In the old days punters didn’t have access to a lot of statistical data. They had to collect newspapers, or keep their own statistics. With the internet that has changed irreversible. Gigabytes of statistics are available and can be accessed within a matter of seconds. Moreover, you can get all the news and updates on teams and athletes on the internet, which will enable to react promptly if you think that, for example, the absence of a certain player makes a team less likely to win.
But, the fact that there’s simply too much available data also means that, at times, it can be difficult to separate the important from the not-so-important information. You may lose hours searching and still be unable to perform a meaningful analysis that will actually boost your chances. In a vast and endless sea of data, it can be extremely time consuming to locate, track and organise the information that will be of use to you and your betting strategy.
There are many strategies that a punter can employ. You can collect data yourself, the old-fashioned way. Find a reliable online source, pick the information that you need and then store it in tables, text files, or whichever way you see fit. This can be effective, but unfortunately, it is very time-consuming. It will take a lot of time to just collect information and then you will need extra time to organise it correctly, make calculations and choose the selections that you could wager on.
Some punters prefer to follow a stricter pattern. They choose the type of bets, or the teams that they wish to bet on and they always place pretty much the same wagers. Other employ some sort of progressive betting strategies, where the stake is increased after a lost bet, or in some cases after a won bet. This type of strategies are often used by casino players who play games of chance.
However, even if you employ a progressive betting strategy, you will still need to choose the tournaments, matches and selections that you’d like to wager on, which means that you’ll have to do some research, because, naturally, you will want to choose selections which give you greater chances of winning.
Everybody uses certain tactics when they are betting, even casual punters. Some people always bet on smaller and less-interesting tournaments, others always chase the same teams, hoping that they will eventually win or lose (after a long series of wins or defeats). Some like to focus on the amounts they wager, adjusting their value and hoping that that’ll lead them to having more money than what they started with.
The ‘never bet on your favourite team’ is a pretty common betting rule, many punters impose in on themselves because they know that they will be biased towards their own team. Some people choose not to bet on the current champions, because the bookmakers always offer lower odds for them to win, which is often based on the teams’ previous successes and not their current strength.
Whatever rule or tip you choose to follow, bear in mind that it only applies to a certain cover and even though might make you more successful at betting, it still isn’t a complete betting system. Devising and employing a full system might seem a bit more difficult and demanding, but ultimately, those who bet professionally, i.e. who are successful enough to be able to live off betting, or at least earn decent amounts of money, develop full betting systems and always have a methodical approach to betting.
What is the point of adopting a betting system, you might ask. The system will provide you with an unbiased way of determining the probability of certain or all outcomes of a particular match. Any punter will tell you that calculating the probabilities on the basis of the betting odds that are offered is more than easy, coming up with real values that represent the actual probabilities is the hard part. If you manage to do that you’re on your way of becoming a successful punter.
The right system will enable to you identify lucrative betting options. The goal is to be able to be a better judge of a team’s abilities than the bookmakers. That might seem impossible, but it isn’t, because you aim to identify the selections where the bookies have miscalculated the odds, not to beat the bookies on every selection, that is indeed impossible.
If you know a bit of programming, you can develop your own betting model. Of course, there are many existing models that you can just borrow, but by developing your own model, you can set the programme to solve the exact issues that you think will make you a better punter.
When you start developing your programme, you will need to keep your focus throughout the process. Firstly, you will need to define what you aim to achieve with your program. That way, you will always know what you are supposed to develop, i.e. what problems is the programme designed to solve. Once you define your needs, you can start building your program.
The programme and its complexity depends on your needs and your programming skills. Don’t set your demands too high, if your skills are limit, stick to creating a programme that will be useful, but also practical and functional.
Make sure that your goals are specific enough and note the parameters that you will be considering. Stick to the parameters you’ve chosen and then define your metrics. Your results have to be measurable, i.e. quantifiable. For instance, let’s assume that you’re interested in a particular team and you wish to know how many times they’ve managed to win even though the odds for them to win were 2.50 or higher. That is something which can be measured and is quantifiable.
You’re goals need to be specific, you can’t just say that you’re interested in how many times the underdogs manage to win. You’ll need to define underdogs in terms of betting odds, and you’ll need to specify which competitions and what eSports you’re interested in. Once you select the metrics, you will need to start collecting data. The whole point of building a programme is that it will collect the data for you, and you won’t need to spend hours gathering information.
The data that has been collected will need to be integrated into your algorithm. Make sure that you select reliable sources for your data. For example, if you choose a website that doesn’t publish data for all competitions or eSports you’re interested in, your database will be incomplete and your calculations will not be precise, and your findings might be misleading.
You can play with the parameters if you want reliable results. For instance, if you’re following just one team, you may wish to focus only on their official matches, and not the charitable ones. You can choose one model, but then, when you analyse the data you can discover certain patterns or irregularities which you can then repair by altering your parameters and metrics.
Never forget that no matter how impartial you’re trying to be, you are always testing an assumption. That assumption is just that, an assumption, and if you’re proven wrong, change your system. For example, you might feel that teams featuring older players generally don’t do well against younger teams, even if they are considered to be favourites. The result may sure that there’s no correlation and that older teams don’t perform particularly worse against younger teams.
On the other hand, when you’re analysing the data you may spot other patterns, or at least something that seems like it is a pattern. Change the metrics and monitor that category instead. If it turns out that there is a certain regularity, then you should adjust your betting system.
Always make sure that the result you’re looking for will yield profits. If you discover a parameter which shows that under certain circumstances teams that are more or less equally matched to their opponents win in 70% of the games, than that is a useful statistics. Because if you wager at odds 1.90, or even 1.85 with 70% success, you will still be making a profit.
Similarly, if you discover that certain selections at odds around 3.00 win only in 25% of the cases, that won’t be of any use, since the odds simply don’t justify that strategy. Even if you revert it, and bet on the opposite options you won’t be making a profit due to the vig.
The best thing about an eSports betting program is that you can always alter it and adjust it, or even include additional parameters and categories that might improve the system. Make sure that your programme is flexible and easy to use and that you will be able to change and add parameters without any hassle.
For example, if you feel that the calculations will be more valid if you add extra parameters to the model, make sure that you will be able to analyse the results, but with and without the added parameters, so that you’ll be able to compete the old model against a new one.
Even if a model proves to be successful and it brings you money, it doesn’t mean that you can’t improve it and make it every more successful. A successfulness of a betting model is always measured against other models. Developing a betting model using a programme that you’ve developed is an ongoing process, the results depend on the input, and then by analysing the results you can alter the input and make it more relevant.
A system can be tested once enough data is collected, don’t just change your model after a week. Once you settle on a specific betting system and you develop a programme, stick to it. Don’t just change it right away because your first few bets weren’t as successful as you expected. Better yet, if you don’t want to risk any money when you’re not sure whether your system will work or not, you can just track the results within your system without actually making wagers. After a sufficient amount of time and a number of mock bets, you will be able to conclude whether the system is successful and it has potential or not, and only then you should think about changing your model.
