---
title: 'Sports Betting Strategies - 3 Methods That Actually Work'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=TlYNbsFENxE'
video_id: 'TlYNbsFENxE'
date: 2026-09-22
duration_sec: 493
channel: 'Thomas Buckland'
---

# Sports Betting Strategies - 3 Methods That Actually Work

> Source: [Sports Betting Strategies - 3 Methods That Actually Work](https://youtube.com/watch?v=TlYNbsFENxE)

## Summary

This video outlines the three core types of sports betting strategies: bottom-up modeling, top-down market chasing, and movers (capital deployment). The creator explains each approach, its pros and cons, and offers guidance on choosing the right one based on personality, skills, and goals.

### Key Points

- **Introduction to Three Betting Strategies** [00:01] — The video will cover three core sports betting strategies and how to choose based on skills, experience, and goals.
- **Bottom-Up Modeling** [00:14] — Creating player or team ratings from scratch, calibrating them, and using Monte Carlo simulations to generate predictions that can be compared against market odds to find an edge.
- **Modeling Advice for Beginners** [01:48] — Start with less competitive sports (e.g., lacrosse, darts, snooker) to increase chances of beating the market, then reinvest into more competitive areas.
- **Independence in Modeling** [02:10] — Ratings must be created independently from external services to avoid overfitting and stacking similar ideas.
- **Top-Down Market Chasing** [02:37] — Watching odds movements and trying to catch the original price before other sportsbooks adjust. Requires odd screens and understanding of market patterns.
- **Odd Screen Examples** [03:03] — Don Best and SpankObs (now SpotObs) are tools that show lines and prices, helping bettors spot sharp moves and grab better prices at slower sportsbooks.
- **Challenges of Top-Down** [04:14] — Liquidity and account limiting issues are common; accounts can get limited quickly when betting on moving lines, unlike modeling which offers more leeway.
- **Movers (Capital Deployment)** [05:01] — Movers are individuals who place large bets for modelers or syndicates, earning a profit share. They solve liquidity issues for those with big bankrolls.
- **Liquidity Issues in Sports Betting** [05:45] — Even large operations struggle to get enough money down due to sports' illiquidity compared to other markets, making movers essential.
- **Choosing Based on Personality** [06:39] — The creator prefers modeling for problem-solving and higher ROI with lower volume, while top-down suits those who enjoy many small-edge bets.
- **Industry Knowledge and Resources** [07:19] — Movers need deep industry experience and networks. For learning, YouTube is great for modeling, while podcasts are recommended for top-down strategies.

### Conclusion

The video emphasizes that all three strategies can be profitable, but success depends on matching the approach to your personality and skill set. It also highlights the importance of continuous learning and understanding the nuances of each method.

## Transcript

Hey, so in this video we're going to outline the three core types of sports betting strategies and which you should choose depending on your skills, experience and goals. Tell us your thoughts. The first is what we talk about on this channel quite a bit,
which is just modeling. So this is basically bottom-up ratings, is where you create individual player or team-based ratings for a specific sport. It's kind of like the creation of a number similar to the odds and then you adjust those odds based
on whatever parameters you're using calibrate it up and you end up with a number or a prediction or a you know monte carlo simulation on a game that then you can work with the odds and basically
adjust it or reference it against the market number or the line to create an edge on either side or neither so this is what we do for all of our models via like whether it's we use replet for
all of our stuff but basically the back end is still python and you can see it runs through it pulls all these different numbers out same for rugby and then if we have the cricket model as well it works in a similar way a little a little bit more complex for the sport but the idea is
the same we have a player ratings model that goes into a team ratings model that then gets basically analyzed in main.py and it creates a prediction of a specific game so this is before we start
saying it this is just introduction data but that's what you're kind of trying to do you're trying to build a model from the ground up that has individual plane ratings with enough data in the background to create basically accurate
more accurate than the market prediction the more accurate your model the more you earn between the edge of you versus the market pretty self-explanatory but worth mentioning and this could be for any sport or any method so it doesn't
has to be for the NFL which obviously not going to beat if you're watching this video it's more for somebody looking to kind of get started with a low level sport so if you're massively into lacrosse or grass hockey or darts or something or snooker pick those for a lot easier to beat sport and then model those out because you much more likely to actually beat them and earn money
and then you can reinvest your time and money into something more competitive and difficult that will have higher levels. The only key, though, is you create your ratings independently from any of the service or information. Otherwise, they might be using the same approach as you
and you just stack the same ideas on top of each other and that's just going to lead to overfitting, even though you won't realize you're doing it. So that's kind of like the first approach. The second approach is basically called top-down or market chasing.
Now, the top-down concept, also called scene chasing, is basically where you watch odds, where you watch sports betting lines, and when they move, you basically try and catch the movement in another place
before it has time to move. Now, there's a ton of nuance to this, and you will need an odd scheme, So I'll just quickly show you a couple of examples. So the most famous on screen is Don Beth. This is the one that's been around for the longest and it kind of looks like this.
It looks like a little bit like a stock ticker almost. This is a nicer version of it. But it will tell you the lines on individual sports and the prices for each one.
And the idea is that when a sharp sportsbook moves, say for example a circle or a pinnacle, other sportsbooks will be slower to move and you can get the old original quote-unquote better price
at those slower to move sportsbooks now like i mentioned there's a million nuances with this so just remember that people who do this well make seven to eight figures a year it's not something you can just come up and work off their normal triggers and make a crazy amount of money
it does work it's very very easy to get signed probably what i recommend is you just get inside but it's not something that's going to make crazy money. SpankObs, which is now apparently called SpotObs,
with their nice AI-built site, is basically originally created by Spanky, who's a well-known person in the sports betting industry. But the idea is the same You have feeds from all of the sportsbooks When a sharp sportsbook can move you try and catch that original late price and as a result you can basically earn money through
there but the difficult part is not so much the odd screens or the triggers but it's to learn the patterns and the flow of money and you need to be careful of fake moves and things like that why i don't love this strategy for the medium to long term is because there's a lot of liquidity
issues and a lot of limiting issues. So if you go and bet a number that moves one minute later and 20 people have bet it at the same time, it's pretty obvious what's going on and your account will just get limited really, really quickly as opposed to if you're at least modeling or you're
building a number, you have a lot more leeway. That's my experience. We've had accounts limited when we're in losses for doing this top-down method. It's very, very hard that on the modeling And then the final one is movers. So this is basically just getting down money. This
is becoming a liquidity option for bags themselves. So they're generally called movers in the industry and these are the people who actually place the bets and deploy capital for other people. Now they generally work with modelers or originators of some sort, but the core
job is that the modeler doesn't want to go down and try and spend days getting 5, 6, seven figures down if they really trust their model. So as a result, they work with people like this to enable it, and there's some sort of profit share,
profit-setting motive, depending on how you work. This is actually probably the most difficult one to get into because you have to really know what you're doing. And as operations increase and bankrolls increase,
most syndicates or large, large, large-scale operations have issues with liquidity overwinning. They know which team to be at what number. the issue is they can't get enough down for their personal preferences.
Now, unlike obviously commodities or equities or currencies or anything like that, sports is very illiquid even the massive sports in comparison So meaning if you have an edge on a model and you have a massive amount of capital to deploy you still going to actually have massive issues getting down on that
bet. And this is when these movers come in. They help you get down on the individual lines of, you can say, hey, can I get 10 grand, 100k down on this market at this price? And they will try
and undo that. The better the person, the more amount they'll be able to get down. and this is why sports betting can be pretty difficult because you go and basically win on the modeling side and win on the deployment and capital side
so yeah in conclusion those are the three options you basically want to choose something that suits your personality and feels that best I don't see this talked about much online but I think personality of how you want to bet is that
so I like the problem solving modeling side and I don't really mind if I get a higher ROI but a lower volume of bets I prefer that. Top down is the opposite. You have a crazy amount of bets but generally they're only
one to two percent edge. So if you're looking for a movable option you do have to have a good network, you do have to have lots of sportsbooks and liquidity is a must. You also need to have good industry experience and understand how the markets work themselves, which sportsbooks will
emit and when, how to deploy capital. This is why I don't think that's really applicable to the jobs. and the industry is very closed on this so all the information around these processes tends to be quite underground
for modelling for example there's tons of content on YouTube you can have a look at our content have a look at others just see who you vibe with and learn from them for the screen down or the screen or top down approach
there's a lot of good podcasts on this tends to be the best place to go for example thank you to you kind of that is a good place to start for any fitness although I do think there's some nuance to his content as well.
But yeah, like anything, with any of these methods, you can make good money. It's just how you can add value to somebody and how effective you are with each individual process. Okay, thanks for watching. Let me know if you think there's any other options
that don't fit into these three categories that would be interesting to you. All right, thanks.