--- title: 'How I Got Started Sports Betting (And Made $800,000 Profit)' source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=IDxuFIY6_l0' video_id: 'IDxuFIY6_l0' date: 2026-08-04 duration_sec: 619 --- # How I Got Started Sports Betting (And Made $800,000 Profit) > Source: [How I Got Started Sports Betting (And Made $800,000 Profit)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=IDxuFIY6_l0) ## Summary The video chronicles the speaker's journey into professional sports betting, starting from a background in poker and quantitative trading at Susquehanna International Group (SIG). He explains how he leveraged sign-up bonuses, arbitrage, and middle betting to build a profitable side hustle that eventually became his full-time career, amassing over $800,000 in profit. ### Key Points - **Background and Initial Interest** [00:02] — Speaker has been sharp sports betting for six years, making over $800,000. He initially planned a healthcare career but loved poker's math and strategy aspects. - **Job at SIG** [00:56] — A friend recommended Susquehanna International Group (SIG), a quant trading firm that values poker skills. He interned and got a job as a quantitative trader, undergoing two years of training without real money. - **Investing in Education** [02:05] — He emphasizes investing in sports betting education before risking real money, tracking bets, studying sharp bettors, and reading books and articles. - **Sports Betting Legalization** [02:31] — When sports betting legalized in the US, he lived on the PA-NJ border. Colleagues discussed sign-up bonuses and offers, leading him to start with Bet Rivers' $250 deposit match. - **Sign-Up Bonus Strategy** [03:37] — He drove to New Jersey to complete sign-up bonuses, hedging them against other books for guaranteed profit, quickly making $5,000-$10,000. - **Traveling for Bonuses** [04:07] — He traveled to other states, like Colorado, to exploit risk-free bets. For example, Sports Illustrated's $7,500 risk-free bet yielded $4,000 profit after hedging. - **Discovering Arbitrage** [05:27] — He researched sharp betting strategies and found arbitrage, which exploits price discrepancies between sportsbooks for guaranteed profit. He made $40,000 in 3 months. - **Middle Betting and Positive EV** [08:11] — He moved to middle betting and positive EV betting, which involve playing over/under on different books to win both if the outcome falls in a range. - **Quitting Job** [09:31] — He viewed quitting his job as an asymmetric bet: low downside (could return to work) and high upside (full-time betting). He was confident he'd make money. ### Conclusion The speaker's journey shows that a background in quantitative trading and poker, combined with disciplined bankroll management and exploiting market inefficiencies, can lead to profitable sports betting. He encourages viewers to invest in education and treat betting as a business. ## Transcript going to be kind of running through how I got into gambling. At this point, I've been Sharp Sports Betting for about six years now, and I've made over $800,000 I've used a bunch of different sports books. But one question that some people ask me is just how did you start realizing sports betting was your thing? This was something you wanted to do as a side hustle and ultimately try to make some money from. I'm kind of going to I thought I was going to work in healthcare. When I was in college, I always loved poker. I loved going to the casino with my friends on weekends and amounts of money or we would play it in the dorm room. I like the math aspect, the strategy aspect. Poker is very different from, let's say, playing roulette. Poker is a game, right, where there's a lot of math, there's a lot of theory, there's optimal strategies, and I really enjoyed learning about that. So, one of my friends recommended that I look into a company called Susuana International Group. And this is a company where there's literally a Wall Street Journal article about it. They make you play poker at work. So, they basically are big believers that if you understand poker, poker strategy and also be a good trader. You will understand risk. You will understand bet sizing essentially as a trader because SIG is a quant trading firm. So I applied for an internship at SIG and I ultimately got a job at SIG. So basically as a quantitative trader, SIG was very big believers in making you learn everything about trading. So I literally had tests. I did trading simulators. And for the first two years of joining SIG, you're not actually trading real money. You're just learning. They are literally grilling you about options. The they really stress to you, we want you to invest in letting you risk a dollar of their money. Right? When you work at a trading You're typically trading the company's money. They don't want you trading a dollar of their money until you prove that you know exactly what you're doing. So, that kind of stuck with me in sports betting. I'm a big believer in investing your sports betting education before I dove in to sports betting and started betting larger and larger amounts of money. I tracked my bets ruthlessly. I studied ruthlessly. I read a bunch of books, articles, listened to things about how are the sharp bers, the syndicates, the pro betterers actually winning. Long story short, I basically just worked as a trader at SIG and played poker on the side for fun until sports betting legalized. So when sports betting legalized in the US, it it's it's on a state-by-state basis and I basically lived on the Pennsylvania New Jersey border. So a lot of people at the office essentially started talking about sports betting. They were traders, right? They were people who loved gambling. They loved poker and they were working all day long in financial markets, trading, gambling in financial talking about sports betting, all the sports books launching, all of the new signup bonuses, all of the signup offers. Essentially, one of my bosses and colleagues at the time was telling me, "Hey, you should do some of these money." He helped me out. He knew I was a broke kid just leaving college. So, I think one of the first sports books I signed up for was Bet Rivers. So, Bet signed up for was Bet Rivers. So, Bet Rivers was a $250 deposit match. So, basically, you deposit $250 and you have $500 in your account. And you just have to play through that initial $250 before you turn it into withdrawable cash. So, he [clears throat] basically showed me you can take these signup bonuses, you can hedge them against other books, and you can convert them into guaranteed profit. There were like 15 sports books coming into Pennsylvania, 15 sports books coming into New Jersey, and $250 is a lot of money for clicking a few book. And once you know the strategy, it's literally free money. So, what I started to do on weekends and after work is I would drive to New Jersey. I would do all the sign up bonuses and pretty quickly I made $5,000, $10,000. And then I actually started traveling to other states. So, one long weekend, I because there was a Sportsbook. I have a video on it. Sports Illustrated Sportsbook had a $7500 risk-free bet. So, what that means is you place a bet for up to 7.5K. So, I saved up that money, you know, kind of reinvested my profits. And if you lose that bet, then you get your money back, which is insane if you think about it, right? Usually, when you lose a 7.5K bet, you just lose 7.5K. But in this case, you actually get your money back. you can do is you can take this risk-free bet. You can hedge against another sports book to [snorts] essentially convert this promo into a risk-free profit of about $4,000, which I explained in the video. So I went to Colorado just to do the sportsbook signup bonuses, rip all of them, and even after flights and stuff like that, I made at least $4,000 profit. I came back to Pennsylvania and I was getting super invested into sports betting. I was spending time traveling. I was spending a ton of time researching it and I kind of realized like, hey, I do love trading. I love gambling in financial markets. I thought my job was really fun and I was learning a lot, but I also love sports and sports gambling in my opinion was more fun. So, I started to research other strategies. What are other ways that you can being a more data driven person playing poker, a lot of the BS in the industry, like, oh, just buy my picks and you're going to, you know, make money. I've never lost a bet. Stuff like Vegas Dave, that that obviously I kind of knew was BS. So, I really started to zone in on short betting strategies and read things. What are people doing elsewhere? What's working? And I came across What's working? And I came across arbitrage. So, arbitrage is a financial strategy and it's really effective in niche markets, right? inefficient markets. So, crypto arbitrage used to be a thing and people made a lot of money in crypto arbitrage, but at this point, crypto markets, at least for Bitcoin, Ethereum, are relatively liquid. So, there's not a ton of opportunity there. interesting about it is you have hundreds of sports books entering the US and they're all setting their own prices, their own unique odds. FanDuel wants to be unique. They don't want the same odds as DraftKings. So, FanDuel has DraftKings. So arbitrage is a very simple strategy. You can see an example simple strategy. You can see an example here from arbitron between two no limit sports books novee and profitex that are legal in nearly every state. So the his example was on a player named Anthony Black. But arbitrage is just when you can hedge for a guaranteed profit. You can play the over on one book, the under on a different book, and because they're so out of sync, you can ensure a what he did here. You can see the math on the screen. He made $100 risk-free, guaranteed profit. Not particularly bad for clicking a few buttons. So, I started to arbitrage bet. I started to look for these plays manually. I started to dabble with creating my own software to find myself arbitrage bets because realized, wow, sometimes these sports books are super out of sync. They have arbitrage bet to make money. And I made like $40,000 in 3 months. So, I would arbitrage bets. I would go into work, gamble in financial markets, and then I would come home and I would gamble in sports markets with my own money. I night long and all these profitable bets. So, from that point on, arbitrage is a great strategy because it's risk-free profit. So, you can see to learn about arbitrage. They give trainings on it. It's an amazing strategy. And again, what's people love about it is there's no variance. You just win every single day. you're not necessarily getting the highest expected return, but you win every single day. So, it's nice to see an all green calendar and just make money day trading these discrepancies between books. But I started to get interested in, well, arbitrage is cool. I'm making money, but are there any other strategies? Like, are there any strategies I'm willing to try out some riskier strategies? And that's how I ultimately stumbled into middle betting and positive EV betting. So you can see an example of a middle right here on Jackson Smith. So middle betting is basically just like all books have the have different odds. They also have different lines from one another. So middle betting is again you're kind of day trading the books. All of these Middle betting is when you can play the over and the under. Obviously one of the example right here with Jackson Smith. One of these bets is going to win. The over the under. This middle was between FanDuel and Fliff. But if Jackson Smith falls within like a range of 11 yards, then I'm going to win both plays. I'm going to win my over, I'm going to win my under, you're buying low, selling high. Essentially, that's what you're doing as a middle better. a quantitative trader. So, I loved trader, as an investor, you're always looking to buy low and sell high. There's so many recreational bers who are just like, "Oh, I love Jackson That's not how you think as a sharp better. It's what's the price, what's the line, is there a middle opportunity, is there an arbitrage opportunity? So, from that point on, I kind of realized I love this sports betting stuff. I'm sports betting industry and at least get to bet on sports full-time for a living. And worst case, once I quit my job, if sports betting gets, you know, banned again in the United States, I can probably find another job. So, I kind of viewed it as an asymmetric bet where if I quit my job, what's the worst case of money. I mean, I was very confident I betting, especially because I would have more time to do it. I didn't have to go I would make at least some money sports betting. But, I wasn't positive if I would make more money than just staying as a trader. Ultimately, I figured, hey, the worst case is probably I apply for for a job in a year or so, and that would suck. But the pretty low downside, but that's kind of my journey into sports betting because some people have asked. I hope you found it valuable and thank you guys so much for your time. Let me know other video ideas.