Anyone dipping into sports betting should understand that the bookmaker is in control of the odds that are set. If you are leaning towards a bit of weekend football betting from the Premier League, La Liga or Serie A for example, the presented odds are what the bookie’s traders have come up with.
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They haven’t happened by chance, either. Serie A odds for example, are based on implied probability, bookmaker margin and risk which are all calculated in a complex melting pot. There’s a massive amount of computing power working on mathematical models to help bookies set their lines.

But no one can really predict the outcome of matches 100% of the time and bookies can often make mistakes with odds. They also often purposely shift odds to try and work in more favour. That can also lead to opportunities for bettors to actually use the bookmakers’ odds against them.

Cracks in the Lines? 

After crunching historical data from a ten-year period, plus throwing in some extra input from live odds, a research team in Japan took bookmakers on directly. In a paper released in 2017, the team stated that they had successfully created a model that exploited bets with mispriced odds.

Most punters like to come up with their own betting strategy. They’ll crunch the stats and try to come up with plans, which essentially try to beat the bookmakers’ mathematical predictions. Is any of that easy? No, but the research team found some cracks in the betting lines.

Changing Odds

Odds for a football match naturally change. They are far from static values and sometimes the bookmakers have to react to public support. For example, if a home win for AC Milan against Napoli has suddenly received a heavy load of interest, then the bookmaker will shift the odds in the market.

It’s common in such a situation, for a bookmaker to then offer longer odds on the Napoli win to reduce their overall risk exposure on the market, because they are suddenly staring in the face of potentially paying out a lot of winning bets on AC Milan.

The improved odds on Napoli in this situation would naturally appeal to more punters to play that option instead, which in turn will help the bookie balance out the ‘overbooked’ AC Milan option.

What this means then, is that the odds for Napoli are no longer the true representation of the initial implied probability that the bookie came up with. It’s this area that the research team wanted to push into, basically trying to use the bookmakers’ odds adjustments against them.

They reported positive results from doing so. In finding the sweet spot in the distance the odds move from a ‘fair odds’ spot that represents a true implied probability, their simulations produced a return of 3.5 per cent profit.

Then, when the model was put into practice by placing real money bets, the team returned almost $1000 from their targeted bets over five months at a success rate of about 8% profit.

The Real World

This was all done through some major computer modelling that the team specifically built on dedicated servers, not the kind of thing the average punter can do. But it was an interesting project nonetheless and it does show, if nothing else, there are ways to model for betting wins.

In this case, there was a degree of success the team had with this strategy by exploiting an albeit very niche area of a bookmaker’s own odds. In terms of time investment and running costs of their software, it naturally limited the overall profit viability of the project.
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The team also happened to get their betting accounts restricted, possibly due to the above-average edge that they were taking against the bookie, which is a huge red flag for operators.

Value Bets

For a slightly more realistic approach, it’s value bets that really are the best way to take on a bookmaker. That’s because it’s pitting your skills of Implied Probability against theirs, and like the research team’s goals, trying to find those prime opportunities.

Value bets work on the assumption that a bookmaker has undervalued a market option. This is a model where your assessment and analysis of stats is what are stacked up against the resulting odds from the banks of traders.

Assess what the data from research is telling you and convert it to odds and wait for an opportunity. This is done by watching the markets, and when the option gets to a position of being better than fair odds (based on your Implied Probability) that’s when you want to make the wager.

The overall takeaway really is that there are ways to crack bookmaker odds. It takes work, planning and research, but it may just be worth it.
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