What it Takes !

What does it take to be a pro sports bettor?
I mean in sense of what do you need besides psychological qualities.
What kind of analysis software or skills do you need? How about math? I assume you use that to be build data models to calculate the probabilities ?
And then you use different kind of data of intuition and what you see in games or out of games to form subjective part of the decision?
And then you use all that to calculate the winners?

How does all this work and what is underrated or overrated? What am i missing?

Thanks

Successful professional sports bettors are about as common as professional slot machine players. There are tons and tons of people companies that will try and scam you by selling you picks, but that generally falls under the category 'Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."

I would recommend finding yourself another profession.


ZCore13

"Successful professional sports bettors are about as common as professional slot machine players."
I think your comparison is a very random and non-factual one. You just pulled it out of the hat cause with slot machines you cant win unless you hunt for bonuses.With sports people can win. Im not saying I want this as profession.Im saying what it takes.

With you pointing out number of scams I cant disagree though.

Quote: zuti6

"Successful professional sports bettors are about as common as professional slot machine players."
I think your comparison is a very random and non-factual one. You just pulled it out of the hat cause with slot machines you cant win unless you hunt for bonuses.With sports people can win. Im not saying I want this as profession.Im saying what it takes.

With you pointing out number of scams I cant disagree though.

I don't pull things out of hats. I've met probably tens of thousands of people in my life. I work in the gaming industry. I've been going to Las Vegas 2-5 times per year for the last 25 years. I've yet to come across a successful profession sports bettor.

How many do you know?


ZCore13

I know one that is successful but he wont teach and little he says is complicated math. So im asking how it works here,in detail.

The one thing you might do is go to Wizardofodds.com and look up sports betting. You may find the half point parlay cards and Super Bowl props interesting.

One means by which to find a good sports bet is to gather as much historical data as you can and use same to determine what is or is not a beatable line. Aside from that, if you're just talking betting ML or Spreads with one team v. Another, I'm afraid I wouldn't even know where to send you.

"One means by which to find a good sports bet is to gather as much historical data as you can and use same to determine what is or is not a beatable line. "
This sounds great .How do I use historical data to determine what is or isnt a beatable line?

I discovered the answer to this question while in graduate school. Basically to build a successful sports betting model you need the educational equivalent of a masters degree in statistics.

But here's the catch, statistics or data mining as it's called now is one of the fastest growing and in-demand fields in the country. If you're good enough to beat the casinos you're more than good enough to get a high paying job in statistics. The Wizard himself was a former actuary.

If you want to get your feet wet I'd suggest starting with prop-bets. Ie. What's the probability that Peyton Manning will throw over 2.5 touchdowns next game. (Hint: Touchdowns follow a Poisson distribution)

Quote: zuti6

This sounds great .How do I use historical data to determine what is or isnt a beatable line?

Hard work. First you make a hypothesis. As an example.... "I think teams coming off a bye week will beat the spread more often than not." So you go back and look at the last 10 years of teams hat fit that profile, and see what the actual results were.... 50%.... move on to next hypothesis 60%... place your bets..
"I think teams playing a second consecutive road game will lose to the spread more often than not"
I think outdoor teams playing indoors are at a disadvantage
I think teams that win in OT are more likely to lose the next week
I think teams with more offensive players on the DL are more likely to lose

The point is you can make a virtually unlimited number of reasonable hypotheses, and then go back historically and check them out. Nearly all will prove to not turn out to be of use, as the oddsmakers tend to be aware of such things and include them in the spread. The most obvious example that worked MANY years ago was the undervaluing of home field advantage on Monday Night Football. For a while home underdogs were covering maybe 55% of the time, which was enough to beat the spread.

Good luck.

Great answers guys ! Learning a lot. Anyone else have something else to add?
Anyone know of good places to get needed historical data ?

Quote: zuti6

Great answers guys ! Learning a lot. Anyone else have something else to add?
Anyone know of good places to get needed historical data ?

Getting good data is a skill in of itself, you might have to web-scrape a lot of the data. Some sports have dedicated fans who help out, while others you're on your own.

For example Major League Baseball has the Lahmam Dataset which has records of every player, team and game played going back over 100 years.

http://www.seanlahman.com/baseball-archive/statistics/

Buy the book Sharp Sports Betting by Stanford Wong.

Although some of it is out of date, you should learn a lot from it.

I hear Wong everywhere .Ill check that one out for sure.

Nice Tortoise.Got any other sports statistics links? NBA or Tennis maybe?

The one absolute factor needed to earn money betting sports is the capability to determine Expected Value of all of your bets.

The only other truly important factor is the ability to beat the market price. But those go hand-in-hand, so if you can do one, you should have no problem doing the other

Profitable slot player is definitely an interesting comparison to profitable sports better. Earning an income playing slots is much easier, but usually at much lower levels. You're often limited by what you can find and can't move to higher denominations just because you're bankroll grows. With sports, you can always put a lot of money into action, but it's much harder to know if it's +EV

I have know a few professional sports bettors. All 3 were bookies, but were able to also win on their own. But only because they studied the games and more importantly were able to get a nickle line, had enough other bookies they could lay off bets with and get a middle.
Knew lots of guys who said they were beating the horses, NFL, whatever. In every case I found out they had an invisible means of support that hid their losses. Owned a few gas stations, wife had money, etc. Not saying there might be a few guys beating sports, but seriously doubt it. Know guys who beat bookies for years, then all of sudden, losses came home to roost.

Before somebody trots out Billy Waters, he made his money in an era when knowledge was golden. Contacts in local newspapers, guys following teams in other states. Of course , Billy was not a bookie, of course not. He was only arrested, not convicted.

http://www.covers.com/articles/columns/articles.aspx?theArt=263695

There is only one sure way to win at sports betting and it's called arbitrage. Do some research on "arbitrage betting".


ZCore13

Isnt arbitrage gonna make them freeze your account?

Whats the best way to estimate ones EV?