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PSA: Don't pursue sports betting as a means of generating income

AgainstAllOdds

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This was a reply that I sent to a private PM. I think it's worth repeating here:

On the average bet, you're expected to lose 5% of the money you bet. That's how the book makes money. That means that you have to have an advantage over that margin in order to squeeze out a positive EV profit.

So you have to hit 52.5% of your bets at even odds just to make money. Sounds easy. It's not.

British sportsbooks have become sophisticated to the point that if you make over $20k, they start banning players, or limit your account. All that tech is now operating the new American sportsbooks.

In my opinion, the game is set up for you to lose. The upside is gone. It's not a skill worth pursuing unless your ultimate goal is to be a quant that creates his own sportsbook.

Bet what you're willing to lose. Consider it enjoyment but don't consider it an investment.

If you don't know if a bet is good or not, look up where the public money is. There's tracking services that you have to pay for in order for it to be accurate. Something like Public Sports Betting & Money Percentages (I've been out of the game for like five years - this is the first one that popped up on Google). If you're on the opposite side of the public, and you're betting for fun, then bet. If you're betting where everyone else is (the hype), then higher chance you lose.

Only bets worth making are where the public is extremely biased (Conor McGregor, American hyped fighters, New York teams, etc.), and knowing that the opposite side is more likely to win. Everything else is not worth it.
 
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Ismail941

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Very interesting what you have described which led me to say this: it is also same case scenario for going to local casino, playing for slot machine and expecting to loose in every time because the odds of winning is very slime chance like hypothetically once in 5 years
 

BizyDad

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@AgainstAllOdds is preaching you can't beat the odds. I never saw this coming...
 

Bobby_italy

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I know 3 guys who became multi-millionaires in a country where the average salary was 200€ per month, selling sport betting tips.

My best friend made 15k in a year doing the same while having literally no clue.

I won't explain their strategy but imo it is a very gray area of "legality", while no one went to jail I think it was kind of an unfair business model, because at the end of the day you can't beat the odds and always having fixed matches is nearly impossible.

This was possible due to them having friends in the right places and putting up a system that made them reach a ton of people.
 
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Nicoknowsbest

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Amen to this @AgainstAllOdds.

British sportsbooks have become sophisticated to the point that if you make over $20k, they start banning players, or limit your account. All that tech is now operating the new American sportsbooks.

It seems like more and more things in our lives are set up for the general population to lose. It is well disguised, but it seems there's a goal of creating dependency where ever possible - think modern slavery.

Now... if the ones using these systems in their favor - betting, casino, etc. - are getting locked out, even the biggest optimist should become a realist. These things are created to ruin you.

Why smoking is banned, but other things are not is beyond me. There was profit in smoking as well, so that cannot be the excuse why certain things are not banned yet.

And if we are talking about banning, the thought "where's my freedom of choice" comes up next. It's an interesting debate.
 

Vigilante

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I am reading a book currently on horse racing gambling. One of the main premises of this book is in the old days you could use the racing form to look for angles and edges that would give you superior information over the general betting public. While that is still true, now your true competitors are sophisticated betting syndicates that are using massive amounts of computer analyzed data to find the edges.
 

Rabby

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People honestly expect gambling to be a source of income? I'm surprised by that I guess. I can see making books, selling information, or running a casino as money makers, sure. But gambling seems to me like just a possibly fun way to blow unneeded money.
 
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Veloce Grey

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I am reading a book currently on horse racing gambling. One of the main premises of this book is in the old days you could use the racing form to look for angles and edges that would give you superior information over the general betting public. While that is still true, now your true competitors are sophisticated betting syndicates that are using massive amounts of computer analyzed data to find the edges.
Correct, and they often have extensive teams of professional analysts on payroll and/or information contractors available to supplement the data as needed.

Anyone in it purely to make money better be able to compete on that level or find a niche too small for such competitors to bother with. The effort and skill required at the higher levels would likely return far more if applied to any number of non gambling businesses.

I was once introduced to a guy who had a particular niche he went solo in, with quite decent financial successes. Of course before they introduced him my friends helpfully advised "he's one of the dullest people you'll ever meet". I'm not sure if he was always dull or 12+ hours a day alone in a room looking at numbers had left him that way, but I do remember that everyone at the table tried to pretend to be doing something else when he appeared in the area. It wouldn't surprise me if he just subsequently snapped and jumped out a window at some point, or he may still be in his betting room greying away.

I still see all sorts of twitter tipsters these days, many conforming to the stereotype from the movie Two For The Money, but I also see more of the lower level market tipsters who sell their daily/weekly wares on a few aggregation sites that track results and take care of the advertising/sales part. This type of seller generally seem happy to make a few $ as a sort of side gig. Personally I've never sold tips and prefer to occasionally mention something I like on twitter and if anyone's mad enough to back it too that's up to them.

Just a note re books-one problem with horse racing books is certain aspects of them can go out of date quite fast with market changes, plus they tend to be very market specific because of the different players, regulations, betting factors, takeout rates etc. They usually don't translate that well from say the US to the UK to Hong Kong to Australia.
 

Rabby

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I was once introduced to a guy who had a particular niche he went solo in, with quite decent financial successes. Of course before they introduced him my friends helpfully advised "he's one of the dullest people you'll ever meet". I'm not sure if he was always dull or 12+ hours a day alone in a room looking at numbers had left him that way, but I do remember that everyone at the table tried to pretend to be doing something else when he appeared in the area. It wouldn't surprise me if he just subsequently snapped and jumped out a window at some point, or he may still be in his betting room greying away.

I love this. This guy is the starting point for some soul-crushing literary fiction that wins a prestigious prize I've never heard of.
 

AgainstAllOdds

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I am reading a book currently on horse racing gambling. One of the main premises of this book is in the old days you could use the racing form to look for angles and edges that would give you superior information over the general betting public. While that is still true, now your true competitors are sophisticated betting syndicates that are using massive amounts of computer analyzed data to find the edges.

Here's a great read if you have the time:


Here's the wikipedia on the same guy. Work $670 million AU when he died: Alan Woods (gambler) - Wikipedia.
 
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Chapas

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Actually lived of sportsbetting for around 6 months around 10 years ago. Why only 6 months? Because it was the most stressful thing ever, and I believe the perspective is way worse these days.

We were 4 friends who moved to Spain in order to live from sportsbetting and poker. It was an amazing 6 months that helped shape my 'entrepreneurial' spirit and showed me that there were other possibilities than to work a 9-5 job in your own country for the rest of your life. So that part I will never regret.

But as many of you mention here, it is almost impossible to beat the bookies in the long-run. Even if you are smarter than them, they will just shut you down.

Living of sportsbetting was like a 24-hour day-job. While you were not working for 24-hours a day, you had to be ready all the time to place a bet.

It is so difficult to find an edge, and it is basically impossible when it comes to the big money markets (EPL, NBA, NFL etc). Therefore, we were also subscribing to picks from 10-15 different niche services. That could be horse-racing, challenger tennis tournaments and even something as exotic as Latvian basketball. We knew that these guys could beat the bookies by a very significant amount (+10-20 %), so initially we thought that if we just follow their picks we will make eaaaasy moneeey. So wrong.

We made money. But it was definitely not easy money. Once we received a pick from one of our services we knew that we had to place it within minutes (even that is sometimes not enough) before it would be slashed like crazy. Especially in the niche markets. So basically we had to be ready at any given time to place a bet. Heck, I even remember us standing in the restroom for 30 minutes in of one of the fanciest nightclubs in Barcelona in order to place bets on Philippine basketball. We even had trouble sleeping normally because picks were coming in at random times in the morning, day or night.

Not enough with the stress, we quickly started to realize that this was not scalable. Soon we started to get limited by the bookies, and some even started to close our accounts.

Being a bookie must seriously be the best fastlane business ever. You dictate all rules and control your own profit margins. If somebody interferes, you just remove that person from doing business with you. I do not know any other industry where you can do that.

Imagine going to a bar a couple of times for their happy-hour offers. Then you go back the third-time and they tell you: 'Sorry mate, you cannot attend our happy-hour anymore. We are losing money on you'. That would be totally out of proportions. Bookies do something similar, but nobody can do anything about it.

Anyways, this was just a little 'rant' and a short story about my 'sportsbetting career'. Became really nostalgic when I saw this thread haha.

Bookies are not all bad though. Just moved to a new country, which means that I have a bunch of new bonus offers from bookies waiting for me. So I will absolutely leverage that. By my calculations it is around $3K USD in free money which I can generate in 1-2 months. Money that I can use to fund the business projects I am starting now.
 

Anda el Diablo

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I have a buddy who made somewhere around $50k one year from sports betting. For some illogical reason, he tried declaring that money to the IRS (in a state where sports gambling is illegal). He was forced to pay all that money back ‍♂️. It doesn’t always pay to be honest.
 

Busch_Jager

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Using matched betting or arbing you can make money with no risk if you are smart about your account. If they see you are doing it they will set your max bet to $0. I made a couple thousand bucks with maybe two hours of work doing matched betting on all the sign up bonuses in my state. A large portion of the professional gamblers make their money on these no risk strategies. It sounds like a scam but look up matched betting or betting arbitrage. I made 5% profit a week in college arbing nfl games using a python script I wrote to scrape odds from different bookmakers.
 
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fated82

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I see sports betting in the same category as forex trading... Its a high risk endeavour if you do not know what you are doing.

There are 3 tiers in the industry. Only 1 of them will make u consistent income legally.

The first tier is being a bookie. If you have huge capital, being a bookie allows you to make the rules and be filthy rich. The problem? its pretty much illegal in every country being an unlicensed bookie.

The second tier is to become a tipster. If you find an edge and provide consistent quality tips, you can sell tips for a monthly fee... Honestly, that is where the real money is for ordinary folks like us...

The last tier are punters. This is the tier where the risk is highest and the reward isn't that great.

So in terms of making money from sports betting, the best route is to be a tipster.

You make monthly residual income doing what you love.
 

Sendery

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As in poker where you may find “prop” or proposition players, I.e. players paid hourly by the house tonrisk their own money and play in the game they are directed to. (Not bigger games than the player can handle) and the hourly rate is pretty high.

In sports it is the same thing, but called proposition bets and they are total points jen yards by Tom Brady. They post a number and you can bet that Tom either makes that’s amount https://betsofa.com/ , or he doesn’t. You lay 110 to win 100. Your prop woman and you collect the 110 you laid and the 100 the house owes you. They have many different types, including the length for of the Star Spangled Banner etc. point per team and per half. Total points for games by both teams, number of field goals and interceptions etc.
 
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