However, one of the most common mistakes made by bettors is making definitive claims from small samples of data. We can extract useful information from that data to make predictions about future outcomes. Data comes from individual player performance, coaching, in-game events, betting lines, officiating and weather. There is an incredible amount of data that exists in sports. Sure, if you have endless piles of cash, you should eventually turn out fine but sports can be unpredictable. They’d need 3,200 and 6,400 to chase the bets mentioned above. Imagine our player is risking 200 per game instead of 100. It is important to have an underlying theory to explain why a betting system is successful. Now we’re talking about betting 1,600 or 3,200 on a single game. Simply being able to answer the question, “Does this system make sense?” can lead to stronger predictions.
Without a hypothesis to test you run the risk of custom fitting your data in an effort to increase a system’s win rate or profitability. Before you start building your system, ask a question like, “Does cold weather really affect points scored?” or “Do teams on the second night of a back-to-back play worse?”Īfter you know the question you can mine the data to find the answer. Sports Betting 101: Winning Bets Can Still Be Bad, Losing Bets Can Still Be Good Read now Start with a betting theoryĪll good betting systems begin with an idea or hypothesis.
