First time poster, figured I would put some effort into it since I enjoy this topic. Surprisingly, there is a lot more to this topic then meets the eye, but I will stick to some main points.
TL
R “It is likely a 100x harder than you imagine to be successful with sports gambling long term, and don’t listen to the average joe schmoe on forums who says it is easy, they have likely just been lucky up to the point they are at. And when you are betting (heavy) favorites which can be the case in MMA, it is harder, statistically speaking, to distinguish luck from skill, bc you need a bigger sample size. Overall, I recommend bet for fun and enjoy that added excitement as your prize!”
I work night shift at a hospital as a pharmacist and have a lot of down time (i.e. me writing this post), and about a year back I started to explore the idea of professional sports gambling as a fun way to make extra money.
Let me tell you, it was quite the roller-coaster of emotions attempting to learn what was likely feasible. I was initially excited to learn that it only took beating a ~52.4% winning percentage (@-110) to be profitable, when dealing with bets that are supposed to be 50/50, such as football/basketball games against the spread. I thought wow that can't be too hard. Then learning about betting exchanges (i.e. Betfair) and professional gambling site like “Pinnacle Sports” where you could get the vigorish/juice (the cut the bookie takes and how they make money) down to -105 or even -103, it brought the necessary winning percentage down even lower! (-105 = 51.2%).
So first thing I did from there, having also heard that 98% of sports gamblers lose money was I tried to figure out why. The first book I read focused on mainly the psychology/mental aspect of sports gambling. I definitely feel that this is one of the biggest components of why so many average Joes lose money. There are so many psychological hurdles to overcome, many that your average Joe doesn’t even know exist. The book was called “Sports Betting To Win” by Steve Ward, and I recommend it as a great starting point if you want to take this topic seriously.
Sadly, this book left me thinking that if I mastered the psychological aspect, then being profitable wouldn’t be so tough.
I know sports gamblers often times devote their entire lives to a particular sport and know the ins/out of everything going on in their sport (trades, injuries, weather etc etc). I quickly realized that I have free time but not enough to devote to a single sport and of course could never cover multiple sports as in depth as the competition. So therefore I developed my initial strategy of finding experts in as many major sports as possible (college bball, NBA, college football, NFL, soccer, baseball etc etc) who sell their picks (they call them tipsters) and place my bets based off their picks. I quickly realized the number of betting opportunities from just betting against the spread and over/under (no props bets or live betting etc etc) was large enough to sustain my overall plan. This overall plan was using a straight betting system of the same amount for each bet (merely to play it safe as opposed to perhaps more lucrative but risky betting systems such as Kelly Criterion). Then placing as many bets as I could. I don’t have the numbers in front of me but the idea is simple, small profit, high turnover, eventually leads to high overall profit (kind of like the idea of compound interest). After determining a reasonable number of bets I could place that I received from tipsters, with an estimated win percentage from tipsters at 55%, and bet size of $2k per bet, vig @-105, I calculated I could possibly be clearing $500k/yr profit.
Now before you start bashing me on that potential profit number, just know I had the same reaction. That’s obviously an insane amount of money. Luckily large enough to make one pause and remember the old saying “if it is too good to be true, then it probably is.”
I read a few more low level books that slightly dampened, but largely kept my hopes alive. I eventually came across 2 books that were gems. That were both eye openers to the fantasy world I was living in. 1st was a no non-sense book called “Sharper: A Guide to Modern Sports Betting” by True PokerJoe. This book will quickly show most noobs how little they actually know about a number of things, one of which was just how math based driven sports gambling is. The author gained my respect quickly and used that respect to crush my hopes and dreams, by stating what I knew deep down, TIPSTERS ARE FRAUDS!
People may read this and disagree and that’s fine. However, the author’s main points are simply that if tipsters are as good as you think and can really hit 54%+ winning percentage, then they don’t need your “pennies” when they could be making much more, simply placing their own bets. In my initial denial my rebuttal was, “yeah but maybe they already placed their bets, and just want some extra funds or maybe some type of fame.” Sadly, this narrative is crushed by the fact that the broader sports gambling market would likely have picked up on these people and be following them as well, once their picks are released, large (smart) money would come in and replicate their bets, this quickly moves the vegas lines that are set (i.e. Patriots -3 moves to Patriots -4), and you lose your edge. You may be able to pick the same team as the Tipster, but you are then either getting a worse line (i.e. that -4) or you are paying a higher vig (-110 instead of -105), either way in the long run it is a losing proposition.
The next book I read which was one of the aforementioned “gems” (“How To Find A Black Cat In A Coal Cellar: The Truth About Sports Tipsters” by Joseph Buchdahl”) covered a huge topic, which had also been touched on by other authors including Poker Joe, but it examined more in depth how to look at a tipster’s historical record and determine does this person have skill or is it merely luck that is helping them win. There are a lot of “3rd party” sites out there that track tipsters bets for you, some of which who will even release picks as soon as the game starts, so you know they are being honest (bc they typically have some skin in the game and take a cut of the tipsters fees). So if you decide you have at least found a reliable site to look at a tipsters historical records, there is still quite the uphill battle. VegasInsider is from my understanding known to be a reputable site and keeps detailed historical tipster records dating back 5+ years. But interestingly, the more you go back on each individual tipster’s record (aka bigger sample size) the more there wining percentage comes back down, basically to what would be a losing record when taking into consideration vig. Another issues with the 3rd party sites that will basically track anyone's record who signs up, is that if you have a big enough sample size of "experts" basically "flipping coins" statistically some will have stellar records, but don't confuse this with skill (like they probably do).
Lastly, if you are betting on lopsided odds, aka a Jon Jones vs Anthony Smith type of fight, then just remember that your winning percentage in the short term can be very high and you can be making a lot of money. But in the long run, if you don’t have an edge (or +EV) then you will ultimately be joining the 98%! So, in the end my opinion is make small bets simply to add enjoyment to watching sporting events, unless you really want to devote yourself and truly understand what it takes to be successful!
