To be able to beat a bookmaker you first need to understand How Bookmakers Make Money.
Bookmakers make money by framing a sports or horse racing market with an overound/margin or what is sometimes called Vig. Here is a simple example of a Football game with 2 teams.
Lets say the 2 teams are evenly matched. Bookmakers would likely frame the market as follows.
Team A to win = $1.90 odds
Team B to win $1.90 odds
As you can see for every $1 you bet you can win 90 cents. However if this is truly an evenly matched event, each team would have a 50% chance of winning and therefore should be at their true odds of $2.0 to win rather than $1.90.
By offering these lower than true odds to the everyday punter bookmakers always have an edge and win over the long run. Similar to how Casinos work. If in the above example they take $100,000 of bets on both team A and Team B to win they would come out $10,000 on top regardless of the result. It’s a very simple example but important to understand.
Now we know how they make money how do you beat them?
There are only 2 ways.
- You obtain odds for a game or horse race that are above what the true or Fair odds really are. This is how many professional gamblers make there money by having a different opinion or analysis of an event and taking odds they believe are incorrect. This is often call Expected Value Betting.
- You take advantage of Bookmaker promotions such as deposit match offers, boosted odds or money back offers they use to entice gambling.
Hopefully this has answered your question. If your interested in learning more about beating bookmakers in Australia here is a great site to visit called Bonusbank .
If your located in the USA here is a community that can help you on your way to beating bookmakers called ProfitDuel.
Matched Betting 