What follows is not a guide to getting rich quickly through betting so I'm sorry to disappoint you. However if you genuinely think that's even remotely possible then maybe it's the perfect guide for you to be reading. It's aimed at the recreational punters and those people who may be thinking of dipping their toes into the murky waters of betting. In it I'll use relatable real life examples and I've tried to keep the mathematics as simple as possible. To start I'll use quite basic language but the further along you get I'll assume you're understanding the basic logic and principles being used and aren't skipping sections so forgive me for many of you who'll already have at the very least a rudimentary understanding of the basics of betting.
Oh and as a warning as well as the quite basic language some of the language may be somewhat rude so if you're easily offended maybe stop reading now.
I don't make any promises. You don't owe me anything for the information contained other than your time for reading this guide and all I ask is that you keep an open mind.
If it's of use to you then it's one good bet you can make that it will be useful to someone else you know too so pass it on.
It's not a definitive guide by any stretch of the imagination and barely scratches the surface as an opener but as Rod Stewart famously sang “I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger.”
Section one: Avoiding long odds accumulators
An accumulator bet is two or more legs combined to make a larger bet. A leg in this instance is a football match and if you don't know what a bet is then why are you reading this guide exactly?
For those of you who are regular recreational punters, the next time you go to place a ten team accumulator, just stop for a second to really consider the mathematics of it winning come full time. Here at this earliest of stages I'm not even referring to the total combined odds or the probability of the outcome. Take a little walk with me through the numbers…
You've 10 games involving a minimum of 220 players with which if each team made all 5 substitutions available to them would bump the numbers up to 320 players. If your ten picks are in league's with VAR (video assistant refereeing) you've got the referee, 2 assistant referees, 4th official, VAR, assistant VAR and technical expert so that's another 70 people that can have a huge influence on every stage of each leg of your bet. I'm not done yet though. Add in 20 coaches / managers and however many coaching staff they have in turn. I've not even mentioned the potential impact several thousand people in the stands might have in creating a toxic and intimidating atmosphere for the players on the pitch. Forgetting about people altogether let us also not forget you generally have a perceived home advantage, the weather, time of kick off, the point in the season when the games are played and whether a result could impact relegation, European places, are the teams coming off a break, has one side played in Europe on a Thursday night. A player could get sent off, hit the post, a star striker could hobble off injured… you get the picture.
Now go back to your accumulator you're about to place. For you to win, every single one of those people involved in those ten games has to have everything perfectly aligned for your outcome to come to fruition. Accumulators, especially ones of those sizes are frankly like herding cats or just getting your children to actually listen to you and do as they are told. That is to say - nearly sodding impossible, especially if your little people are like mine. Even if you did get all those people pointing in the right direction for your bet to come in, remember they need to do it for the entire duration of the game and with the advent of VAR it means the traditional 90 minutes played with a couple of minutes additional time thrown in at the end could now be more like 105. I mean you're definitely swearing if only one leg lets you down on your accumulator. Really and truthfully you should be bloody amazed with all those people involved if your bet got anywhere near close.
A 25/1 accumulator carries a 3.84% probability of winning. Or to flip that on its head - it has a 96.16% probability of losing.
If probability is too technical a definition in this context then substitute it for chance. Probability however is a more defined mathematical principle formed on statistics on the likelihood of an outcome coming to fruition i.e. in this context of your bet winning.
50/1 = 1.96% probability of winning - 98.04% probability of losing.
100/1 = 0.99% probability of winning - 99.01% probability of losing.
If your 100/1 accumulator was a horse it would have 3 legs going over jumps with blinkers on with no eye holes cut out to see where it's going. There's always a chance it could win but be honest with yourself now, if you saw that horse up close and personal, would you stake your house or your life on it winning? No, you wouldn't even stick a £1 on it. Most of your accumulators are that horse and when the Tour de France starts in July you'll see examples of them during every advert break from some random animal charity trying to save them. Here I'm merely trying to save your hard earned money by not even laying the bet in the first place.
I'm going to give you an example using real data from last season noting this is being written in the summer of 2024. If you're reading it in 2028 then don't be a smart arse, it won't suit you.
If you took the Premier League final table for the season 2022/23 as a starting point and you looked at the sides who finished at the top. Then you decided to do an accumulator based only on the top four for the following season… but maybe factored in that Newcastle finishing fourth wasn't going to happen two seasons on the trot and kicked them by the wayside, it would leave you with Manchester City, Arsenal, Manchester United and Liverpool.
How many times do you think your fourfold accumulator would win over the course of the following season?
Before you come up with an answer I'll be fair and point out there's 38 rounds of games in a season and of course you can't bet on all four teams to win every week because at some point two of those teams will face off against each other and there of course can only be the one winner in a game, so that leaves a total of 26 rounds where you could place your accumulator. So pick a number between 0 and 26.
Let's face it it's not a bad example to use because the large majority of people who know even just a little about football will know the team names here and probably know well enough that they tend to win a lot and for the average recreational punter, in their heads it probably makes a lot of sense that you'd put those teams into your accumulator.
There's an awful lot of people who don't use data, they bet merely by team names they recognise and here we have four of the five biggest based on final league standings from the previous season. OK do you have your predictions ready for how many times your fourfold accumulator would have hit? You do, great.
Well the answer is 4. Yes 4 times out of 26 or 15.38% or to look at it the more important way in this example that's 22 times it would have lost or 84.62%.
The reality is probably worse though because most recreational punters having put those four teams into an accumulator would probably have added a few more legs in as well and we've already gone through probability and in turn how many people you need not to get sent off, score an own goal et al for you to win your bet. This was just four of the best teams in England who won the most games the previous Premier League season and it would have only won four times the following season.
I was actually surprised at that figure because half way through checking it I'd started to wonder if it had even landed once.
Say you bet a £1 on each round your outlay would of course be £1 * 26 to give you £26.
We know that £1 * 22 is £22 and £26 - £22 = £4 so we need the four rounds that come in to cover the £22 you'd have lost.
Well thankfully given how poor Manchester United were at points last season, when they won on each of the four winning rounds it was their odds which bumped up the returns. Including the stake of £1 the returns would have been as follows;
Round 22 £5.82
Round 24 £6.59
Round 34 £7.61
Round 38 £3.51
You'd not have gotten those prices on United when they finished top four the previous season by the way so not only is it not a common occurrence as a winning bet, on an average season you're more likely to see £3.51 than you ever are £7.61. Don't think either that it was a poor United team that meant it didn't win each round. All four teams contributed at numerous points seeing the bet lose and some rounds more than one.
Now I appreciate not all bookmakers offer the same odds but that's based on what I had to work with post season. First thing to point out maybe is it took until Round 22 of the Premier League season for the bet to win just once. Discounting where two sides played each other meaning the accumulator couldn't be bet, that's the 16th time you could have placed the bet before seeing it win first time around and how many recreational punters would have carried on until that point? Worryingly too fucking many is the answer especially if those names were more than likely part of larger accumulators. Sometimes you just can't see what's staring at you in the face.
Anyways back to our four winning rounds above. They totalled £23.53 which isn't bad for 4 wins but let's not forget we've had £1 on each round meaning in this example we'd finish £2.47 out of pocket. I very much doubt the biggest win of £7.61 would have had us jumping for joy by Round 34 and Round 38 would have had most swearing either because it was typical it won in the last week and we'd stopped earlier or the fact it was at least £2 less value than the other 3 times it would have won during last season.
I'm not saying there aren't examples of punters winning huge accumulators, of course there are but if you're betting online don't be surprised if your account is suddenly mysteriously restricted post win and you're left having to provide everything from your passport, DVLA licence, dogs paw prints and more to get that money into your bank account. If they do allow your account to remain open you're going to be allowed to bet pennies.
Maybe you like a bit of jeopardy and it adds to the flavour of the weekend adventure. If you're betting just a £1 then in most cases that's money you can afford to lose. However if you don't like the jeopardy and you get annoyed at losing, especially when it's a team you don't support or maybe even loathe who let's you down, then consider doing something else with the £26 instead. Give it to a homeless person and see the joy it gives them and the warm fleeting buzz it brings inside you. OK technically you're now £2.47 out of pocket but the other £23.53 isn't now sat with a bookmaker and you've done something nice.
Section two: Why the Premier League isn't the best in the world - For betting on at least
One of the biggest, if not the very biggest markets in football betting is the English Premier League. With every operator (bookmaker) jostling for a market share in a crowded pool, finding value bets is pretty much a non-starter. If you want to bet on football, bet on a league which isn't so tightly priced and where odds compilers don't spend the same amount of time researching before a game and therefore odds on offer are far better for the punter.
As I did with the section on accumulators, I've provided an example from the 2023/24 season which can also link in turn to accumulator bets and your general selections.
I've taken current champions Manchester City as a starting point given they are the most successful side in the competition currently. For recreational punters if you assumed you'd make money betting on the champions every week, then you'd be - well wrong.
City like all other clubs played a total of 38 games, 19 home and 19 away. Using the £1 bet example betting on City every week would see your outlay in this instance be £38.
During the season City won 28 of those 38 games which means if you'd bet a single on City to win each you'd have won 73.68% of your bets or just under 3 in every 4 games played. Anyone new to betting would assume that would turn a profit but that would have made an ass out of u and me.
The 19 away games would have returned a profit of … £0.27. Thats a 1.42% return on your investment. However at home your £19 would have seen returns of £16.61, a loss of £2.39. So betting singles on the country's best side even with a 73.68% win rate isn't profitable. The reason of course is there's no value. Take the last game of the season against West Ham United. Even with the potential jeopardy that a slip up could hand rivals Arsenal the title, City still went off with a starting price of 1.07. I'll give you some more examples from the season for added context; Against Luton 1.08, Burnley 1.1, Sheffield United 1.07, Bournemouth 1.09. In fact the best price at home all season came in the opening game against Newcastle at 1.81. Next was Liverpool at 1.68 a game they drew. Away from home they went off at 2.47 against Arsenal which they lost and 2.06 against Liverpool which they drew. Had they won both you'd have been in profit overall at £2.14 or 5.63% but they didn't get the results and in this example you're once more out of pocket.
For those of you who are genuinely new to betting and don't understand decimal odds in the example used of betting £1, just add a £ sign in front of the examples given above for the return if your bet wins. So £1 on Manchester City at 1.08 would return you £1.08 in total.
Going back to the comment about accumulators, if you're putting City at home into your accumulator, whilst you'd have seen 14 legs win over the course of the season you'd have had them let you down on 5 occasions and the addition of City isn't adding any real value. I'm an old school punter in that I bet in fractions. However here I'm using decimals as it provides an easier example of how to train your betting brain when looking at what you're about to bet on.
Let's go back to the Manchester City v West Ham game as an example. If you were to add it into your accumulator then it's not going to be the worst move you make in your betting career but neither is it the wisest. At one stage the score was 1-1 and Sir Alex Ferguson knows that even West Ham are capable of sending the title elsewhere on the last day of the season. Chances are City would offer the worst starting price of any leg on your accumulator on most weeks as they start clear favourites in the game to win. We'll assume they'll win for the purposes of this example but remember it's not guaranteed so take your £1 initial stake, the decimal odds of City at 1.07 and assume that's actually your new starting stake at £1.07. Is it really worth putting into your accumulator just to try bump it up? In my opinion probably not, especially as we've seen before you're more likely tempted to add Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United in as well and OK in this round that would have paid off but in the accumulator section we've seen 22 rounds where it would have resulted in a losing bet.
My advice would be never to try bump up your accumulator with skinny prices but if you're going to do it remember you don't have to add just one side to win. If you're determined to ignore advice and bet on the Premier League because it's the league you know most about and you're happy with skinny prices then take Tottenham as an example at home of something to add as your lowest price leg. Not to win, but for either side to win. In their 19 home games they won 13 and lost 6 so a 1 or 2 bet (simply meaning you've bet either team to win) came in 100% of the time across the season. The season before it was 12 wins and 6 losses so would have won 94.73% of the time. That's 97.37% for a leg across the two seasons and yes whilst playing against the likes of Sheffield United it's going to be a skinny price in the same way City to beat a Luton would be, but against most sides it should be around a price of 1.3 so your starting between value with a 97.37% success rate over the past two seasons would see your initial stake value rise to £1.30 if that was the smallest in your accumulator. If you place a 10/1 accumulator with a theoretical stake of £1.30 compared to £1.07, if it wins you're looking at an additional £2.30. Of course you still need everything else to go into your favour and as we've already ascertained betting on accumulators is as easy as herding cats as a strategy for making money but given most won't take the advice offered, at least for those who do they should at least tighten up part of their bet and increase the chances of it winning. But still the advice would be not to bet on multi legged accumulators with one side to win full stop.
Section three: Become a nerd
We now all live in a modern era where we can find data on pretty much anything we like to aid us with our betting decisions. If you're not using it and betting with your gut instincts the chances of your long term success over the course of a season I'd argue are pretty remote at best. We've already ascertained why betting on big team names won't bring about success so using data is critical but only when you stop to consider whether the numbers involved are relevant. How could they not be you ask? You've just told us how critical it is. Well quite. Use data, but take a deeper dive before you do.
Sites like soccerstats offer a broad range of data where they average out goals scored and conceded for each team; overall, home and away. This of course is a great starting point to work out what you should be betting on. But how useful is some of this data on it's own and without added context? The potentially utterly useless answer is simply - it depends. So let me explain.
I'm going to take a random team from the league I watch most as an example - Vizela who would end the season relegated from the Portuguese top flight.
They played a total of 34 games, 17 home and 17 away.
At home goals scored were 20, against 32
Based on the numbers above we create the following averages;
Goals scored average per game 1.18 (total goals / total games played)
Goals conceded average per game 1.88
Combined total goals average per game 3.06
So far so simple.
So knowing each game had on average of 3.06 goals per game, with that statistic in isolation you'd think betting over 2.5 goals per game would be a good starting metric. However the question is - is that average a true reflection of how the results panned out across all 17 games? Of course the answer is no, otherwise it would be a pretty pointless example. So let's break the games down further.
Vizela lost the following games by either large margins or in games with an inordinate amount of goals scored in the match;
Portimonense 2-3
Boavista 1-4
Sporting 2-5
Casa Pia 0-4
They won one game with a large margin;
Estrela 4-0
They also drew one game with a large scoreline for combined goals;
Estoril 3-3
Basically for me any game with 4 or more goals is higher than the average expected total of goals you'd find in a game in any league. You could obviously add a 3-1 or a 1-3 as well being the same total as a 4-0. That was an afterthought after id crunched the data so my brain is as fallible as the next person's, but anyway moving on…
Discounting these games leaves us with average scorelines you'd expect from a struggling team across the season; 0-0, 1-0, 0-1, 1-1. So the average combined goals for all games was 3.06 as previously stated. The total times over 2.5 goals came in was 10 from 17 or 58.82%
Just to mention for those who've never bet before Under or over 2.5 Goals to be scored in a game is an incredibly popular bet to make.
So if we take out the 31 goals in the games specifically mentioned in the examples above that leaves us with a combined 21 goals scored over 11 games which is 1.91 goals per game on average, so not the over 2.5 but actually under 2.5
Their away record is similar scoring 16 and conceding 34 to bring about the following averages;
Goals scored average per game 0.94
Goals conceded average per game 2
Combined total goals average per game 2.94
So again based on one metric the perceived bet is over 2.5 goals scored.
That average data is once more skewed by five losses;
Sporting 3-2
Arouca 5-0
Benfica 6-1
Porto 4-1
Famalicão 3-2
Take those five games out with their 25 goals and once more it paints a very different picture.
Goals scored average per game 0.83
Goals conceded average per game 0.76
Combined total goals average per game 1.59.
What a jump from the average goals conceded of 2 per game to a truer reflection of the average away game of just 0.76. Against your average side their defence actually held out really well considering they were fighting relegation.
Over 2.5 goals scored despite the season average would have landed just 9 times, 1 less than at home. That's 19 times in a 34 game season or reflected as a percentage 55.88%. Then factor in the results against Sporting, Porto and Benfica especially would all have come with skinny prices on the overs market so you've gone from an average in isolation that paints one picture to an average that is really quite different when you break down the games into actual worthwhile data that can be used.
As I say data is useful but it depends on how it's used. When it's used in isolation without digging deeper into the numbers then don't be surprised when your new foolproof betting scheme falls flat on its face at the first hurdle.
Section Four: First goalscorer bets
Before the onslaught of the accumulator, and the ability to bet online on your phone, one of the most popular bets especially from the match going fan was the first goalscorer bet. I can remember sitting in a pub in Ipswich one day prior to kick off ear wigging on a conversation where a guy was saying how without fail he always bet Hermann Hreidarsson to score first goal at 50/1. I don't know how many games into the 102 games the Icelandic played for the club it was when he finally scored the first but I remember thinking it would just be as easy to set fire to a your money every few weeks. This has stuck with me for twenty plus years.
For the average fan who attends in a group on a match day you imagine this is a bet that represents a bit of fun but should never be treated as anything more.
There's a reason why bookmakers love recreational punters because they quite literally act like flies around shit. It's how they make their money and when they come up against a bee collecting pollen they block off its route.
So for anyone unfamiliar with the concept of a first goalscorer bet, it is literally as it sounds - you're betting on the first player to score in a match. It's the same as trying to pick the winning horse in a field of 20. At least with horse racing there will be a winner of the race. With the first goalscorer all bets are off if it finishes 0-0. You can do all the research you like into this type of bet and it can all go out the window in the first sixty seconds of a game when the opposing left back finds himself in space and smashes in a 20 yard screamer to make it 1-0 whilst you had your hard earned money on the league's top goalscorer who's not even touched the ball once when the first goal went in.
If you surmised that a clubs top scorer is likely to score first then there is a slight weight to your argument but not an awful lot. Take Erling Haaland at Manchester City. In 29 starts for the Premier League Champions last season he scored first 9 times. Dominic Solanke had the joint highest total of first goals alongside the Norwegian but his came in 37 starts. I don't know the prices for the 9 times Haaland scored first but I'd be surprised if against Luton as an example you'd have gotten much better than 1.36. Sure given Solanke plays for Bournemouth he'd have come with a better price but not better that 9 wins would have overcome the investment in the other 28 losses for placing the same bet every time he started.
Paddy Power have launched their rolling sub offer for first goalscorer bets which is about as helpful as running out of toilet paper with a case of the trots and finding the only thing you can wipe your arse with is a loo brush. Just to clarify you bet player a to score first, they get substituted and the player who replaces them takes their place so your bet still has a chance at 0-0. Sounds great in theory but how many games will still be 0-0 at the point your first goalscorer pick is substituted meaning your bet rolls on? It won't be fucking many is the answer.
I used West Ham as an example and broke down each game in relation to the first goalscorer as only one game finished 0-0 last season so it provided me with a good data pool and Jarrod Bowen scored 16 times for the club so there was a chance his name would crop up at least once or twice.
So West Ham played 19 games at home and away totalling a 38 game season.
If you could bet on team to score first alone then you'd bet West Hams opponents on the road. The Irons scored first in just 5 games away at 26.32%. But this isn't about which team scored first, it's about first goalscorer and we find the aforementioned Jarrod Bowen as the clubs top scorer complete the accolade twice, then with one a piece; James Ward Prose, Tomáš Souček and Maxwell Cornet.
Of those 19 first goals scored 15 were from forwards, 2 from midfielders and just one from a defender just in case you fall into the category of betting on defenders every game knowing they have bigger odds. There's a clear reason here why they have bigger odds - because just like the big Icelandic defender at Ipswich Town they rarely score at all and even if they do it's rarely going to be the first goal.
Anyway we switch our attention to the Soulless Bowl. West Ham did at least take the lead in over 50% of the matches played scoring first in 11 of the 19. Our man again Jarrod Bowen was first scorer on 4 of those occasions. Would those 4 come with prices to cover the losses of every other week on the principle of laying the same bet every week? No of course they wouldn't. Interestingly though 3 defenders did score first during those 19 however only one in the claret and blue of West Ham which was Aguerd in the opening home game against Chelsea. Typical West Ham they shot that bolt too soon.
So I'm conclusion by all means on a match day have this type of bet as a bit of fun if you're with your mates, but in reality you're better off all putting a pound in a hat, writing down the names of the 22 starters and each picking one out and whoever wins takes the pot. No winner after a 0-0 then it's like the lottery rollover.
Anyone who claims to win regularly on first goalscorer bets is also the sort of punter who backs every horse in the grand national just to show you they had the winner. Across the whole of World football last season, one player had 12 first goals and the days of bookmakers offering 50/1 on Icelandic defenders is long gone and consigned to history.
Section five: Tipsters
Online I can use Photoshop to attach the headshot of a model onto my body for mt profile picture and having never met me you might think you're onto a winner but having been charmed by me you're going to be left feeling cheated by the end results if I rocked up and met you in real life. There are lots of people who dispense tips on a multitude of sports, not just football. The one thing they all have in common is that not one of them, no matter who they are, can guarantee a result come the conclusion of a fixture. No that's a lie, there's a term for those that can and it's called match fixers. Odds on favourites lose all the time. If they didn't then there'd be no such thing as a bookmaker. Like with me photoshopping my head, it can be used to make something that looks like a winning betting slip. Take my advice, here's the massive bet I placed this week to show how good I am.
No matter the perceived gap between two teams there will always be a time where David beats Goliath. If you replayed the FA Cup Final between Wigan Athletic and Manchester City another ten times the chances are City would win all ten but the history books show that on May 11th, 2013 it was Wigan Athletic who won 1-0 to hold the famous trophy aloft. That's the same Wigan Athletic who got relegated from the Premier League that year. Talk about the highs and lows of following a football club. Sure as night turns into day you'll find someone after the event showing you a betting slip that reads a 1-0 Wigan win at odds of maybe 20/1. Like the Punter who backed every winner in the Grand National as mentioned previously they don't show you all the other losing slips, just the winner.
There are obviously people who can predict to a large degree the outcome of matches but even then it's reliant on the probability of a bet coming to fruition. As I write Australia took on Afghanistan overnight in a T20 cricket game in which they started at a price of 1 / 5. That means they started with a probability of 83.33% of winning and that is before you discount the margin the bookmaker has on that percentage. So if you allowed a figure of 4.5% as a tentative margin that's around an 88% chance that Australia should win. They of course lost otherwise I wouldn't have bothered to mention it.
Those with real skill in putting tips into the market for punters to follow do so at a cost behind a paywall. Those who go onto X (formally known as Twitter) offering potential riches don't do so with a Crystal ball at their disposal and yet there are some punters who think they do, bet too big and then get pissed when it loses, vent their anger and get blocked. Who's fault is it in that example? Well it's not the person who made the post, it's the person who followed unsolicited advice in the first instance. Nothing, I repeat nothing is guaranteed and if it appears too good to be true then it usually is. If someone you'd never met approached you in a street and tried to sell you this get rich quick money making scheme, you'd tell them to piss off. So why trust someone online just because the pitch is sold in a different manner?
There's no such think as luck. If there was you'd toddle off to the shop and buy some. Everything comes down to chance. In football there are so many factors that could go wrong. A goalkeeper could get his marching orders in the third minute of a game, the star striker who has scored for ten games on the spin could pull his hamstring in the warmup. Even the best made plans can go wrong, so if you choose to follow the advice of someone else, especially someone else you've never met, don't bemoan the fact that the bet loses. Firstly they didn't force you to take the advice and secondly, unless they happen to be the goalkeeper in the game who gets sent off and secretly offers advice as a tipster, the actual outcome had nothing to do with them so if you want someone to blame go look into the mirror for ten minutes. I'll tell you the expected returns of a good service later on, it'll be like an Agatha Christie 'who did it' novel. My money is on the Butler. Not Jos though he's had a poor T20 tournament as opening batsman for England.
Section six: Enhanced Odds bets
All of the soft bookmakers will offer enhanced odds on events. In the US they are more commonly referred to as Proposition bets or Prop bets for short. If you find yourself betting on these frequently then the bookmakers love you in the same manner they do as recreational punters who bet on large accumulators and first goalscorers.
The key to a prop bet is to make it sound reasonably plausible enough to make you place your hard earned money on but with a small probability of the bookmaker ever having to pay out. In the section on accumulator bets we saw how betting on Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United as an accumulator wasn't profitable. Prop bets don't provide you with much information when displayed and that's quite deliberate. You might see an offer for Liverpool, Arsenal and Rangers to win and most know enough about football to think all three clubs win regularly. Say the market price is 2/1 and the enhanced price is 5/1 that makes it a no brainer right? You might reason to yourself that you know they all win regularly and hey 2/1 is a good price so 5/1 is really good and before you've thought it through your money is down. You've not considered who the opposition is in each game, the form of the opponents etc. In fact you've just seen the £ sign flashing in front of your eyes. You've missed the blindly obvious fact they've misheld key information deliberately to entice you to bet. Two of the legs might actually be realistic but having bet you check on the scores to find Rangers are playing against the current Portuguese Champions Benfica and are 2-0 down away from home after 20 minutes and your bet is going south pretty quickly. There's no cash out on an enhanced bet either. So even if you're winning at half time on all legs, you're reliant on every result going your way come the full time whistle. Bookmakers make a big deal of having the enhanced bets at the top of the page where they're seen first but if they were forced to publish results after the event they'd soon vanish and no longer be offered.
As well as removing facts from the description like who each club is playing, punters should be wary of the language used to disguise the prop bet on offer. Player x to have over one shot on target reads a lot differently to Player X to have a minimum of two shots on target.
Let's use Trosaard from Arsenal as an example.
We're offered enhanced odds at 5/1 for Trosaard to have over 1 shot on target during the game.
The Belgian winger made 18 starts for Arsenal, made a further 16 appearances from the bench and scored 12 goals. In total he had 60 shots. For the 1,646 minutes he played he averages a shot just over every 27 minutes. That's a shot on average. Not a shot on target as an average. Of those 60 shots 22 are on target so an average of over a 1/3rd which really isn't as bad as it sounds on paper especially considering the player is a left winger. There are 17 games where he registered at least a shot on target during the game but only four times where he registered 2 on target and no game where he had 3 or more. Only Saka and Havertz at Arsenal had more games where they registered one or more shots on target during a game. So once we've taken a deep dive into the offer and ascertained firstly the shot needs to be on target and secondly has to be a minimum of two shots on target. The reality is it would have been a winner 4 times during the games Trossard played for Arsenal last season and I'll guarantee you it's not going to be an enhanced bet offered against a Burnley, Wolverhampton, Brentford or Brighton which were the four games the hypothetical example would have landed in.
Other examples might be for Saka, Havertz, Odegaard and Rice to have at least one shot on target. Let's say it's 7/1. You don't want to make it too good to be true but interesting enough to make someone quickly part with their money. It did happen three times last season against Wolves, Brighton and Luton but you again can bet your bollock to a barn dance if it was offered it wouldn't have been against one of those teams and certainly not at that price.
Definitely avoid anything that couples first goalscorer with even more constituent parts. Player A to score first, player b to make 2 tackles, player C to be booked and player D to tie his boot laces before half time. We've already ascertained how hard it is to pick a first goalscorer, so why would you then have to also rely on another couple of events occuring to win a bet?
Occasionally however bookmakers do offer what I'd call a loss leader. Player x to do y at evens. This will come with limits on the amount that can be bet. Again there are no guarantees of it winning but they usually come after a good run of winners for the bookmakers and they find punters are stopping betting. It's a way of enticing people back in. So by all means maybe choose to bet those and take advantage, but I'm once again reiterating there's no guarantee they will still win.
Section seven: 6,302 Punters backed this bet
Paddy Power will have a similar section to enhanced odds where they give a bet builder and tell you the number of times someone has backed the same bet. Unlike the prop bets there's no enhancement of the odds here. At present ahead of the Scotland v Hungary game in the 2024 Euros they have a 50.32/1 bet builder which has been backed 6,302 times three hours and 1 minute before kick off. For those of you with a poor memory - the probability of a 50/1 shot losing is 98%
Let that sink in. Paddy Power are advertising to you that they have gotten over six thousand punters to place their money on something that has a 98% probability of losing. (Note - post game the four line bet builder which included McTominay to either score or assist a goal lost with Hungary beating Scotland with a 1-0 win). Quelle fucking surprise.
They've over 3,000 punters backing a 72/1 build a bet in the Germany Switzerland game. That's a 98.63% probability chance of losing. Talk about sticking a middle finger up subliminally. It is way more subtle than the scene in Fight Club with the giant cock spliced into the kids movie.
They're whipping your pants down and fucking you from behind whilst emptying your pockets.
I mean bravo for not hiding the fact and being so brazen about it and banking on the fact that the average punter has no idea about probability. If you wonder where the term mug punter comes from you probably wouldn't have to wonder for much longer with these examples. As we've already ascertained though with the Paddy Power roll on substitute offer, it's about as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike if a goal has been scored before the first substitution has even been made. Let's look at when the first goal was scored in Tottenham matches last season as an example. Away from home is especially good; Minutes 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 11, 11, 14, 16, 17 - I think you get the picture. I've not even bothered to look when the first substitution was made in each game.
The more complicated something is the more something is likely to go wrong. Take a modern car with its engine hidden and all its electronics. Take someone who stops you for directions and you tell them to take the first left, second left, third left and fourth left. Go straight for about a mile, then take the fourth exit at the roundabout and go straight for another mile. Or you could tell them to just go straight for two miles. Bookmakers in turn disguise what is obvious when presented to you in a different format like the example I've just presented. It's financially in their interests to do so. Being a general arse and giving stupid directions like that would just cause me some general level of amusement. I've never done it by the way but I am now tempted now I've written it. I'd still get you to your destination by the way, I've not fleeced your wallet when you weren't looking.
So far you might have been left with the impression that betting isn't a good idea at all and you wouldn't be wide of the mark in reality. Like everything in life, something potentially harmful is OK in moderation. If you only bet what you can afford to lose and your expectations about the outcome remain in check then there's no real issue. Most punters fall into this realm and whilst the government makes noises about cracking down on the gambling industry as being problematic, they'll still let you drink yourself into an early grave. Something that has a far greater strain on the NHS and impact on the wider society through things like anti-social behaviour.
Section eight: Betting isn't balsamic vinegar
Whatever you are betting on, be realistic about the possible outcomes. The first one and most important one being that whatever you're betting on - there's a good chance you could lose. Whether that's you following the tip of someone else or following the wind whether it takes you, that should always be first and foremost in your mind. If you can't afford to lose the money you are staking or the placing of the bet is going to bring about undue stress and anxiety that could manifest itself in other ways then I'd suggest if you need the money - get a second job. There's an image sold by bookmakers that by having a bet on something you're watching, it makes you part of something bigger, it means you belong - you're now part of our community. You are one of us! You've seen the adverts where bars are crowded and the person at the centre of it all is the one having a bet on the outcome. That's the dream they're selling you. Of course it's not like that. When you bet your money you're not suddenly magically transposed into an urban city environment with hundreds of people behind you. The only person even remotely now interested in you is someone watching how the markets are reacting at a bookmakers office and whether your twenty pence bet might cause them their job if it wins.
Having something on a game doesn't make it more enjoyable, it invariably makes it more stressful and if your bet loses it takes away what little enjoyment you did manage to get from the game. I'd bet good money a large percentage of footballers abused online following a defeat would directly correlate to the person behind it having lost money because of it. We vent our anger at the loss of money, not at ourselves for the person who made the bet, but at one individual we perceive to be the culprit. A player scores an own goal but we ignore the two yard tap in missed by the striker the other end of the pitch. A player misses a penalty but the goalkeeper spilled an easy cross for a tap in. You could name dozens of different scenarios. Betting isn't balsamic vinegar. It's not enhancing the flavour of your experience watching a game. It's more likely to be like tipping balsamic vinegar into an open cut. If you don't know what vinegar in a cut feels like, next time you get a paper cut run for a bag of Walkers Salt and Vinegar crisp as an entry level indicator.
We started with the section on accumulators detailing how many people we need aligned for that type of bet to land. If you're watching a game with a crowd of friends and you want to bet to make it fun then do the first goalscorer suggestion noted previously. Or try putting your phone away and watching not only the game but the stress levels of those around you who have something riding on it. Ask yourself whether it looks like it's bringing them enjoyment? And fuck off all of you's who say someone who backed a winner looked like they were enjoying it. Did they for the entire game? Did they?!?!? Did they watch the game or the cash out option on their phone? Did they interact with friends or interact with their phone? You get my point.
Section nine: High Street Banking
What's high Street banking got to do with betting? Good question, I'm glad you asked me. It's about framing the way you look at betting. High inflation may be bad news for everyone with a mortgage but good news for everyone who has a savings account. If you had £10,000 knocking around and you were looking for returns on an investment, you might put it into a tax free ISA with a return of 4.95% which after 12 months would earn you £495. Pretty simple, money for doing nothing and given interest rates for years have been around the 1% mark you'd probably be quite happy with that. So if you'd be happy to get a return of just shy of 5 pence in the pound on your savings, why when betting would you think you could realistically achieve on a regular basis returns of 100% and above. Take that Scotland bet builder - that's an expectation that you're going to get a 5,032% return on your money. Do you see a bank offering returns of 5,032% on your investments? You're lucky if you find somewhere that would offer 5.032% returns.
It comes back to expectations management. If you really did find a way of beating the bookmakers with odds of 50/1 on a regular basis then you'd find you'd not have an account with soft bookmakers for very long.
If I've not put you off betting for life already then set yourself a realistic goal on expected returns on your money. Keep your investment brain in gear. I'm not however suggesting you stick your £10,000 on a 1/10 shot just to make that clear. The best bet most people will ever make in their lives is the first bet - if it happens to lose because it's usually good enough to put most people off for life.
Unless you have very deep pockets and are willing to bet offshore with sharp bookmakers the realistic chances of you finishing with returns over 100% over the course of a year are skinny odds at best which is to say fuck and all. To clarify winning an evens money bet on your first bet and not touching the money for a year doesn't count by the way.
Section ten: Instagram isn't really life
Going back to our High Street banking analogy it's really hard to retrain your brain to look at betting in the same manner as you would an investment. Because if you got even a 30% return on your money you'd be frankly fucking ecstatic. Yet most recreational gamblers might actually end up with a loss of their money of 100%. It's really easy to blow the lot especially when chasing losses. I don't know if it's worse betting in shops where you're less likely to keep track of your losses or betting online where you can keep track of your losses but does that then make you instantly more fallible to try and chase those losses?
There are those who can genuinely just stick to a £2 accumulator every week and that's all they bet on. That's £104 a year and if they get a couple of wins they're happy enough. Fair play to those punters.
The problem is like with social media platforms like Instagram, certain people sell you a dream which isn't their actual reality. You find yourself susceptible to wanting that dream you're being sold. You place a £2 bet on a 500/1 20 team accumulator. When that doesn't work you might try a £5 200/1 accumulator, then a £10 100/1 accumulator. Before you know it your pockets are getting lighter and lighter and all the time you're seeing other people winning so it must be possible right? Well Wigan won the FA Cup as we ascertained in the same season they got relegated. So yes there was the high of one win but over the course of a season they were getting fucked week in, week out and that's what bookmakers do to the average recreational punter.
My advice for what it's worth is to open an account with all the soft bookmakers offering bonuses.
Most UK bookmakers will allow you to open an account for a deposit of just £5. Most will offer you deals like bet £10 get a £20 freebet. If you've been reading from the start it will come as no surprise that my advice is to ignore those parts of the offers. What you will now have access to are the £1 free bets, the free spins, the offers on roulette games and the like. The latter two are going to need you to be really disciplined with. Say for example you're awarded free money to play on the roulette table. Bet on black or red. Avoid betting on individual numbers in the game. If you win you double your stake. If you lose you've lost nothing. Gambler's fallacy will tell you that if the last five spins have landed red, them the next must be black, like if a coin comes up heads four times on the trot the fifth will be tails. This is just a voice in your brain and like luck it doesn't exist, everything is down to chance. Well the voice exists but luckily you're the only one that can hear it. Betting red or black carries a 48% chance of winning. The green carries the 2% chance.
With a £1 freebet take your new found knowledge about accumulators and don't go betting 10 legs which involve the big names. Treat it as a case that any win over evens is adding money to your bankroll and its not costing you anything. So if you can find an accumulator that pays just 1.78/1 but it makes mathematical sense to you and it comes in that's £1.78 you didn't have when you started the day. This will also provide value with the section of scaling down before you scale up. I used to get odd looks from people everytime I stopped to pick a penny or a 5p piece off the floor. I used to put everything I found into a pot and banked it all when it was over £200. The cost to me - bending over and some funny looks. Money is money. I closed my account with Virgin betting and Virgin Casino having taken the best part of £100 from them just playing their free games and placing the occasional bet until they stopped my access to all their promotions. Alongside free bets, spins et al, an account with Bet365 gives you access to coverage of most major league's games outside of the UK; Serie A, La Liga, Liga Nos, MLS, Bundesliga. What better way to broaden your knowledge of teams outside of the UK Markets as well by watching games regularly just because you have a £5 deposit with them?
When it comes to free spins use discipline. Spin them then run. Hit the Road Jack and don't come back. Sure eventually every single bookmaker will stop offering you promotions but fuck em you're not here to make friends. You're reading this because you're either regularly losing money or are interested in how to possibly make money. Well Rome wasn't built in a day and from small acorns grow big trees but you need water, sunlight, nurture and nature to see it grow to fruition.
Section Eleven: Odds on betting - Be more Daniel Son
I've already drawn attention to how the average brain works when it comes to investing money compared to betting money. The sensible investment head says 4.95% represents real value. The betting brain is going "yeah but we can get 5,000% returns on our money, all we need is McTominay to score first, their keeper to make 3 saves, ours to make 2 and a pigeon to fall out the sky in the 33rd minute. Fucking simples innit!"
Having a betting strategy which involves odds on bets causes the same level of turmoil in the average brain. If you're brand new to betting and still at the curious stage then you stand a better chance of winning this battle than a punter who has been losing regularly for a consistent period and wants to continue betting but see some sort of return for their money. So what is an odds on bet and why might you hear other people suggest it's a bad idea to back odds on favourites?
We'll take an evens bet as our starting point, that is to say fractional odds of 1/1 or shown on the decimal as 2.00
Odds on bets as a fraction will have a smaller number to the left and larger to the right.
For example 1 / 5, or 4/7
As a decimal they'll be displayed with a 1 in front. I'll use the example from an earlier section where we saw Manchester City with odds ranging from 1.07 through 1.10
I'll keep the example simple for those new to betting. If you were to lay £5 at odds of 1/ 5 (1.20 on the decimal) and the bet wins you'd win £1. With the return of your stake you'd collect £6.
As we've ascertained there's no guarantee of any bet winning. If you want a safe investment then put your money in a one year bond or a tax free cash ISA. We've ascertained that a 50/1 shot whilst if it would win would provide a return of 5, 000% on your money, also has a 98% probability of actually losing as 6,000 plus punters found to their detriment backing Scotland in Euro 2024.
If I build part of a wall using rows of 5 bricks, each 10 bricks high but left one out deliberately creating a hole and invited you to throw a tennis ball through the gap at a £1 a go to win £50 and your stake back, you'd probably have a go but when the ball bounces back at you, you're not likely to have another go. Yet this is what recreational punters are doing time and time again when they place accumulator bets. To them it's psychological. I might lose my £1 - but I could have won £50 and got my £1 back. They can't grasp the concept that the 1 / 5 shot carries an 83.33% probability chance of winning. In my wall example just used that's now a bloody big hole you'd be looking at throwing a tennis ball through. So what's the problem? Well in my example I'm saying pay £5 to throw a tennis ball through this large gap to win your money back and an extra £1. The reality is I might suddenly pop up with a tennis racket from nowhere and forehand volley the ball somewhere into next week like the goalkeeper who gets sent off after three minutes. The real problem is that it stings that little bit more to lose an odds on bet than it does to lose a bet where the odds were against. If you lose a ten leg accumulator you lost. It doesn't matter that you had 7 legs come in, you still lost. If you're backing 50/1 shots every week the likelihood is you're going to be pretty deep in the hole before you back a winner. Their argument is going to be I'm going to have to back the same bet five times just to be level if I've backed a 1 /5 shot. Which is true on the one hand but frankly bollocks on the other. ⅘ is every bit as odds on as ⅕. It has more risk but not as much as the 50/1. I can also change my stake accordingly so could turn it around just as quickly. Like Rudyard Kipling if you've researched a bet properly; If you were happy with the maths and your ultimate undoing happened to be that the keeper got sent off in the second minute and not that it was always a stupid bet, then shrug it off. There's nothing you can do. Laugh it off. Betting odds on means you have to become like Daniel Son in Karate Kid. It takes discipline; Odds on, odds off, odds on, odds off. You have no idea why you're waving your hands in a circling motion but at some point it will become apparent to you. I once had money on an odds on horse that refused to leave the stalls. Just sat there with the jockey going nowhere whilst the rest of the field hurtled off down the course. It was the funniest thing I've seen and the strangest way I've ever lost a bet but what was the point in getting angry? It didn't help me get the money back I'd lost and part of winning in life is being able to laugh at your own misfortune. That's taken me time to learn as a skill by the way. Twenty years ago you'd have gotten a rather ruder reaction that you'd not have wanted your kids in earshot off. So yes you will lose a 1/ 5 shot and the first voice you hear will say is change your strategy and go running back to trying to throw a tennis ball in one hole between 50 bricks. However it doesn't take a genius to work out if you throw 100 balls through a big hole you're going to get far more in than you are trying to throw 100 balls through one hole in a big wall. Patience Daniel Son.
Section twelve: How do big punters make their money?
You might have heard the term ROI by which I don't mean the Republic of Ireland but in this context it means a return on investment. The section on tipsters didn't mention this because they're in the main snake oil salespeople. Whereas if you paid a subscription fee to a service like predictology you'd see their current years ROI as a percentage on football betting and it will probably be between 6 and 8% and that's to those members following the long term strategy i.e you have to be betting everything, you can't cherry pick your way to quick riches.
Yes you read that right. Professional bettors might expect a return on their money of just 1% more than that tax free cash ISA you could have had your money sat in causing you no stress at all over 12 months. No swearing at Harry Kane missing a sitter, it's just sat there going "Hi Dave, how the devil are ya? I'm still here, still grand and I've given birth to another pound coin overnight. You're now a grandfather again. Isn't it marvellous? I'll pop it next to yesterday's grandchild. I'm sorry about that Harry thing by the way. He's an egit and a great tick lump to be sure. Anyways, the kettle is always on if you want to pop in and say hello. Toodle pip now."
Like any punter they'll have months where they go on losing streaks but with a long term strategy in the main, their year all going well will be a winning one. I've never been a member but I'd put good money odds on that nowhere within their information will you find a promise of ridiculous returns. So the high street is giving you 4.95% and a good service is providing between 6 and 8%. What are those on social media platforms leading you to think you'll get if you follow their tips…
Anyways in betting circles those with deep pockets are referred to as whales. Don't ask me why. It's casino parlance for their high rollers. Brighton and Hove Albion owner Tony Bloom is a whale. Sharp bookmakers will take his money because it means they can sharpen their lines to where the market should be odds wise. Soft bookmakers wouldn't take his bets if you erm paid them to take his bets. That Alanis is called real irony.
Line sharpening is a bit like calling a plumber to seal your leak. You might lose some water out of the tank but if you keep most of it that's the price you pay. Tony Bloom isn't going to be betting £100,000 at 50/1. He's going to be betting £500,000 on a 1 / 100. OK actually I don't know what he's going to be betting figure wise I'm making it up as I go along. Why don't I know? Because he's not fucking stupid enough to broadcast to everyone how he makes his money. I do know enough to know though that what is laid are eye watering sums of money to you and me. His operation is one of the, if not the best researched organisations in the field of sports betting. This is not just data crunching, this is hundreds of simulated games being carried out with variances applied to find the best value bet. Their mission is then to find a discrepancy between what they make the price for an event and what a bookmaker makes it. That's the crux, that's the key - finding the mistakes and extracting the value. Again it comes with no guarantees. But imagine you work out with data that a bet is a 1/10 shot but that you could lay the bet at 4/7. For your £1 you should realistically get £1.10 back but someone is saying I'll give you £1.57. You've checked your data, you've phoned a friend and sure enough it checks out still. That's how the whales make their money. Vast operations crunching data joining up with a group of investors with very deep pockets placing bets with operators we'll never have access to. So going back quickly to the last section, yes your 1 l 5 might have lost, but if you find a genuine error in the market you adjust your stake accordingly. In fact if you're correct you're going to maximise its potential and pray to a God that doesn't exist that like my horse it doesn't get stuck in the stalls. Just know there will be a lot of times where things don't pan out how you want them to. The weekend I wrote this I'd been betting on the J League. Of the 10 fixtures played 70% of the market favourites either drew or lost. That's how it goes sometimes. For all the data crunched and preparation put in during the week it just so happened that it became a giant stack of dominoes laid out and when one fell they pretty much all fell. Shit happens. Was my data wrong or flawed? Had I tried something for twenty weeks with no returns previously? No. Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. OK I'm slightly insane on other fronts but as alluded to previously I know the value of a penny in the same way I do the value of a £1 or £10. Going back to Tony Bloom in a recent podcast I listened to the interviewee claimed that Bloom would bet heavily on a 1% return.
Section 13: Scale down to scale up
You'll have heard the expression everything in moderation by which it's meant that the odd doughnut, pint of beer, bacon sandwich etc isn't going to be what causes you ill health. It's the bag of doughnuts, ten pints or two bacon sandwiches every day of the week which could potentially cause the damage. So in terms of betting, whilst you begin to figure out what works and what doesn't scale it all down. Do it in the equivalent style of moderation. If you find something that works then scale your bets up accordingly. If you're still not finding something that works at least you're likely to be losing way less money in the process than you may have done previously. Just remember if you wanted to become a builder you wouldn't start out trying to build a skyscraper without working out what the correct foundations are so betting shouldn't be any different. Some may have been scratching their heads about the £1.78 accumulator win from a freebet comment. Well to me 17 bets at £0.10 that have cost you nothing to test a model that might bring you a ROI. If you're wrong 17 times it's cost you nothing to find out. Scale down do the hard time on their money then start to up your stakes.
The section above has also taught us a valuable lesson. The professionals at this game only make it look so rewarding because they have deep pockets. Do you have deep pockets? Maybe. But by that I'm not asking how much hand you can fit in. Are you rich? Of course you're not you're reading what I've written. Tony Bloom isn't sat here reading this going how do I stop losing money on this betting malarkey?
We know to avoid betting on the Premier League because there's no value. Therefore we're going to look at league's lower down. Guess what, not only are the potential returns better, there's a wealth of markets available to bet on and you don't need to be like Tony Bloom and employ a team of data analysts before you start to bet.
If you've seen a pint of Guinness poured you know you have to let it settle before it's drunk and football is like that. Look at Manchester City's records the last three seasons and after Christmas they're the perfect pint of Guinness ready to be drunk. They become the epitome of consistency. Most league's are like that. Chances are you hated maths at school so what follows might not be great news as you're going to have do some level of work I'm afraid but your rewards will be dependent on how much work you're willing to put in. If you have kids who hate maths but love sports and love a pound note you could use it to your advantage but don't stress the fact you're using them as your data centre to win money. This won't go down well at parents evening because kids always open their mouths and may result in child services being called in. Oh for any married men reading - women talk. Your secrets are not a secret.
So what do I do? Well unlike most people I actually like data, statistics and finding patterns - Yes I'm the one who likes the mathematics and the mechanics of it all. To be fair though I do have diagnosed obsessive compulsive disorder and I'm the son of an accountant so I probably have an unfair advantage and that might explain the reasons I might be perceived to be a bit weird in this scenario. As mentioned previously the data available online is great as long as you know it's a true figure which is going to be of benefit to you and I've provided examples of how it isn't.
An accumulator as we've established means for every leg you're reliant on more and more people doing what you require to give you the desired outcome. So it would make more sense to do the opposite right? Well it does to me.
The simplest bet you can make is one of three outcomes on a game of football, namely will the home team win, the away team win or will it end in a draw? 30 years ago that's pretty much all you could bet on. Now however there are literally hundreds of different outcomes you can bet on during a single game. So let's widen your horizons away from the traditional bet and into some of the smaller markets. Yes the odds are smaller but you're lessening your risk and enhancing the probability of finding winners. Why bet on one horse in a race when your money can cover two?
Last year I had data sets on the following league's; the Premier League, Championship, League One, League Two, Liga No's, Serie A and the J League. I know I said never bet on the Premier League but I also said to open accounts with all the major soft bookmakers and a large number of those have prediction promotions and that's what I use the data for. You can call be a sad bastard all you like I don't take it personally and I'd agree with you.
For each league I'll separate into each team. For each team I separate into home and away so I can see easier how their performances relate depending on each. Just because a team plays well at home doesn't mean they play well away and vice versa. I'll then record the following data into rows; half time and full time scores, both half results as a W, L or D, whether the side won either half, whether both sides scored, if the game had over 2.5 goals and lastly whether the team lost either half.
No I'm not joking.
First rule: stop betting the team name and start betting the mathematics. This isn't easy by the way. Many a time I've seen the mathematics and not bet something because my assumption is something totally different just based on my perception. The data was right, I was wrong. What's worse is if you bet against the data and you lose and were also wrong. You need to be able to switch off the voice in your head. Sometimes the voice may have been right of course but more often than not that voice is made of a long term opinion which isn't supported by the facts.
Rule two widen your options. The traditional bet was home win, away win or draw. I'm going to take the option to bet two of those eventualities at once. Again my odds are less but I'm betting 66.66% of the market compared to 33.33%. if you've been reading from the start and are still going well done and thank you. Remember the example about Tottenham at home last season where they didn't draw a game and have drawn only once in the last two seasons. There are a multitude of similar examples throughout every league. Kyoto in the J league had the same, Inter in Serie A have drawn one home game in two seasons. Some are 100% records, some are ranging from 90% upwards. If they are anything from 85% down I'm not touching them. That's right despite having an 85% success rate I'm not interested. I've still got a massive hole to throw a tennis ball through but I'm not doing it. I'll let that sink in for a bit. When you breakdown data into patterns you'll find the majority of teams settle into no pattern at all. You're better off pissing on your shoes than you are into the wind to find out whether it splashes back it's a lot quicker.
So I might bet 1 or 2 to win which means I think the result will be a home win or an away win. Or I could bet home win or home draw or away win and away draw. Yes it's an odds on bet but I can bet the single with the double result for a higher stake or I can add the option into a double which the standard returns are about 67% if they win or a treble which tends to be around evens money. I'll remind you that the professional tip services are giving you about a 6-8% ROI and that's dependent on a long term commitment and strategy. It's not foolproof and we've ascertained already for all punters winning long term on football is hard whatever level you're betting at.
Win either half.
There are some good young sides about who are great over 45 minutes but not quite good enough over 90. There are some that respond to a half time dressing down from the manager and finally start to play in the second half. You could bet a side who go in at half time 5-0 down and everyone else has done their money but you've got the half option and a single consolation goal in a 5-1 loss where your pick scores the only goal in the second half sees you win your money. Barnsley last season were up until the last month of the season good value for winning a half both home and away. At home they won a half for 14 of the first 16 games. Away that was 17 wins from 20. So yes you might have lost 5 times making that same bet every week but unlike backing Manchester City at really skinny odds you'd have probably got at worse returns of 20% at home and 30% away. Enough to leave you in profit most importantly.
Why do I record whether a team has lost either half when I can't bet it? Because I'm betting the opposite. Charlton Athletic as an example lost just 8 games away from home from 23 played. But they lost at least one half of football 18 times. So that's 18 times you could have bet the home side to win either half and won.
You'll hear the term overs and unders markets bandied around for goals scored in a game but for your average punter that somehow ends up becoming the over 2.5 goals market. They've somehow completely ignored the unders part. There's a famous psychology video where you're asked to count the number of times a basketball is thrown between people and at the end of it they'll ask the total passes and then they'll ask what about the gorilla? What gorilla? The gorilla in the video. There wasn't a gorilla. So they rewind it back and say stop counting and fuck me there's a huge gorilla and a room full of people all concentrating on counting have missed it. OK it's someone in a gorilla suit but you get the point. Same principle for both sides to score - you can bet yes and you can bet no. What does the data tell you? What percentage would the same bet hit previously? A home side might have a good average in over 2.5 but if they come up against a side with a rock solid defence that's going to lessen the chances of your desired outcome.
Don't know how to work out a percentage? It's simple and again good to use a a ruse for the kids to start to enjoy maths.
If we want to work out the percentage of games Barnsley have won either half away after twenty games we take the two totals. In this case 18 and 20.
Total wins / Total games = X as a decimal figure
Decimal figure * 100 = percentage answer
So for this one I don't even need a calculator. Half of 18 is 9. Half of 20 is 10. So the bet won 9 out of every 10 times which as a fraction is 9/10 and as a percentage is 90%. But I appreciate not everyone gets called a smart arse so let's do it properly
18 / 20 = 0.9
0.9 * 100 = 90
This is also a nice example because the wheels did come off at the tail end of the season and it took me two or three weeks to go to decide this had run it's course but I'd had a bloody good run with it. That's another good point. Sometimes you'll see the pattern change so you'll need to factor that in before making a decision before betting your hard earned money. Is there an obvious reason why? Change of manager leading to a change in playing style? Injury to a key player such as top goalscorer or first choice goalkeeper. As great as data is there's also a human involvement on some level which needs to be factored in.
You can't drink the same pint of Guinness twice either so if you're reading this don't rush out on the first day of the season expecting Barnsley to win either half. Should they do so it will be for now anyway a nice coincidence and the more weeks into the season you go and the more your pint has settled you'll know whether or not it's ready to drink from. Some will argue the opposite - the opening weeks are when it's time to bet before prices tighten. They may be right but they're also seasoned in this game and after a few years you'll have earned the right to make the same judgement call or not.
Did I mention there are no guarantees of a winning bet? I did? Oh good I just wanted to check because finally now I've reached the point at how you can potentially win some money, I don't want to make it sound like I've got the answers to change your life. The purpose of me putting this together is to try to stop recreational punters losing money from examples that make you think - oh shit I've done that, or I do that all the time. I know them because I've done them or did them all the time. When it comes to losing money let someone else do it for you and learn the hard way. What do I want from the advice dispensed here? Certainly nothing financial. A thank you would suffice and knowing it's helped at least one person. If that one person helps one person in turn and so on then we're all making a difference. If you choose not to take the advice then I won't take it personally. It's cost you nothing but time for now but chances are if you fall into the same traps as outlined already all the way through it will most likely continue to cost you money week in and week out and maybe at some point you might come back and go oh yeah now I get it.
Section fourteen: Keeping scores
Track your progress not just in terms of how much you win or lose but you're trying to identify what worked and what didn't. If it's not working for you is your model wrong, is the data wrong or are you genuinely falling short because of a decision or outcome that didn't go your way? Are you being realistic with your expectations? Set yourself a goal. Can you outperform the market? If the market is an ROI of 6-8% then you could aim for 8-10% ROI. 20% is ambitious, 5,000% would be easier and less painful to just write the bookmaker a cheque for your losses in advance of the season.
Section fifteen: The final word
So in conclusion, what have we learned? Firstly if someone asks you to count the number of times a basketball ball is passed back and forward, be the one person looking for a gorilla.
Avoid recreational accumulators because we know they make as much sense as trying throw a tennis ball through a small hole in a wall.
Avoid punting on the Premier League because there's no value, which means we're going to broaden our horizons into smaller leagues which offer better prices and there is just as much data for you as there is on the Premier League.
Make sure we are using data available first of all, but secondly ensure the data we're using is of value and not leading us somewhere else totally.
Don't follow tipsters who post on X or any other social media platform. Be like the teacher who suspects someone has copied someone else's answer for their maths homework. You want to see their working out before saying it's correct. If you lay it and it loses remember it's no one's fault but your own. Go to the nearest mirror, point your finger and say you did this.
The only value in a first goalscorer bet is in a sweepstake with your mates where the winner takes all. The offer from Paddy Power for your goalscorer pick to roll onto the substitute makes it as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike.
Enhanced odds equals enhanced profits on the bottom line for the bookmakers.
Just because 6,000 other people have done something doesn't make it a good proposition especially if your money is involved. Allow yourself to laugh at the stupidly of others in private but don't be mean. If you know someone who'd be in with the 6,000 then take advantage and tell them you'll take their bet. A coin toss is 50/50, this coin toss has a probability of 98/2 in your favour. You never see a poor bookmaker. In 2023 Denise Coates the CEO of Bet365 paid herself £221 million for the year. More importantly for anyone reading this in the UK she pays her tax on it so you can moan about that figure all you like but the tax at least is propping up things like NHS far more than your contribution is.
Remember those who make the most money from betting are called… no not whales - yes that's right - bookmakers.
Stop betting the team name and bet on the data but even then - make sure it's the right data.
Remember even a broken clock is right twice a day. That might mean that what I've written makes perfect sense. Or on any given Sunday someone telling you the complete opposite might also be right. Question is who's long term right? If you're a regular recreational punter and you're still reading this you will know who's likely to be right based on the contents of this guide. Want to bet against me? I'll happily open a book for you to bet on. I'll give you 50/1 antepost.
There's a real danger betting online that money doesn't seem like money. It's all a series of numbers on a screen. If you're burning through cash maybe try walking into a bookmakers and physically hand over the cash as a better way of remember the true value of what you're betting. Being in my 40s if I wanted to bet at 18 I could only do it on the high street and at the time I was on a YTS on £35 a week. If I did my money I wasn't going out Saturday night. I had two 16/1 winners on the races one afternoon both which won by a nose. I only had a quid on each but that's doubling my weekly wage at the time. It were like Christmas. But leaving money was a lot harder experience than its ever been online apart from the example I'll give in the last section. You'll know the one when you read it
Section Sixteen: The remaining big question
OK I'm sure you're dying to know. How profitable is betting for me? Well apart from my Skybet account with which I started with a £10 deposit, on every other account it was started with £5. I hold accounts with Paddy Power, Ladbrokes, Coral, Bet365, William Hill and Betway so that's seven in total. The total balance at the time of writing across all 7 is £924.26 and I had £52.28 with Virgin Bet at the point of closing my account with them. So that's from £45 worth of deposits. More importantly though that's the figure from changing my betting habits and taking my own advice above. Because overall to Coral and Ladbrokes in regards to online betting I'm probably £400 in the red across the two operators combined. I'd be reloading my account every week without fail. We're only talking £5 a time but those £5's soon add up. I'm as guilty as any of chasing a loss and my worst example having found myself £100 down with Ladbrokes was punting £200 on Leeds to beat Histon at ½ which of course then lost. At that time it was a huge amount of money for me. So everything written above comes from experience. I don't win every bet I place far from it. A lot of the time I'm betting minimum stakes with each operator. As I said, I'm the oddball that likes the mechanics and the mathematics of it all. I don't need the money and that makes me privileged I know but I've been unemployed and not had a pot to piss in, where marmalade on toast with a cup of tea would count towards one of my daily meals and a luxury. I've seen it from both sides and if I can stop one person from falling into bad habits then I'll have given something back. I might not take the money I've lost to them back but I can potentially stop someone else giving them the same and that will be for me like winning my money back.
You don't have to agree with what's written above. If you have something that works and goes against the grain then keep it to yourself. If you shout about it and everyone else jumps on then the markets will close.
There are so many other areas not covered in this guide. It was never meant to be inclusive. It is just meant to change certain habits some have or some might easily fall into. I'm not an expert but neither am I claiming at any stage that I can make you rich. I could however help you stop losing!
I will be posting examples of models and seeing seeing if they work alongside updates of my current betting so welcome along for the ride.
