No Fluff: How I Made $400,000 Betting on Sports Part-Time & Why I Write Software for Bettors

[00:02] and i graduated from stanford in mathematics and computer science i'm a i'm a data guy i'm a software guy but there are two things that i really love betting on sports and beating the sportsbooks and the second one is pretty

[00:15] related but it's writing software to help myself bet on sports and beat the sportsbooks um i think why i've always been so fascinated by sports betting is unlike other forms of gambling like slots or roulette in sports betting you

[00:28] can actually have a mathematical profit margin over the sports book and win in videos are going to be about we are going to talk about becoming a more data driven a more mathematical and most importantly a more profitable sports

[00:45] bettor so there won't be any fancy graphics no fluff no bs i'm not a movie i hope you watch until the end of this video because we are going to talk about key concepts to making money in sports betting

[00:58] now me personally i have profited over four hundred thousand dollars since regulated sports betting came to the united states in 2018 i've never done it full-time and i would never even consider doing it full-time and in this

[01:11] video i'll try to weave in my experience to share show and prove to you to share show and prove to you everything that i am saying very briefly before we dive in i want to make very clear i'm not saying that

[01:23] sports betting in the us or canada is easy because it's absolutely not i have spent thousands of hours building models to help myself bet on sports writing software to identify line discrepancies and profitable betting opportunities it

[01:38] is not easy and sports betting is never going to be a game for the impatient those who want to get rich quick um and even the slow to be a great sports bettor you have to be fast disciplined and also mathematical um and that's kind

[01:52] of what we're going to talk about so before we dive in we can take a look very briefly at one of my sportsbook accounts um draftkings just to see you know before i started odds jam how seriously i was betting

[02:09] one of my many many sportsbook um accounts looks like so this is my draftkings and there are nights between sportsbooks i've had over fifty thousand dollars but spread across you know 35 plus bets all on bets that are

[02:22] mathematically profitable so you'll see wins and losses here nobody wins every time it's all about finding odds in your favor so that you win in the long run right it's kind of like investing you won't win every day as a profitable

[02:37] better you obviously won't win every bet but over the course of the long run you will make money and for me it's a pretty incredible feeling to know i have a mathematical profit margin in every bet that i place

[02:50] um sit back and ultimately watch games and let the math work itself out to make me money so yeah pretty crazy account the last thing i'll say before we dive in is that if you like this content

[03:03] please like please subscribe please share that's really the only way i know that this content is actually valuable to other people um just aside from hearing myself talk i'll also leave my email in the description

[03:15] and please do not hesitate to reach out with any questions so concept one this is the most important concept in sports betting and it is the realization that sports is a financial market just like the stock market my background is i

[03:30] worked as a quantitative trader on wall street and i understand this may sound very weird to some people but in sports betting it is not about sports it is not about picking winners it is about identifying inefficiencies and odds on

[03:44] u.s and canadian canadian sports books in taking advantage of them and there are a lot of inefficiencies on u.s and canadian sportsbooks now when i say financial market there are two important parts to that the

[03:57] first is that sportsbook odds are not static and second they are determined by supply and demand and things can move quickly just like the you know price of gamestop stock can go from 160 one minute to 200 the next minute in sports

[04:13] betting it's exactly the same if kevin durant gets injured maybe the nets in tonight's game go from minus 200 odds to minus 120 odds in a matter of minutes um the nets are less likely to win and that's reflected in the odds at the same

[04:28] time maybe kyrie irving is expected to have the ball more in his over 30 points have the ball more in his over 30 points goes from -110 odds to -210 odds um again odds are constantly constantly changing across bookmakers as new

[04:43] information is absorbed into the market and bettors place bets supply and demand so yeah that's concept one sports betting is a financial market and this is really important to understand because unlike other markets

[04:58] the sports betting market is very inefficient you have hundreds of bookmakers in this global ecosystem largely setting odds independently firing a bunch of algorithms trying to balance supply and demand on both sides

[05:13] and update their odds and this yields a lot of interesting inefficiencies which lot of interesting inefficiencies which we can look at right here how crazy the sports betting market is you have all these books running around

[05:28] trying to set their lines independently so here we can see an example from the yankees twins game tomorrow um you know the twins for example are plus you know the twins for example are plus 180 on bet mgm they're plus 215 on fox

[05:41] bet could you ever imagine placing a bet plus 180 odds on bet mgm if you knew you were getting plus 215 on fox bet it's absurd um now if you think these discrepancies and odds like the difference even between plus 200 and

[05:56] plus 215 is small then there is a massive massive flaw in your thinking um sports betting is all about earning one percent to you know seven percent profit margins on a daily basis and watching those returns compound and compound and

[06:12] you know if you think about the stock market people get rich investing in the stock market which returns like eight percent per year on average so imagine if you could earn three percent per day in sports right that is the goal earning

[06:28] a three percent return on capital every day in sports betting and watching your returns compound and compound and compound now let me tell you that is never never in your life gonna happen if you're placing bets at plus 180 odds and

[06:41] plus 200 odds when there's another sports book in your location giving you sports book in your location giving you plus 215 odds these small differences or seemingly small differences in sports book odds in the line discrepancies add

[06:54] up to a lot a lot of money in the long run so this is kind of an example of what all these sports betting markets setting lines independently looks like setting lines independently looks like um in real time

[07:09] in sports book odds is actually really fascinating and pretty mind boggling um right like it doesn't happen in the stock market it's not like i go to robin different price on apple stock it doesn't really make sense but in sports

[07:24] clicking one tab over from bar stool to bad mgm can really change your payout in so a lot of people may be wondering well that doesn't make much sense why do all why don't they just copy each other and the reason for that because it's a great

[07:39] question is all sports books they largely want to be unique draftkings they don't want the same odds as fanduel they don't want the same odds as badmgm or pinnacle right we wouldn't need hundreds of sportsbooks in this global

[07:52] sports betting ecosystem if every single sportsbook had the exact same odds it wouldn't make sense these sports books largely want to be unique set their own lines have their own models and do it themselves

[08:06] from a sports betting perspective it works in favor of the books because you need multiple sportsbook accounts to be successful this is called line shopping and it's browsing odds between different

[08:19] bookmakers and only placing bets at the best possible odds you do not want to get ripped off by sportsbooks you should never be placing a bet on badmgm at plus 145 odds if you can go one tab over in your state and place that bet on

[08:33] draftkings at plus 160 odds so line chopping is a very important concept in sports betting and doing it ruthlessly adds up to a lot of money in the long run don't get ripped off by the sportsbooks only take bets on

[08:47] sportsbooks that are offering you the best odds um you know they're like 50 plus regulated and offshore bookmakers in the us and canada you should have as many accounts as possible it takes like two to three minutes to create an

[09:01] account um when i was actively actively really betting before i started odd jam i had like 30 or 40 sportsbook accounts that i like 30 or 40 sportsbook accounts that i used um you know win bet points bet

[09:13] william hill draftkings fanduel mgm that us tons of them you never know when there's going to be a great opportunity with great odds on a particular book so having more books it just increases the number of possible profitable betting

[09:26] opportunities that you can place more books the merrier in my opinion um the about in this video but it's worth mentioning is a lot of these sports books offer sign up bonuses if you make an account with them um draftkings

[09:41] fanduel caesars they all do it right and if you think about it be true like how are these sports books giving me a thousand dollars to sign up ruthless competition with a ton of commodity businesses right these are all

[09:55] commodity businesses they're sports books they accept the wagers draftkings has to compete with fanduel has to compete with pointsbet and they offer thousand dollars and free credits or some promotion to sign up um so knowing

[10:09] how to do these sports book sign up bonuses and promotions in a mathematically optimal way um can actually lead you to a lot of money so i started betting in pennsylvania but i went to new jersey

[10:22] with a friend i stayed in hoboken and i calculated at that time that new jersey sign up bonuses if you knew how to do them right in a mathematically optimal way between caesar's william hill like you add up everything um

[10:35] we're talking about like five figures that you can make just from sign up bonuses alone in new jersey so i would recommend online about signup bonuses but if you have questions you can also email us

[10:48] because this is one of the easiest ways to make money sports betting going to need multiple sportsbook accounts and that is limits um limits

[11:01] limits limits my least favorite word but this is a question i get a lot from friends former colleagues i've worked with is well if you're a profitable bigger in other words if you have a three percent edge you're betting a

[11:15] thirty dollars an expected return why can't you just start betting bigger and the reason is because of limits in the business model of us and canadian break it to you you're never going to make a million dollars off of a u.s

[11:30] regulated or canadian sports book and the reason for that is limits this is why sports betting is unscalable and honestly becoming a professional sports bettor is not lucrative and everybody who claims to be a professional sports

[11:44] bettor is really just starting a company to try to sell you something in sports betting the sky is realistically not the limit because of bookmaker limits now when i say limit all i mean is if you start betting out on fanduel for

[11:58] example when i started betting on fanduel i could place five thousand dollars per bet on basically anything um if fanduel determines that you are a winning better a mathematically profitable better that limit will slowly

[12:12] come down now i can barely bet more than 50 dollars on fanduel and on the other hand if you're losing better the sportsbook will take your limit up so bet a lot of money on all of these sports books but if these sports books

[12:26] determine you are smart and mathematically profitable these limits will slowly slowly come down and again this is why you probably don't know anybody smart who is a professional sports bettor and why it's really an

[12:38] industry that attracts zero talent in technical people it's solely because of limits regulated sports books are not in the business of taking people's money who are smart um they are in the business of limiting people who are

[12:51] smart in keeping around the losers that's just how the industry works and that also means if you know people who claim to be really great bettors but they're not getting limited they're probably just not profitable getting

[13:04] limited is oddly a sign of success um i'll be very clear here limits are a function of profitability i've run models to prop that that's gotten me limited i've obviously written software to identify line discrepancies that has

[13:19] gotten me limited if you are making money you will inevitably get limited making money and you aren't getting limited you know profit and loss because you probably aren't making money um

[13:35] yeah i've personally been limited by almost 20 bookmakers at this point which pretty crazy but again it's just part of the game this is just how the industry works sportsbooks are in the business of limiting winners and keeping around the

[13:49] this isn't meant to discourage anybody from betting on sports obviously sports you're making money and it can still be lucrative it's just to say that you're probably never gonna make four hundred

[14:02] thousand dollars three hundred thousand dollars off of one sports book you're going to get limited well before that the goal is to make twenty thousand maybe off of five ten or fifteen sports books that is really your goal here the

[14:16] power is in the number of sports books you have and again with this crazy wave of regulation and legalization in the u.s as well as canada there are a lot of their signup bonuses take advantage of them make as much money as you can but

[14:31] you will lose some accounts um like again here we can see my fanduel profit 38 000 not terrible but i can tell you this will never probably even pass 50 000 because i can barely even place a bet on the product anymore um

[14:46] have one final point i'll leave you with because it's kind of fun kind of interesting is in the us different states have different sports books for example i'm in virginia right

[14:58] now so there's one bet i can bet on win bet if i'm in pennsylvania i can't so long story short you do not need to physically live in a state to bet on that sport states on that state's sports books you do not

[15:12] need to live in the particular state um so i actually you know i've spent some nashville tennessee i've created the sportsbook accounts done the signup promotions or vegas so i highly recommend if you are traveling check if

[15:26] you're in a regulated location and if you are you can still bet on sports at least take advantage of the sign up bonuses and have some fun sports sign up bonuses and have some fun sports betting while you're there

[15:40] case of line shopping so basically there was this fan dual promo and you know i don't want to spend too much time talking about it but on every tuesday you wanted to go through in every single baseball game every single baseball game

[15:54] on tuesday you wanted to bet 25 on a player to hit a home run essentially you were given some bonus if you did this so every tuesday you know a bunch of people would be talking about who should i bet on fanduel you know for

[16:08] this specific game to hit a home run so let's go over a simple use case of line shopping and just kind of see how easy it is um so what we can see here is it's pretty late at night so we see

[16:20] only three bucks have posted player to hit a home run markets for tomorrow but this is the reds marlins game so let's say you wanted to get a head start what you'd want to do is look for players where fanduel is simply offering you the

[16:33] best odds right why would you ever place your promotion bet on alex jackson over 0.5 home runs so to hit a home run plus 300 when pinnacle sportsbook the sharpest sports book in the world which is on the odds jam plus ev page is

[16:48] is on the odds jam plus ev page is giving you plus 359 right this plus 300 is pretty clearly a crappy bet so all you want to do essentially is look for ones like this right like this one is great here we see

[17:00] fanduel is offering you the best odds plus 230 odds and that's on joey votto to hit a home run he's obviously been pretty hot the odds are better than betfair the odds are better than pinnacle so maybe joey

[17:12] votto is a good choice or maybe sanchez is a good choice plus 440. this one also may be kyle farmer plus 550 is only plus 500 to the home run on betfair and only plus 437 on pinnacle so

[17:26] this is a pretty powerful tool because essentially if you would have selected the best lines from fanduel over the course of the promotion you would have netted over twenty five hundred dollars just from this one specific promotion on

[17:40] fanduel embedding the best home run lines um so in my opinion this is really what i love about data driven software products right no one can argue with live real-time odds this isn't a bs model this isn't bs picks right this is

[17:56] literally real-time data and the way you know you are getting good odds and you are making a good bet on fanduel for this promotion is you place bets where fanduel is offering you the best odds on that player to hit a home run

[18:10] fact that if you want to make money sports betting you are going to need multiple sportsbook accounts and you are going to need to line shop ruthlessly earning like two percent returns three percent returns on a daily basis and

[18:25] compound and compound now what's really interesting is if you think about all the different sportsbook accounts you could get in new jersey then if you think about all the offshore bucks like bovada bet u.s if you add up

[18:38] the total amount of odds on these sites at any given time we are talking about millions and millions and millions of odds and it's a lot these odds are always moving as we kind of talked about so in my opinion at least it's nearly

[18:53] impossible to find good bets manually it's not going to happen odds are always changing good lines don't last forever anybody who's made serious money sports betting will tell you you need good software if you actually expect to

[19:07] profit in sports betting um that's why i initially built odds jam right i wanted to make software to save myself time and make myself more money um of course at basically every sports book it's not as useful for me but hopefully for you you

[19:23] know it can save you time and make you money we process millions and millions of odds every single minute powered by hundreds of hundreds of servers to show you some of the best betting opportunities as well as live odds from

[19:36] around the world it's a pretty powerful tool because there's no fluff no bs no bs picks no bs models we just build tools based on real-time odds and what's better than building tools based on real market data

[19:50] we also power a lot of companies in the industry through our real-time api of live odds so i encourage you we'll talk about odd share more in other videos but to check it out we have a lot of free features a bet tracker free line

[20:03] that can improve your betting game even just line shopping if you are betting on sports just make sure you are getting the best possible odds and you are not getting ripped off by the sportsbooks um it's really important

[20:16] and at odds we're just getting started we are building tons of new tools based on live odds from around the world paired with historical data to build some insanely insanely useful tools for our users we hope

[20:30] with odds jam trying to bring really the best of silicon valley engineering directly into a sports betting product for retail sports bettors in the us as well as canada so that's a bit about odd jam i hope you

[20:44] enjoyed this video again if you did if you want to hear about more topics odds boost promotion sign up bonuses i mean whatever it is feel free to email me or just comment like share subscribe it's good feedback for us that this content

[20:59] is actually valuable to other people and other people are interested in actually making money sports betting so again thank you for your time my name is alex and until the next one