How to Identify Non-Obvious Profitable
Bets by Being Creative and Thinking Laterally
By Matt Elliott
Most profitable
punters you will find are good lateral thinkers.
They never stop reviewing their selection/staking
processes with a continual drive to improve and are always
on the lookout for a good bet regardless of the market.
Many punters
haven’t ventured into more creative type bets where
great betting opportunities exist.
It is simply a matter of training your mind to think
laterally when considering a betting proposition.
Some of the best betting strategies often lie just
under your nose waiting to be found.
It is only after they are recognized that we wonder
why they hadn’t been identified earlier.
I will use
a recent example to provide an explanation of what I mean
when I speak about creative betting.
The following
are screenshots taken from bookmakers SportsBet and Pinnacle
Sports and are golf markets for the 2005 British Open.
Pinnacle
Sports
SportsBet
The Pinnacle
screenshot is a Finishing Positions market.
If we take the first bet on that screen, it is a
bet for Tiger to finish in the top 3. You can bet that he will finish in the top three
(odds of 2.0)
or you can bet that he won’t (odds
of 1.909). If you fancy Tiger’s chances in the British
Open, you may like to back him for a top 3 position and
conversely, if you don’t believe he will play well,
you can bet that he won’t finish in the top 3.
The second
screenshot is the Top 10 market on SportsBet.
You will notice that there is a subtle but important
difference between the two markets; Pinnacle has given individual
players’ finishing quotes whereas the SportsBet market
is a top 10 market only.
I would like
to draw your attention to Retief Goosen in both markets.
On the Pinnacle market, he is priced at 1.885 to
finish in the top 12 and to not finish in the top 12 he
is quoted at 2.03.
On the SportsBet
market, we can back him to finish in the top 10 at odds
of 2.8. These two
markets are not the same, but what is interesting is that
we can back Goosen NOT to finish in the top 12 (odds
of 2.03), with Pinnacle Sports and we can back him to
finish in the top 10 (odds of 2.8) with SportsBet.
This is not
a straight arbitrage (or middle), situation because if Goosen finishes 11th or
12th, we will lose both bets.
But, if we can back each outcome proportionately,
a nice profit will be made if Goosen finishes either in
the top 10 or worse than 12th.
If we had $1,000
to outlay, we could back Goosen for $420 at odds of 2.8
with SportsBet and outlay $580 at odds of 2.03 with Pinnacle
Sports. We would
collect $1,176 (figure has been rounded for simplicity),
if he finishes inside the top 10 or outside the top 12. This represents a profit of $176.00 or a profit
on outlay of 17.6%!
If you did
have an opinion on the chances/value of Goosen in this event,
you may like to bias your bet towards your opinion. For example, you believe that Goosen has excellent
form in past British Opens so you decide to bias your bet
towards Goosen to make the top 10.
You would bet $507 on Goosen with SportsBet to finish
in the top 10 and $492 on Goosen not to make the top 12
on Pinnacle. If you
are correct with your assessment and he does finish in the
top 10, you will make a profit of $420 which is a profit
on your $1,000 investment of 42%. If Goosen finishes worse than 12th,
your outlay of $1,000 will be returned to you meaning that
you will breakeven. Out
of the 146 or so players in the tournament, if Goosen does
finish in 11th or 12th position, you
will lose your total stake of $1,000.
You might like
to go for a riskier proposition and back Sergio Garcia to
finish within the top 10 at odds of 3.5. You could then back Garcia to NOT finish in
the top 15 in the Pinnacle market at odds of 2.08. This could give you a profit of just under $305
on outlay of $1,000 or close to 30.5% profit on your money. In saying that, it would be questionable as
to whether it would be worth taking this bet at this one
is close to a straight out gamble.
In any case, it will hopefully get you thinking.
The above is
a good example of creative betting. I have used a sports betting example however,
there are opportunities to be found in the horse racing
markets. There are a number of great betting strategies
closely related to the above that we have been making excellent
money out of for some time now.
Many are cross-arbitrage type situations many involving
low liquidity markets which is the reason we cannot disclose
these ideas freely on Punting Ace for everyone to access.
I am sure if you use lateral thinking in your betting
you may well discover a few for yourself :o)
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by international Copyright © Elk Publications Pty Ltd
October 2004 Please contact
if you wish to reproduce this article elsewhere.
