Even people who only dabble in sports betting understand that the house/bookmaker is normally favored in the bet. What most people who bet don’t realize is that there is a way of turning these tables, so they will favor the bettor more often. It is called becoming an advantage player through advantage betting. An advantage player is a bettor who only bets when the odds are in their favor. In order to become this kind of player, you have to understand positive, negative, and neutral expected value (EV).

Expected Value

The simplest way to explain expected value is to look at it when betting on a coin flip. A neutral expected value (EV) is when the bettor is betting a dollar on their call and the bookmaker/house is betting the same on their call. Over the course of 100 flips, it is likely a 50/50 chance that either side breaks even. Now to understand negative and positive expected value, let’s up the bet a little bit.

A negative expected value (-EV) is when the odds are in favor of the house. Let’s say, over the course of 100 flips, the bettor wins $1 on their successful calls and the house wins a $1.10 on its successful calls. If the chances are 50/50 in winning the calls, the bettor can consider themselves losing from the beginning and it will (on average) cost them $55 over the course of 100 flips (versus the $50 it will cost the house).

A positive expected value (+EV) are when the odds are in favor of the bettor. We will continue with our coin flip example. When the bettor wins a $1.10 on their successful calls and the house wins $1 on their successful calls, the bettor has the improved chances of walking away with $55 than if the $50 the house would win. These positive expected values are the situations that bettors want to find in order to turn the tables on the house and come out with a profit more often than not.

Methods Used To Find Positive EV

We have a couple of articles posted in order to help you understand and implement two different strategies to become an advantage player. These strategies are the teaser betting strategy and the prop betting strategy. These articles will allow you to understand the basics and begin to use them in a way that will allow you to turn a profit.

Teaser Betting Strategy– When you begin to do the research prior to your bets, you’ll realize that just before game time, the lines become more efficient. Teasers are the values based on those betting lines so that you (as the bettor) doesn’t have to go into deep research in order to figure out where the positive expected values are. This is probably one of the easiest ways to find +EV bets and our article outlines this method in detail.

Prop Bet Strategy– These are bets based on particular situations within the game and is one of the easiest betting opportunities that a bettor can take advantage of. Our article will detail the breakdown of the situation of betting on who will score first. Once you have used this strategy to find +EV on and win the prop bets on this situation, you will be able to use this method for other prop bets.

Expanding Your Knowledge

There are different ways in which to implement advantage betting. The strategies listed above are the simplest to understand and put into action in order to turn a profit. The article we have available are articles in order to help bettors start on their advantage betting strategies. They are by no means the end all, be all of the possibilities of advantage betting. Here are a couple of great books that can really elaborate on the basics of advantage betting.

Sharp Sports Betting by Stanford Wong

Weighing the Odds in Sports Betting by King Yao

Our article about finding the bets with max value is a great supplement to whichever method that you have chosen to use for advantage betting. It is a way to continue to expand your knowledge of advantage betting with either strategy that we highlighted above.

We also have listed an article about winning without a tout. This is a great article to read in pairing with the article of finding the max value that will help you in earning bonus picks. When you expand your knowledge, you increase your chances of earning a profit with each educated bet that you place.

All of these articles are aimed at increasing your basic understanding of advantage betting. These will allow you to find the bets with the best positive expected value and how to make money utilizing these bets.

This will take some time to fully understand and to successfully implement. It will take research and practice in order to become proficient, but once you have reached this level and you want to be the type of bettor who can make an online career doing this, there are other reading materials that you may want to explore. One such book is Conquering Risk: Attacking Vegas and Wall Street by Elihu D. Feustel.

This is a book that is a lot more in-depth with the process and applying it to further situations and circumstances. It has a major focus on the math, statistics, and handicaps that go along with betting and risks involved with bets and monetary gambles. This is a book that only need be explored once a bettor has reached an advanced level.

Understanding how to place a successful bet is not an exact science and it is going to require some work and research. It will require practice and will come with some losses. These are going to be learning processes that can all be utilized in becoming more proficient in advantage betting. It is important to make sure to utilize all of your possible resources, the ones that we provide and others out there as well. The more knowledge and research that you can obtain, the more that you will be armed to make educated bets for profit.