Why can you make money betting on value? What is the secret?
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Zsoltfbo
April 18, 2025
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Professional articles
/This is an excerpt from our book The 12 Iron Laws of Sports Betting, enjoy your reading!
Digital sports betting
How interesting that digitalisation has rewritten the way we work in different professions. Today, the "home office" is as natural as working in a fixed place for a fixed period of time was before. Can you imagine that 20 years ago your employer would have said that you would do part of your work from home, or conversely, if you were the employer, would such a demand have arisen? - Probably hardly.
And sports betting has undergone exactly the same digitalisation. Through the nature of digitalisation, we've come to the point where it's not just about people trying to predict the outcome of matches for fun, for leisure - and like everything, there are many sides to it. In this article, we will show you how sports betting has changed, what makes it possible for someone to become a payer not just for fun, but to become a payer with an associated investment approach, how sportsbooks relate to this and the overall potential of the industry.
1, The natural nature of sports betting, or what it has become.
I'm trying to recall the first memories I have of betting on sports and it's surprisingly difficult. It's been a long time and let's not forget that I've been dealing with digital sports betting on a daily basis for the last 8 years, which is nothing like the old days. And when you spend so much time in an area that is so different from its predecessor, you tend to get locked into a bubble and forget what you are currently observing - which is exactly what is needed for this study.
...Returning, overcoming the difficulties of oblivion...I had to realise that it was a great stroke of luck that sports betting had turned out this way. I don't remember the exact year, but it was somewhere in the early 2000s when I became aware of the existence of this phenomenon. Back then, there were not so many betting opportunities, or even so many matches. With one or two exceptions, you could only bet on sporting events in the major leagues, but not like now, but there were so-called "totos", which I think generated a profit of nearly 100% for the gambling operator. Those of us born in the eighties and nineties will remember it, but younger readers may not, so I'll write it down. So this so-called "toto" consisted of specifically guessing which team would win by how many goals from the already poor match offerings. (This was later varied until we got to what it is now, but at the time it was really that fixed) And if it wasn't enough to have a specific guess on the score of the match, they even varied the combination. It was 'worth' giving up a ticket so that there would be several, preferably three, but preferably more than that, sporting events on it and an exact result for each of them. Mathematically, the chances of anyone winning were very slim, almost impossible. There was perhaps only one occasion when a friend of mine won, which was about a third of his gross monthly wage at the time, and he lost it early...
But other than that, I've only seen failures and I've only tried my luck once or twice, but entirely for fun. Why people were still betting day in and day out is a good question, but after all these years I'd say it was because of the part successes, because it's true that they almost never won, but there was always a ticket that they hit at least one match outcome on, and that kept them in the running. The same can be seen in lottery draws, when someone misses the number drawn but is, say, close to it, many people think they've almost had a lucky draw, when mathematically they had no better chance than if they had played other numbers. The difference between the winning number drawn and the lottery number predicted is nothing more than self-deception, or rather "partial success", just as it was for the bettors of the time (which, incidentally, has not changed spectacularly to this day).
"Old-fashioned" sports betting was hugely profitable for gambling operators, and at the time it was unthinkable that anyone would try to rely on any strategy to make a predictable profit from this activity. I think somewhere around 2007, domestic sports betting started to resemble what it is today. I'm sure it happened much earlier abroad, because I didn't think it was a very important industry at the time and I didn't think it would define my life to such an extent, but I'm sure that the biggest sportsbooks - and Bet365 was the most prominent one at the time - had an interface and a look that has changed in terms of content, but the main features have remained the same. Anyone can see this, just looking at the blogs of the time, where you can find screenshots of the old site, is quite interesting. And now, by 2024, we've gone from a few sportsbooks to hundreds of dominant ones, with different sports news stories changing hands in milliseconds and a level of fragmentation of betting that would have been unthinkable before. The fact that there are now more than 200 betting options on a moderately well-known sporting event has opened up a whole new world of sports betting. And the 200 betting options are not bad when you consider that there are thousands of matches on the market that can be freely combined. This monumental change has been brought about by the digital revolution in sports betting and it's safe to say that this is the key change that has created a realistic demand for income for bettors and it is partly because of these demands that sports bureaus have been forced to take various tough measures against them: If you have found this article interesting so far, I strongly recommend you to read on, as it will also discuss the restrictive behaviour of sports agencies towards their clients, which is aimed at "squeezing" players who are making a serious financial profit. Of course, we do not give up our "skin" so easily, but they will never be able to make us impossible.
2, Counterproductive development
So far, what I've written above is terribly good stuff for us conscious sports bettors. But whether they are really as good for the sportsbooks, or whether they have caused themselves as much trouble as they have benefited, is a question that needs to be answered by looking at the statistics. At a time when sports betting was still in its infancy and only a lottery was available, it is estimated that gambling operators were working with a return on investment of nearly 100%. I have not been able to find any concrete data on this and the contemporary reports do not give a clear picture, but I find it mathematically impossible that, under such conditions, there would have been even one person in this country who could have been a regular payer. Or, if there had been, it would presumably have permeated the public discourse, just as we can still talk about the fact that sports bureaux try to limit the accounts of their players who are beneficiaries of these sites, so they not only pay in, but also claim payments to earn income.
This was unheard of in the past, and it is also the result of digitalisation. Bet365, the sports book, which is ranked number one in Europe, had revenues of £2.81 billion in 2020, according to TheGuardian, and CEO Denise Coates was paid a salary and dividends of nearly half a billion pounds in the same year, according to the newspaper. These are huge sums, but we don't know what the total money wagered by players was (i.e. the amount they regularly put into sports betting), what percentage of that total wealth was in sports betting (presumably the majority, it's very likely), what their revenue would be if they didn't try to filter out players who were a threat to them (i.e. payers), and indeed what percentage of registered users fell into this category.
These sportsbooks also do not provide statistics on what percentage of their players turn into payouts, nor are most of the sites transparent about revenue, especially the ones registered in Asia, which are even more concerned with providing as little information as possible. Bet365 is an exception in this respect, although we can rather track the extent of sports betting, as well as the current popularity of each sport, unfortunately we can't see much more of it. What is likely, however, is that they are working with a success rate of at least 90%, so the players who use the site's services are only depositors at 90%. Opinions are divided on the remaining 10%.
There is a view that names 1-2% of players as successful bettors, although I have seen this in so many places, especially those that are very much not professionally considered to be competent providers, so I have reservations about this data. This is probably just an urban legend that appeared on some foreign site and was taken over by Hungarian sites. I would say 10% is more like 1-2%, so 10% of players fall into the set that is either a net payer or is managed in such a way that there is little or no meaningful profit for the sportsbooks after them, break-even or close to it. This is supported by a number of factors, although as there are no precise statistics, it is in any case an approximate figure.
One factor is the development of a back-end IT system that "tries" to filter out logical, principled bettors.(although there are some very serious flaws that can get experienced sports bettors past the filter) Obviously if we were really talking about a business where 99% of the participants are losing consistently, why would it be necessary to fund major improvements and maintain staff in each country where they are present to monitor and identify those less sympathetic customers? If the financial implications of all these were added up, I am convinced that the cost would be higher than what the 1% perceived player pool represents as an expense to the sports agency.
The other important aspect is that the image that has dominated offices for decades has been overturned. As I mentioned, it would never have occurred to us before that a conscious, well-planned system could be used to turn a net profit from sports offices like this one. A search on the internet will turn up dozens of blogs and forums with thousands and thousands of members, and multiple sources confirming that sportsbooks limit winning bettors. (Not in all cases, there are some exceptions, or if sports analytics are bet on that are not widely bet on by players, and if they meet two or three additional parameters, then the lifespan of "soft" sportsbook accounts (such as Bet365, WilliamHill, Unibet etc., and in Hungary also Tippmix or Vegas) can be extended very well, up to 3-5000-8000€, I'm not going to go into this in detail now because it's the subject of a whole chapter in the rest of the book)
The third argument is that I myself have followed this change and when I joined the conscious sports betting community 7-8 years ago with serious capital investment and started to experience this community, there were already many people, tens of thousands of people in similar shoes as me, I met many people on various internet forums and I have had the pleasure to meet some of them in person since then. The feedback is mostly positive, the people with whom we started to experience this new digital world together, although we all went our separate ways, but we all arrived at the same place, the expected results have been confirmed: I have had countless sportsbook limits, and my fellow author has been able to get to the point where his bets have led to a global reduction in the odds of the sporting events he bets on, or to a temporary withdrawal from the offer. In retrospect, this is a very good memory and a merit that cannot be taken away from a person, no matter what happens, although obviously, if it were not about sports betting, it might even be listed on various investment portals or in some wider domestic media, because it is a Hungarian merit in a way, and we can be justifiably proud of it.
When I was trying hard to get some concrete statistical numbers on the difference between what I thought was 10% and the 1-2% I read in most places, I managed to find a rather interesting relationship, right where I wouldn't have thought. At my former workplace, a young sports student was recruited to one of the gambling operators, partly for IT duties, and as he was very knowledgeable about sports, he had to manually intervene in matches where the automated system could not set the odds correctly, and also had a permanent monitoring role, which specifically consisted of constantly scanning the offerings against two samples and correcting if he detected a discrepancy. It was a very responsible job, but you couldn't make that many mistakes, there were two samples, one was the template, the software that the gambling operator used and the other was the website where the information was displayed, sometimes incorrectly. This young man, then about 25 years old, provided a lot of useful information, taking into account several aspects, which helped to build a much more complex picture of the internal workings, but unfortunately he could not tell us what percentage of players were 'targeted' by them. His reasoning was that this was not shared at his level, and in fact it was perhaps confidential data that only senior managers could see. So in the absence of specifics, but still based on my own experience, I still prefer to rely on an estimate of around 10%, which is a really good rate.
3, The practical reasons
So far, we have summarised the huge reshuffling of gambling operators, the increase in sports betting supply due to digitalisation, and the resulting niche market that is very beneficial for players, providing them not only with an enjoyment factor, but also with interests that are in opposition to the agencies, and with a revenue stream.
Sports betting basically consists of three essential things: firstly, there is a sporting event, secondly, there are betting opportunities and thirdly, odds are assigned to each betting opportunity according to the odds of it happening. These odds decrease as the odds increase - on paper. Of course, odds alone are not always a good starting point, just think of the English championships, or even the many games in which the home team has played where the paper (and the odds) would have suggested a clear win, and yet they have suffered a surprise defeat. In the rest of this book, we will go into more detail about the odds and the model by which they are calculated, but in this description we need to talk about them in general terms, so if you are interested in all the details of the subject, feel free to read 12 sports betting iron laws our book on.
Let the numbers speak for themselves: by replacing the previous three or four bets per match with hundreds, they have achieved a much higher level of interest in the sports betting offer, with people betting who would certainly not have done so before, but with it has come a logistical burden on the betting shops that is simply impossible to keep track of. Sports bureaux should be thought of as a kind of financial institution. There are strict rules governing their internal operation, and the image you see when you open one of these websites is all down to IT systems. Thousands of events, with hundreds of bets on each, change by the second, and most of them are accompanied by live commentary, which is possible because of the sheer number of processes involved. It is, if you like, a labyrinth that is difficult for bookmakers to navigate.
In the past, when digitisation was not so widespread, they had a huge advantage in that people got their information from them.- If something happened that made the outcome of a sporting event more certain, we could find out a lot of it from the bureaus. Nowadays, especially in the push notifications which allow for literal instantaneous exchange of information, this competition has become much more even, even the bureaux are literally racing against time to track the likely progress of matches faster, ahead of competing bureaux and players who are at a disadvantage, who prefer to bet on sporting events, mostly of a lower/medium class, where changes can occur in the minutes before the match starts that can clearly decide the outcome of the match.
In fact, if we talk about profitable sports betting, we have to follow a simple mathematical model. We should aim to obtain, from a large sample, a hit rate that, when coupled with appropriate average odds, results in a net profit. This can only be done by integrating the whole process into a process with built-in checks and balances that self-monitor the actual results in real time and in a customised way.
They warn you if there's a problem, urge you to exercise restraint if you're in the middle of a high hit rate and protect your savings so that you can take the fight against the sportsbooks step by step, with as little risk as possible. In summary, this is what a sensible, professionally sound betting strategy provides. To use an example, it's like building a house and taking care of the foundation, because if it's not right, it won't be a long-term show, that's for sure.
Going back to the numbers, what do you think is the hit rate you need to achieve to become a net payer? - Many people fall into the mistake of overestimating the number of winning bets and impose a condition that cannot be beaten. If you ask the question when you can get a hit rate close to 100%, it is always the betting agencies that become net winners, and if you ask the question how you can get a hit rate around 57%, it is always the professional bettors that become net payers, it is as simple as that. So it makes a difference what we set as a target.
We should not strive for a flawless sports betting activity and for every bet we take to be a winner, because that will never happen. We must set a lower standard, but hold ourselves to it firmly. A hit rate of around 57% (or somewhere in the range 52-58%, depending on the average odds) is quite realistically achievable, if you have confidence in us, you will see it in the FIOS menu when you run your own stats, but without this practical experience, just following formal logic, you can decide that this statement holds up. If you bet with average odds of 1.90-2.22 in your betting activity (assuming you follow our analytics exactly), coupled with a hit rate of around 57% as just mentioned, you will become a net payer.
This requires a larger sample, which is why we have a 60-day money-back guarantee, because if we were to test a shorter distance, variance would intervene. Because we have no control over the exact intervals at which the hit rate changes, there are short cycles where the average shifts and either more losing bets are generated or, conversely, more winning bets are generated. This will be crystal clear in your own statistics - assuming you vote us confidence - and will in fact draw attention to all situations that can arise in sports betting, offering solutions to them. You will see when it is advisable to increase your bets or, on the contrary, to correct and reduce them to some extent. But don't worry, you can always turn to us, we help all our clients, that's why we're here.
And the answer to the question of how the hit rate of around 57% can be achieved lies in digitisation. The privilege that sports offices used to have should be completely forgotten. They do not have access to exactly the same software as they do, which they use to automatically determine the betting offer and odds for each sporting event (if only because they usually either develop their own or rent equipment which they do not share with everyone, but only very narrowly among themselves, but it is interesting because there are several sportsbooks who rent the same software) but the market has matured and there are many custom developments and rented software available that a professional tipster ( value analyst ) can use to create a pattern that if followed and adhered to can result in a net winner for the players.
It's also good that professional bettors don't use the same software as the sportsbooks, because it gives them the opportunity to assess the mistakes they make., whether it's a badly placed odds or a betting opportunity. Sometimes we are 2-3 minutes ahead of the bookmakers, but sometimes it can take up to 15-20 minutes for them to either remove a bet that they have previously misplaced or to reduce the odds/betting opportunities they have previously set. And when I referred in the previous paragraph to the fact that they themselves, through their ambition, create the market niche that ingenious bettors can exploit, that is exactly what I meant.
It's simply impossible to always correctly identify and correct thousands of events that change in real time, even from moment to moment - and it's not a function of technological sophistication, it's simply the way the medium is. All they can do is to try to filter out such conscious players in a semi-automated way, with live personnel, but because their ambition is to attract a far larger crowd than they can control, they are forced to tolerate what I believe to be a 10 per cent share of the profits of the players who are the net beneficiaries of their activities.
You must have wondered what if they put some kind of filter on you and either you won't be able to take advantage of that niche market or they will somehow be able to filter out players who will become potential payers very early on. I have to reassure you that this will not happen, both because of the characteristics of the sports betting industry, which I have detailed above, and because of the very narrow field that separates profitable sports bettors from their unsuccessful counterparts. Just think what would happen if they were so strict with their players that they wrongly identified bettors who were not otherwise "dangerous" to them?
Here we are contrasting about 10% with 90%, so that the activity we are talking about has a variance. What's interesting is that unsuccessful bettors also have winning streaks, and you've probably noticed this in your surroundings. If an automated system were to differentiate between players and players based on what their results are currently showing, then you would lose a lot of bettors who will never become net payers in the long run, because the information that you have access to here, for example, is not available to them and they are not betting accordingly. If there were no longer 10% winners or stagnant bettors versus 90%, it would be a different story, because the smaller the "scissors" the less the bureaus would have to lose, but that is not very likely to happen, especially in the near future.
On the other hand, it should also be remembered that knowledgeable bettors who have such an understanding of how sportsbooks work and who set up a system that offers an answer to all the eventualities will not be scared away by a filter setting. When I look back at the most rewarding stages of my sports betting career, I have to say that the monitoring software and analytical resources outlined above were necessary, but I had to rely on the knowledge I had gained over the years. Obviously, in the world of the internet, anyone can say anything, but unlike many people we put a complete education system on the table, the only one to offer sports analytics services we give a money-back guarantee, and we publish our own bets in full publicity as evidence.
Following the formal logic, anyone can see that unlike most websites, we are not an advertising platform, but a complete service offering, functioning as a genuine service provider. If you are interested in our range of services and you feel that you see a system that you have not seen elsewhere, I strongly recommend that you give it a try, your trust will be returned with maximum dedication and attention.
Thank you for reading this short introduction, if we can help you in any way, please contact us!
Zsolt Lázár and László Hajka, authors of the book The 12 iron laws of sports betting.
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