--- title: 'How I Actually Make Money Betting on College Basketball (Up $250,000+)' source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y2u5kEKyIw8' video_id: 'Y2u5kEKyIw8' date: 2026-08-04 duration_sec: 725 --- # How I Actually Make Money Betting on College Basketball (Up $250,000+) > Source: [How I Actually Make Money Betting on College Basketball (Up $250,000+)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y2u5kEKyIw8) ## Summary The video presents a comprehensive guide to profitable college basketball betting, focusing on strategies used by professional bettors. The creator emphasizes the importance of using multiple sportsbooks for line shopping and details four main strategies: arbitrage, middle betting, positive expected value (EV) betting, and promo conversion. The content is practical, with examples and a recommendation to start with arbitrage and promos for beginners. ### Key Points - **Basketball as the Most Profitable Sport** [00:02] — The creator states that basketball, including college basketball, is the most profitable sport to bet on due to the high number of games, line movement, and discrepancies. He has made the most money betting on basketball. - **Use Multiple Sportsbooks** [00:44] — To maximize profits, bettors must use multiple sportsbooks because each book sets its own odds. Line shopping is essential; for example, betting Florida at -166 on FanDuel is better than -185 on Fliff. - **Arbitrage Betting** [02:07] — Arbitrage involves betting on equal and opposite outcomes across different books to guarantee risk-free profit. The creator recommends it for beginners as it provides daily profits and builds confidence. Example: betting Portland State +14.5 at +135 and UMKC -14.5 at +100 on different books, yielding $70 risk-free. - **Middle Betting** [05:22] — Middle betting exploits differing lines between books. Example: betting over 67.5 on FanDuel and under 68.5 on BetMGM. If the total is exactly 68, both bets win. It's a low-risk lottery ticket, often free due to arbitrage, with a small guaranteed profit and a chance for a big win. - **Positive EV Betting** [07:17] — Plus EV betting involves finding bets with a mathematical edge, but it has variance. The creator compares it to his quant trading job, where many small edges lead to profit over time. Example: betting Ricky Council over 15.5 points on PrizePicks when other books had 18.5, indicating value. - **Promo Conversion** [09:47] — Sportsbooks offer lucrative promotions to attract customers. The creator recommends starting with promos, especially for small bankrolls. A 30% profit boost is significant compared to the 4-5% house edge, making it a plus EV bet. He advises looking for no-brainer promos daily. ### Conclusion The video concludes that the three main strategies—arbitrage, middle betting, and plus EV betting—are how professional bettors beat the books, and promos are an additional lucrative opportunity. The creator encourages viewers to start with arbitrage and promos to build confidence and bankroll. ## Transcript going to be breaking down the main strategies I use to make money on college basketball, which is finally starting. I love college basketball. You know, in my opinion, basketball, it's the most profitable sport to bet on. The NBA, college basketball, there's just so many games, so much line movement, so many line discrepancies. There's tons of profitable bets. Basketball is the sport I've made the most money betting on by far. It's been insanely lucrative. So, in this video, I'm going to run through the main strategies that I recommend using to actually beat the books. This is how the sharps, the pros, the syndicates are making money betting on college basketball. So, first things first, a lot of people already know this, but as a sharp sports better, if you want to make money, if you want to maximize your profits, you need to be using multiple sports books. I've used hundreds of books since I've started gambling. You never know because all these books want to be unique. They set their own odds. They set their own lines. We never know which book is going to have the best value on a given day. Sometimes prize picks has a ton of value. Other days, DraftKings or FanDuel had better value. So the more books you're using, the more outs you have. That means more books means more recommendation. You know, if you want to bet on, let's say, Florida in the first basketball game of the year, you better be betting them at minus 166 on FanDuel, not minus 185 on Fliff. You have to be line shopping. That's step one to making money sports betting. This applies to any sport, NFL, whatever. You know, if you're betting something at -1 185 when you could get -16, you're screwed from the beginning, right? That's like buying a stock at $185 that you could get for $166. It just doesn't make any sense. That's a surefire way to lose money. But without further ado, let's start getting into some of the main strategies that I personally use and have used for the past 5 years to make money. So the first strategy that is amazing during basketball season, it is so good especially for college basketball. The first strategy is called arbitrage. So, I actually started gambling my sharp sports betting journey with arbitrage. It's an amazing strategy and it makes risk-free guaranteed profits. I realize that sounds too good to be true, but I'm going to take you through some examples. This is not a get-richqu scheme. You are literally day trading discrepancies between books to guarantee small little risk-free profits, sometimes bigger risk-free profits. So, the reason I love arbitrage and recommend it to all new sports betterers is you will make money every single day. If you are doing arbitrage correctly, every single day you're going to make money. You're going to see your bankroll grow and grow and grow. So, it will increase your confidence that, hey, I can actually beat the books. And from there, you can start to layer on other strategies that have more variance, ups and downs, like positive EV betting. But arbitrage is simple, okay? All books set their own odds. Out of the millions of odds across books, you know, maybe.1% 2% of plays, two books get so out of sync that you can bet equal and opposite outcome. So in this example, you can see the math on the screen. This odds jam user was making $70 risk-free profit, and he bet this live while the game was going on. So right when the game ends, he gets back his money plus $70 profit. So he bet Portland State plus 14 a.5 on Bet MGM at plus 135 odds. And then on Bet MGM at plus 135 odds. And then on FanDuel, he bet UMKC minus4 1.5 at plus 100 odds. So one of these two bets will win, one will lose. Right? You're betting equal and opposite outcomes. But because FanDuel and Bet MGM were so out of sync, they had such different prices. Regardless of what happened, if UMKC won by 25 points, they covered the spread. Or if Portland State covered the spread, it didn't matter, right? He was making a guaranteed profit regardless of the result. So that's arbitrage. This play made $70 risk-free. So you try to hit as many, you try to bet as many ARB opportunities as you can every single day, and you're using a bunch of sports books, right? When you're arbitrage betting, you're hedging two books against each other. you're day trading discrepancies between them. So, as an arbitrage better, you want to use as many books as possible. More books, more ARB opportunities means more risk-free profit for you. Obviously, some states have more sports books, so they're example, I live in Virginia. There's tons of sports books. FanDuel, Bet MGM, Fliff, there's tons of books. So, try to sign up for every single sports book in your state. Most of these books have pretty lucrative deposit matches, signup bonuses, and then you can start arbitrage betting. Give it a try. I've made some fulllength YouTube tutorials on arbitrage. You can see a thumbnail here, and I'll add a link in the description to this tutorial I made on arbitrage betting. But let's move on to the second strategy. I don't want to bore you guys with arbitrage, which is a strategy I love. I use every single day, but I've also talked about it in other videos. So the next sharp strategy, this is another strategy the pros use, syndicates use. So middle betting is all books at their own lines, right? And sometimes books have different lines from one another. So I'll give you an example. Check out this play that an odds jam user hit on FanDuel. He bet the over 67 half first half total points. And on Bet MGM, the line wasn't 67 half, it was 68 half. So he bet the under 68 it was 68 half. So he bet the under 68 half on bet MGM. So he has two bets, over 67 half, under 68 half. If there's exactly 68 points in the first half, then he wins both bets. So that is a middle, right? You're basically hoping, I call them lowrisk lottery tickets. You're basically hoping a very low probability event that there's exactly 68 points in the first half. You're hoping that happens. that's what you're rooting for because if they're 68 points, then he's going to win both plays. However, what you're going to notice why medals are so awesome is you can essentially get them for free. So, in this case, no matter what happened, if there was 50 points, 100 points, 68 points in the first half, this guy was making a risk-free profit. So, it was an arbitrage bet that was also a middle. So, he's making like five bucks the screen here. He's making approximately five bucks no matter what. But then he has this rare little shot where if there's exactly 68 points, he's going to win like 225 bets for only risking a little bit of capital. So lottery tickets. You're hoping for a kind of unique outcome to occur. And again, this is how the sharps, the pros actually make money. datadriven strategies like middle betting and arbitrage betting. But let's continue to move on to some other strategies. So next we have plus EVV betting which I absolutely love. However, plus EV betting unlike middle betting, unlike arbitrage, it is not a hedge strategy. It is not a risk-free strategy. You're going to have ups and downs. I mean you can even see in August, which was one of my best months sports betting, I had a ton of profit. I had a lot of red days, right? So, positive EV betting, you have some ups and downs, but if your bets actually truly have an edge, have an advantage, you're going to make money long term, which was very similar to my job as a quant trader. Every single day, you make thousands of trades, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. Sometimes every trade has a small edge. Some days you don't make money, but over the course of each month, you will make money just due to the law of large numbers. assuming your trades actually have a mathematical advantage. So, in sports betting, plus EV bets can either be line discrepancies or discrepancies in odds. So, I'll give you an example. In a prize picks play, this is an old example. I was digging up some of my old college basketball bets to use in this college basketball bets to use in this video, but I bet Ricky Council over 15 and a half points on prize picks. Why did I like this? Well, every other sports book, all these multi-billion dollar companies like Bet 365, DraftKings, every other book had his line higher at 18.5, right? So, I'm using lines, odds on other sports books as a source of information, a source of data. And you may be thinking, you could have middle bet this, which is true. I could have bet his over 15 half on prize picks, his under 18 half on DraftKings, pay the juice. But if he has 16 to 18 points, I'm going to win both bets. But basically, I I realized prize picks is the book slipping up offering value. So, I'm just going to take the over. So, again, DraftKings, even if you don't use DraftKings, you want to look at their odds, look at their lines when you are placing bets, right? DraftKings is a 20 billion company or whatever, you want to put some weight into their odds, into their lines, because again, DraftKings has teams of data scientists. they're taking millions of dollars in betting volume. You want to put some weight into their lines, even if DraftKings isn't legal in your state. So, the final thing, the main strategy I recommend starting with, especially if you have a smaller bankroll, is promos, promo conversion. So, all of these books, right, are in ruthless competition for new customers. FanDuel, DraftKings, everyone is competing for the same people. People want customers to show up to their website. FanDuel wants you betting on FanDuel, not DraftKings, right? It's a marketing game for these books. So, a lot of them, almost every single day, these books run on lucrative promos, other days it's FanDuel, DraftKings, whatever. But basically, the first thing I do, and you'll notice this if you tune in to any of my live streams, but the first thing I do is I look for where are the no-brainer promos, where are the profit boosts. You know, a 30% profit boost is a ton. The average VIG or juice or house edge that books bake into their markets for books bake into their markets for college basketball is 4% to 5% for mainline markets, maybe 8% for player props. So, basically, whatever you bet, if you're getting 30% better odds with a profit boost, is going to be a profitable bet, a plus EV bet. When I started gambling, you know, I only had like a $5,000 bankroll at first, is I would get home from work and the first thing I would do is I would pull up Bet MGM, DraftKings, FanDuel, and all I no-brainer promos, where where are the 50% profit boosts, the massive discounts. That is the first thing I would look for in a given day because ever going to make. But regardless, I hope you enjoyed this video on college Arbitrage, middle betting, plus EV betting. Those are the three main strategies pros, syndicates, and sharps used to beat the books and actually win long term. And then also promos, right? Even though most of these promos have Even though most of these promos have max bet sizes of $25 to $50, they are insanely lucrative. It really adds up if you're taking advantage of the free squares, the 30% profit boost. You'll notice that you're able to actually if books in your state, you're finding these no-brainer promos. It really adds up in terms of your net profit. But I hope you enjoyed this video. Comment any questions and thank you guys so much for watching. Thanks so much for your time.