Creating Value - How to Maximize Profit

By Charles Stever

I thought I would take some time in this article to shed light on sports betting from a value standpoint and what that means for your investments. There are many many many ways that you can create value for yourself and systems that will provide value in different ways: Contrary Investment: What this means is you have an antipublic strategy. You set a reasonable limit where you will start to back the team that is NOT being bet on by the public. Often people look for significant lopsided public betting of 85%/90% + to use this strategy. This is ESPECIALLY valuable in NBA where spreads can be inflated out of proportion based on public investment. This investment strategy is one where strike rate (win rate) is LOW but return is HIGH.

Back Tested Statistical Trends: This is where teams of people or software come together to provide an overview of a given game without interference of qualitative factors. Here the system is looking to get a HIGH strike rate and a medium/low return per. A perfect example of this is Aragorn/Legolas NBA Zcode System. Here is the profit chart:

Market Betting: This is an interesting concept and one that not a lot of people understand. Ive been market betting for a while so Ive taken it internally. However, when you first start the easiest games to understand are those that have public split right down the middle 50/50 or close to that. The odds drifts you see through out the day (especially in the early morning, during line opens and before the game) will give you information on where real money is going. When the public is lopsided (more than 60%) one way or the other it can be very tricky :).

Lag Investments or Pure Value:

This is another one of my favourites. Here you monitor the bottom 5 teams and top 5 teams of a sport for play. The public money is ALWAYS behind the curve and that is why they consistently lose. A great example is Columbus, around 3 weeks ago they started turning it around HUGE and I invested

in them every game to a nice profit. This is because public money thought Columbus was still terrible and invested in the other team which provided GREAT value for us on CBJ. The same goes for a favourite team like the Yankees - if they hit a slump or major injury get in on the teams they face BEFORE the curve and you’ll make a killing.

So how does this all work in practice?

Well for starters always watch games and do little tallies to yourself before markets open and think to yourself: 1) Who should the favourite team be here? 2) Why should that team be the favourite? 3) Are there injuries, home team advantages or coaching trends you know about? 4) Where is the public likely to go? 5) Have there been any slumps on either side in the last game or 2 and are they likely to continue? 6) What is the style of play that each team brings to the game and how will that affect things like totals etc? Often if you can answer these questions you have a good idea of the game and can use the information on Zcode to help affirm your hunches or deny them :). Another thing I would recommend doing is CREATING value for yourself DONT always take the bookie’s word for the game. Do your own thinking. Here is an example: Lets say if Pittsburg faces off against Philadelphia in NHL we know based on trending that the game is likely OVER and both teams will rack up points right? What if I told you to look at the odds for the OVER 6 and it was something like 2.2? That seems like great value right? Now, what if the UNDER 6 was only paying 1.7 ... FISHY. The same thing goes if team totals are posted as 2.5 for a game with a listed game total of 6. The bookies are telling you that they personally believe the game will be low scoring.

KEEP THAT in mind.

Another way to create value is to understand betting and strike rates. If you have a team that you KNOW will score well and win but the ML is something dumb like 1.4 you have to create your own value. In hockey if a team has a ML around 1.4 but they are up against a team with poor goal tending and defense you can often find VALUE in the team total over 2.5. In basketball the race to 20 points in first period is ALWAYS better odds than the ML when the team is a HEAVY favourite.

Keep these things in mind. No one is forcing you to always back the ML or the spread. Sometimes its better to back other bets on certain teams where you create the value yourself and leave the tight lines to the public. Hope that explains some things for people :).