Why Most Sports Bettors Never Win

[00:02] winners if you're doing that you're trying to predict the future and next few minutes I'll show you how you can start your journey to winning where can start your journey to winning where so many people

[00:19] I've been a pro better for over 20 years I started out as a card counter attacking casino blackjack games then moved on to other things and now I focus on sports betting first let's talk about what profitable sports betting isn't I

[00:33] got so many $100,000 plus tickets nobody made more money than sports betting me it's not a get-rich quick scheme don't be fooled by those who pretend that sports betting is about massive payouts and long shot wins there's a reason

[00:47] Sports books focus on those things and show you the big Winners they want you to believe sports betting is like a lottery where you can risk a little to win a life-changing amount of money in truth sports betting

[01:00] is a process it's about finding the small edges that can exist everywhere betting those edges and then grinding out a profit over time find the edge BET The Edge appropriately and then rinse and repeat that's the process it's also

[01:16] about probability let's find your first Edge and that will help explain probability uh take this this coin for instance if I were to flip this coin there's a 50% chance that it'll land heads and a 50% chance it'll land tails

[01:30] simple straightforward probability now let's add in the price if we each risk $1 on the coin flip 50% of the time you'll win my dollar and 50% of the time I'll win your dollar if we do this again and again neither of us have an edge

[01:46] we'll just be swapping dollars back and forth for as long as we want to flip the coin however what if I put up A110 to your dollar each time you win you win $110 but each time you lose you only

[01:59] lose $1 you know that this is a good bet because you win an extra 10 cents when you win and you're going to win 50% of the time with each flip of the coin you gain 5 cents of value that's expected value now expected value is a term that

[02:14] sharp Sports betters throw around they call it EV it's what you can expect to win not necessarily what you're guaranteed to win this is why sports guaranteed to win this is why sports betting is about price not picks you're

[02:27] you're getting makes it a good bet for you when the price is better than the probability you have a positive expected Value Plus EV but how do you know the probability in sports betting it's a lot harder than

[02:43] just a coin flip sports betting deals with real life events those events have unforeseen variables like player injuries Randomness and miracles some people try to calculate their own probabilities but remember I told you

[02:57] predicting the future is hard if you're going to do that you need a lot of study sports book on the other hand some winning Sports betters rely on the market itself being somewhat efficient and they use that as their guide so

[03:12] Market there are two types of sports books those that take action from sharp betters and those which don't take sharp action and just follow what the sharp Sports books do people think that Sports books try to set a line so that half the

[03:27] betters are on one side and half the betters are on the other side but that's not really true in actuality it's only the sharp bers that tend to shape the line if these billion dooll companies that you see on every other television

[03:42] ad think that following the sharp Sports books is the way that they can make money then maybe it's the approach you should take too you can use sharp sportsbooks lines as your source of truth of what they believe the

[03:55] probability to be then see if the price offered at other sports books gives you positive expected value again it's just a process of probability and price in this case everyone has - 2 and A2 but there's a minus one available here at

[04:11] DraftKings so far this sounds simple but there's still a lot more to learn for instance there's no one universal sharp sports book that you can look towards as your sole source of Truth different sports books have strengths and

[04:24] weaknesses and how they set lines and a adjust for Sharp action a sports book that might be the sharpest for the NBA might not be as sharp in the NFL next you need to know how much to bet a lot of sports bets think that the reason

[04:38] they don't win is because of bankroll management as if bankroll management can be some magic formula that can turn bad sports betting into profitable sports betting well they're half right bankroll management might be a big reason why

[04:52] they're not winning but it's not any magic Elixir for what alss them chances are they're over betting their bankroll or maybe they don't operate with a bankroll at all this is John Kelly he developed a system known as the Kelly

[05:05] Criterion in its simplest form it says you should bet your Edge divided by the odds take our coin flip example from earlier you had a 5% Edge over me in the coin flipping Kelly betting would have you bet about 5% of your bank roll on

[05:20] every flip in sports betting since we can't exactly quantify our Edge using this full Kelly Criterion is very risky if we're over estimating our Edge that will lead to over betting our bankroll which that's a bad thing instead you can

[05:35] bet a fraction of Kelly such as a quarter or half of what it says you should bet if you're serious about sports betting I strongly suggest dividing by at least four and using quarter Kelly Stakes so now that we know

[05:48] that our bet sizing is dependent on our Edge we need to know what our Edge is this is where probability and price meet this is also where sports betting starts to require some tools tools to assist you in doing it well now we express

[06:04] probability as a percentage the coin flip has a 50% probability of Landing heads however sports betting expresses probability in odds that's the positive or negative number you see listed next to a bet so we know what an edge is and

[06:19] we know how much to bet when we find an edge now we need to know how to find that edge in some cases it's easy if you can find + 110 when it should be plus 100 like with the coin flip earlier you have a 5% Edge sometimes it's harder

[06:35] than that though like here the sharp line is 52 1/2 on the total for this game but there is one book offering 51 1/2 is getting over 512- 109 enough of an edge if the sharp line is 522 well that depends on how much we're

[06:50] gaining with this line a full point lower than what it should be the ability to do the math and data science necessary to come up with those numbers is beyond what most aspiring Sports betters can handle but that's why we

[07:03] found it unabated because we know that not everyone is a superh hero of math data science and market knowledge we provide tools to help you shop lines we provide our unabated line which you can use as your source of Truth for your

[07:17] probability and we help you calculate the probability and determine your expected value we even highlight the good opportunities in the market to help you get to them faster and more efficient effciently you can make good

[07:30] money picking off all these small edges in the market there are dozens of them available every day once you start to see sports betting through the lens of being a sharp better you're going to see why other people lose at sports betting

[07:43] why other people lose at sports betting your next step forward starts right here with another video that explores what it's really like to be a winning Sports