How do people who take bets make money

May 8, 0 comments. There is something that has always fascinated me about beating the casino at their own game and luckily I was able to turn that fascination into a career and make money gambling. I started with matched betting and then moved to arbitragewhile dipping my toes into every other form of professional gambling. But before we start, if this is all new to you I really recommend starting with Matched Betting as it is the easiest and least risky. Here is my detailed how-to guide on Matched Betting. Matched betting is the easiest way to become a professional gambler. It is where I started and over the years has made me a lot of money. And if done correctly it is risk-free. Most online gambling sites offer promotions such as free bets to try and get you to sign up with them rather than their competitors. If you are clever you can hedge your bets and whatever the outcome withdraw most of the free bet. I have a detailed free introductory guide to matched betting.

This is a simplistic example but the vigorish or vig, t Bookies are very talented in ensuring that the points, the spread and the odds all even out so that all the bookie is risking is the losers money. What happens when everyone bets on the Eagles and no one bets on the Ravens Baltimore? The Philadelphia Bookie «offs his bets i. Oddmakers and bookies are always looking to work a line, say Eagles by Oddsmakers and sports line people keep their trade secrets pretty close but if you look at the lines before the games and then look at the outcomes, you can see why the work is so important. Most lines are right on the money. Hundreds of factors go into sets lines, over unders, and odds sos that the net outcome is even. It is not unheard of for a bookie to keep an emergency roll in case he takes bath or cannot lay off bets. Bad bookies have another name gamblers. First of all, thank you for reading my answer :. Well, all and all, the vigorish is nothing more than a spread. The existence of such spread is seen in the odds, and a little math knowledge allows you to check for yourself whether or not the house is charging you a spread for your winning bet. One way to understand how bookies determine the payoff odds for a bet is by backtracking their odds calculation process. Consider the following fictional example of a Football match:.

How to Start a Sports Bookie Business

Well, here it goes; a long, long time ago, there once was a time when sports betting existed without bookmakers. When people first started betting on sports, they just made wagers with other individuals. Bettors would agree on the terms of a wager between themselves, and then settle up once the relevant event was over. Although this would occasionally cause a dispute, this process still worked well most the time. Of course, people still bet this way today. People often make sports wagers with friends, colleagues or family members. Most sports betting these days is done more formally though, with a recognized bookmaker.

I wonder how that would go down with your high school teacher. No big deal, Benter figured. Read his full bio here. Are there people who make a living of sports betting? Thanks a lot for your time, Thomas. I think the real question is whether sports betting is a game of skill. Sign up to our newsletter! Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Suggest that you choose how much cash you’re I suspect because it is harder and less of a sure-thing than their day jobs.

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TomTom I never said it was not possible, nor did Mmoney say that luck is the only way it could happen. Disappointed in StackExchange management. Nets the information is laid out openly. Since we specialize in betting draws, a late goal from either side can ruin your bet. Diego: How much are you winning net profits per month now? I was with him one day and the only time he moved from his chair was for bathroom and food breaks.

A reality check

By using our site, you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Cookie PolicyPrivacy Policyand our Terms of Service. I know that the overall expected value of sports bet is negative, however this is not as straight forward a system as scratchcard for instance.

I am not asking whether it is a good investment to put money in sports bet, I am just wondering if there are people who actually make a living of it. I am not talking about someone who won one bet that he lived off of his entire life nor bookmakers or the people who actually manage the bets. But people who have demonstrated through the law of large numbers, that there expected value when betting on sports was positive.

Your question seems like it could be interpreted in a few ways, but the law of large numbers is going to have a hard time identifying someone who is good enough at gambling to make a living as opposed to someone that turns out to simply be lucky, which the law of large numbers suggests is likely to occur more often than. Additionally, the amount of winnings depends on the size of the stake, and so a bettor would need to already have a decent amount of money to be able to win enough to live on, and so a strictly professional sports gambler might not be feasible in that another source of income or independent wealth is probably necessary to win enough that one could live on the winnings.

I’m not aware of any empirical cases, but that’s not surprising as the majority of sports betting in the U. Interpretation 1: Is there or has there been anyone whose net return from sports betting has been positive? This is «law of large numbers» territory.

With the number of games played and the variety of types of bets that can be placed winner, point spread, tournament brackets, fantasy leagues. For this interpretation to be correct, only one of those people needs to win more than they lost.

The time horizon being discussed is very important. Someone who wins consistently for 20 years may have «made a living» off of it, but a string of losses thereafter could still easily drive their long-term returns into negative numbers. Someone could, for example, just be lucky enough on which bets they placed and in what amounts that they happened to win money.

Interpretation 2: Is there or has there been someone who was so skilled at predicting outcomes in sports that they actually have a positive expected value from any given dollar wagered? Soft maybe. This is hard to evaluate because the «skill» of the choices such a bettor would make is essentially impossible to differentiate from the lucky gambler.

An important difference between sports betting and lottery tickets or casino betting is that sports bets are not based on well-defined rules like 5 numbers being independently drawn. Instead, bookmakers set odds, and they do so not based on what they think the outcome will actually be but rather in order to attract bets in the correct proportions that the pool will be able to pay out to the winners, plus a margin for the bookmaker to.

In this case it’s less about predicting outcomes successfully than it is doing so with uncommon information, such that the odds allow for winnings based on that information that are enough to cover living expenses while leaving enough cash to stake in the next bet. Whether or not the odds allow for that information to be profitable is a factor totally outside of the bettor’s control. Interpretation 3: Is there or has there been someone who is sufficiently skilled in the institution of sports betting that they can have a positive expected return on any given dollar wagered?

A gambler who can manage a true expected positive return is far more likely to exploit arbitrage opportunities across multiple bookmakers offering odds for different outcomes that can «balance out»and so hedge their bets effectively, instead of to be great at predicting outcomes of sporting events. This is obviously heavily dependent on decent math skills and the environment in which the betting takes place as opposed to being good at betting on sports, specifically.

I would not expect such opportunities to exist steadily over any given stretch of time. Nonetheless, if someone only bets in these situations and places large enough bets to live off of the net winnings, then the net expected value of the actual bets could easily be positive.

Interpretation 4: Is there or has there been anyone capable of making more informed bets than others such that they can derive enough winnings to live on?

I suspect that this is the closest to your intended meaning, and the answer to this is moderately likely to be yes, provided that we are not limited to publicly available information.

Knowledge of things like rigged games obviously has very high value for a bettor though in that case they’re not exactly betting But there are other bits of valuable information an insider could gain that might give an edge over the average bettor, such as knowledge of a putative injury to a player or an upcoming suspension, which might allow for favorable bets to be placed before that information becomes public if it ever does and is then incorporated into other bettor’s decisions and the odds offered by bookmakers.

It’s not crazy to imagine that a well-placed or well-connected person might be able to gain enough information to generally win bets. It’s probably also possible, if not necessarily feasible, to seed the environment with information true or not in order to manipulate odds offered in the bettor’s favor.

I would think that the people that understand sports betting markets well enough to have an expected positive return on «honest» bets are very, very likely to be bookmakers instead of bettors. Bettors have to take odds as they find them, and so aside from inter-bookmaker arbitrage can’t necessarily leverage information into sufficient winnings even if their knowledge is guaranteed.

You only asked if there exist people who made a living off of sports betting, not if there are a lot of. And the answer to that is «yes». Bloomberg’s profile of Bill Benter tells one rather interesting story of one who made his fortune writing algorithms that analyze horse-betting. The only sound was the hum of a dozen computers. Bill Benter and an associate named Paul Coladonato had their eyes fixed on a bank of three monitors, which displayed a matrix of bets their algorithm had made on the race—51, in all.

Benter and Coladonato watched as a software script filtered out the losing bets, one at a time, until there were 36 lines left on the screens. Thirty-five of their bets had correctly called the finishers in two of the races, qualifying for a consolation prize. And one wager had correctly predicted all nine horses. On a nearby table, pink betting slips were arranged in a tidy pile Then they posed, laughing, for a photo—two professional gamblers with the biggest prize of their careers, one they would never claim—and locked the tickets in a safe.

No big deal, Benter figured. They could make it back, and more, over the rest of the racing season. I think the real question is whether sports betting is a game of skill. I believe the answer is definitely yes, there is at least some skill involved, making it likely to be a winning proposition for those at the highest skill level.

I know of two people that might prove it’s possible, even though both do not currently use sports betting as their primary source of income. I suspect because it is harder and less of a sure-thing than their day jobs. Person 1: He would bet college and pro sports games here and there, but only when he detected a lopsided line, so overall this was rare compared to the bulk of his winnings, which came from fantasy football.

Years ago before he had a familyhe would study pro football incessantly. On Sundays he had every game going at the same time on 7 different TV’s. I was with him one day and the only time he moved from his chair was for bathroom and food breaks. He would play multiple season-long high-entry fee fantasy football leagues with large payouts. Now that he has a family he’s slowed down since it was killing his Sundays and Monday and Thursday nights, and the rest of the week reading the news.

Person 2: He is already wealthy from owning successful businesses, and he loves horses. He has a stable on his estate and he raises race-horses. Most of his profits from the horses come from breeding, but also from his horses racing and sometimes winning.

Being involved in the horse racing business makes him very in tune with the betting lines and he knows when the odds are occasionally out of whack. I only went to the track once with him, but while we were there he only bet on one race, because he said that was the only one where he knew the odds were off. The horse he bet actually came in fourth and he didn’t win, but it was longshot odds to place and he basically said, «that horse has shown some speed in practice and at those odds I’d make the bet every time».

Most of the time the odds aren’t worth it and he’d pass. My sample set is obviously small, and in both of my examples they choose a different way to earn a living for various reasons, but being that sports betting has some element of skill, it is extremely likely that there are skillful people out there that choose to use that as their main source of income.

So, yes, it is possible. It is not easy, but a few do not merely make «a living». They make a crap ton of money. It is not what you would you normally consider as gambling. It is high-end computer banks finding edges and inconsistencies in the bets on their behalf to create a positive outcome. Home Questions Tags Users Unanswered.

Are there people who make a living of sports betting? Ask Question. Asked 1 year, 5 months ago. Active 1 year, 2 months ago. Viewed 3k times. PaoloH PaoloH 1 1 silver badge 3 3 bronze badges. There are always people who excel in some area and defy the odds. Those in the top one percent are written up in the financial magazines. Once upon a time there were tape readers who could watch the ticker tape and trade profitably. They too were the exception.

I have no clue if this exists in sports betting but by the very nature of a non finite sample, it’s likely that someone is doing it. I am just asking because it is largely acknowledged, that trading requires skills, knowledge and can be profitable. However, with sports bet, there doesn’t seem to be a widespread consensus, and a large amount of people seem to view it as a totally random system, in which it is not possible to «excel». Which would likely mean that in the long term, basically nobody has ever made a profit with these bets.

Define: «sports» Does it include poker, for example? GreenMatt I mean sports in the larger sense so poker could be included as a sport, however I really mean sports betting so people betting on the outcome of a game they are not a part of. The player with a stack in a poker game are not really within the scope of sports betting they’re really just playing the game. DJClayworth Of course, that’s why I specifically mentioned them as not counting as a possible answer.

Almost certainly. Perhaps, but the time horizon is again very important. Final Note I would think that the people that understand sports betting markets well enough to have an expected positive return on «honest» bets are very, very likely to be bookmakers instead of bettors. These are very interesting points, I hadn’t thought about all these cases. Originally, I was thinking of something along the lines of interpretation 2 and 4, but everything in here is definitely relevant.

TomTom Care to expand on that, at all? My answer has a list of names of people that made tons of money. Endy’s answer has a short anectody of one of them — which was betting bets on one race! Some fotunes are made in this area, which means it is factually wrong to say it is not possible.

And it is not «pure luck» when you run numbers that high and companies doing that for years.

Certainly that was my view. Apart from an annual punt on the Grand National I steered well clear. Another obstacle is mental arithmetic. If ever a gambler tried to talk me through the basics, I glazed over within seconds.

Why Bookmakers Adjust the Odds & Lines

My reward? Typical Villa left it late, nabbing the winner in the 88th minute. Which set me thinking, could short odds betting, whereby the chances of something happening are relatively high, at the very least beat interest rates offered by banks and building societies? But I kept at it. But soon I was the one laughing. In fact, with 50 bets now under my belt, my profit margin stands at Beat that, Nationwide. How have I done it? First, by betting only on short odds. Secondly, I paid only in cash. As certain pals of mine admitted, internet accounts are an open doorway to temptation. Thirdly, I kept detailed records, to log my progress but also to ensure that I never tried to kid. He was right. Andy Murray how do people who take bets make money beat Novak Djokovic. What was I thinking?