odds tend to incorporate a sportsbook commission (often around 5%), while they’re also set using advanced statistical models and historical data. So, you’ll need to adopt a similarly methodological approach to beating the odds, and there are several steps you can take to achieve this objective.

Calculate Implied Probability

Firstly, you’ll need to calculate implied probability values. These can be derived directly from published odds, while they draw indicate just how likely a potential outcome is. By understanding implied probability values, you can simultaneously appraise the most likely outcomes and set an optimal stake amount. There’s also a formula to help you make quick and accurate calculations:

(1/ decimal odds) * 100 = implied probability

To provide some context, let’s look at a practical example. Arsenal are the 1.25 favourites to defeat Wolverhampton Wanderers in their first game of the 2024/25 Premier League season. These odds imply an 80% probability of a win for the Gunners, indicating that they’re a huge betting favourite in the eyes of bookmakers.

Conversely, Wolves are priced at around 14.00 to defeat Arsenal, with these odds implying a 7.14 probability of an away win. The draw can be backed at 7.00, so there’s a 14.28% chance of the match ending tied after 90 minutes. Immediately, you can see an accurate probability of each outcome occurring and plan your betting activity more effectively going forward.

Using Data and Personal Analysis When Comparing Odds

Once you’ve calculated the implied probability values, the next step is to analyse these by measuring them against your own research and data collation. Make no mistake: detailed research is one of the key factors that separate professional from casual bettors, while the former are also informed in terms of the key datasets in any given scenario.

For example, when betting on Arsenal vs Wolves, your first step will be to analyse the respective form of each team. Pay particularly close attention to relevant home and away form data, while also comparing key statistics such as average possession per 90 minutes, xG values and number of balls recovered. You can then begin to build a picture of how the match is likely to pay out and start to determine if the odds are accurate or highlight potential discrepancies.

Another key point of information is injuries and suspension news. For example, let’s say that Arsenal are without key defenders for the visit of Wolves but continue to adopt a high press and defensive line. If the statistics also show that Wolves have scored a disproportionate number of goals on the counterattack, they may have an enhanced chance of winning that may not be reflected in the real-time odds.

Introducing Value and Arbitrage Betting

Once you have analysed the odds and relevant form data, you can begin to make informed betting picks that use real-time prices to your advantage. This can also help to negate the competitive edge held by sportsbooks over punters. It may also lead you adopt broader betting strategies, include value and arbitrage wagering. Here’s a summary of both strategies:

• Value Betting: With value betting, you’ll look to identify instances where the published odds don’t accurately reflect the likely outcomes in a particular game or tournament. In this case, you’ll compare the implied probability values with the type of personal analysis referenced above, using objective resources that will vary depending on the sport in question (such as FBRef.com when wagering on the Premier League). You’ll also compare historical results and head-to-head results, with this strategy involving a great deal of work and preparation.
• Arbitrage Betting: With arbitrage betting, you’ll usually leverage multiple sites and sports betting accounts to identify discrepancies in pricing that may help you to guarantee a profit. Such opportunities are characterised in instances where the combined implied probability of all potential outcomes amount to less than 100% (the example above created a cumulative implied probability of 101.42% and would be unsuitable). You can leverage automated systems and calculations when deploying this strategy, while arbitrage betting usually relies on the principle of generating nominal profits from a high volume of wagers.

As you can see, it’s possible to calculate implied probability values using published odds. You can then measure these values against targeted data analysis to identify the best value betting lines, while there are also professional strategies that enable you make the most of the data that’s available to you.

Targeting Different Bets and Wager Types

While casual bettors tend to have a limited understanding of odds outside of how they impact your returns, this demographic may also use a limited selection of wagers. For example, they may stake their cash almost exclusively on moneylines, which require you to predict the end result of a match and (in some instances) have three potential outcomes to consider.

However, in addition to picking the winner of a match or tournament, there’s a huge range of alternative betting lines that enable you to increase your chances of winning and create additional value in match betting. But what are the alternative wager types most commonly deployed by professional gamblers?

• Handicap Betting: Also known as point spread betting, handicapping requires you to attribute a virtual deficit to a particular team or outcome (typically a moneyline). For example, you may back Arsenal to defeat Wolves with a handicap of –1.5 goals, in order to wager at enhanced odds. However, the Gunners must win by two goals or more for the bet to come in, with this tactic used sparingly and based on advanced data analysis. You can also apply a virtual advantage of a betting underdog (such as +1.5 goals), and in this instance, the team will need to win, draw or avoid defeat by more than one goal.
• Totals (Over/Under) Betting: This is an even money market with two potential outcomes. Here, sportsbooks will set different points, goals or runs totals as individual betting lines, and you’ll have to select one before deciding whether the actual total will be over or under this threshold. This market leverages half points to determine that your pick is either right or wrong, and once again, your selections can be informed simply through the analysis of relevant scoring statistics.
• Accumulators: While professional bettors definitely use accumulators sparingly, this wager type also enables you create value in match betting. Here, you’ll combine anywhere between four and 20 selections in a single wager, with the individual odds multiplied together to create a single, extended price. Your picks will typically include winners from different games. In order to optimise their returns, professionals will often cap the number of selections between four and eight (depending on the competition in question), while they’ll prioritise short price favourites to strike the balance between risk and reward.

Your Professional Betting Strategy – The Key Components

Each of the components we have discussed so far will contribute to the overarching betting strategies adopt by professional gamblers. However, these elements need to be combined into a comprehensive and effective approach, which can seek to either minimise losses or maximise returns over time (depending on your own unique risk profile). Here are two of the universal professional betting strategy components!

Prioritising Bankroll Management and Betting Systems

We’ve already touched on how discipline can contribute to effective bankroll management. You should never wager an amount that you cannot afford to lose when betting online, while it’s important to ensure that your bankroll covers a finite period of time. We’d also recommend using online sportsbook tools to aid the management process, such as flexible and customisable deposit limits.

Another component of bankroll management is bet sizing. Generally speaking, you shouldn’t commit more than 1% or 2% of your bankroll on individual wagers, especially if your core goal is to minimise your exposure to risk. In this case, professionals will use a ‘flat’ betting strategy, where they commit the same stake amount every single time.

However, this fails to take into account odds, implied probability value or the insights derived from your market analysis. So, more ambitious or seasoned bettors may want to use systems that enable them to tailor their stake in real-time. Percentage betting allows you to adjust your stake based on the size of your bankroll and previous results, whereas the ‘Kelly Criterion’ uses a mathematical formula to set the optimal stake amount for each individual wager.

Hedging and Matching Bets

We’ve already spoken about arbitrage betting or ‘arbing’, with this an example of a hedged betting strategy. This is commonplace in the realm of professional sports betting, while it requires you to cover all potential outcomes in a particular match and wager in a way that guarantees at least a nominal profit.

One example of this is ‘matched’ betting. This strategy sees you lay a traditional back bet on one team to win, usually at a designated betting exchange and at the exact same odds. This automatically covers all potential outcomes (including the draw where applicable), while setting the optimal stake amount will secure a profit. You can also use free bet offers at different sportsbooks to maximise your potential returns.

This type of strategic and technical approach is highly effective when executed well, although you should use bet calculators to ensure that your total stake will deliver a return irrespective of the outcome in a match. It also offers an insight into how professional sports bettors operate, while highlighting the steps that casual punters must take if they’re to evolve their wagering habits!