Betting value is arguably the most important aspect of successful long-term online betting.It refers to securing better (higher) odds than what the bookmaker should be offering you and provides you with an excellent opportunity to take advantage of the bookmaker’s overly-generous offer when it comes to a particular bet.
In our guide to betting value, we’ll use our expertise to explain in detail what is, why it’s important and how to make best use of it.
Imagine a coin toss where you and a friend are betting on the outcome of it. Odds of 2.0 on either outcome are exactly what they should be.
Odds of say 1.9 are too short because after all, there’s no reason why you should be paid at less than 2.0 when it’s exactly a 50/50 chance. Also known as getting poor value.
But if your friend for some reason offered you odds of 2.1, that would be an example of betting value: getting paid out at higher odds than the mathematical probability of that event happening.
Bookmakers occasionally offer betting value on all manner of markets, including cricket betting ones and football. You just need to know how to recognise it.
This isn’t easy to do but the best way to find betting value is to work out yourself what the odds should be on a particular outcome.
And you need to do this before you actually see what the genuine odds are.
Let’s say that after studying all the possible factors such as recent form, head-to-head records, team news and the conditions, you decide that India should be 1.7 to beat Australia in Bangalore.
This isn’t an exact science but as long as you trust your methods and are confident you’ve worked out the odds accurately yourself, then that’s good enough.
If when you look, India are 1.85, then that can be considered betting value: the odds are higher than they should be.
You’re far more likely to find betting value on side markets than you are on the more popular markets.
In the above example, we said India might be available at 1.85 rather than the 1.7 you’d expect them to be, but in reality that’s quite unlikely to happen.
The reason is that the more popular the market, the more time and attention betting sites will pay to it so they are less likely to make mistakes in terms of offering prices that are too generous.
But you may find betting value on say an Indian top batsman market.
Maybe you worked out Rishabh Pant should be 6.0 and is available somewhere at 9.0, a good example of betting value.
Or that Ravi Jadeja should be a 12.0 chance to be man-of-the-match, yet is available at 16.0.
We said it was arguably the most important part of successful long-term betting, but why is that? What are the advantages of betting value?
Using the above example, if you’d placed a 10,000 INR bet on India, would you rather be paid out at the fair odds of 1.7, or the inflated odds of 1.85, which we identified as betting value?
Exactly. Each bet you place that has betting value results in a bigger payout than what you’d expect to get and that can only be a good thing.
And the more times you win and secure superior payouts, the better for your bank balance.
As gamblers, some people have the tendency to place too many bets. That dilutes the quality of your betting choices.
But if you only ever bet where there’s betting value, you’re only placing good bets that you’ve thought long and hard about and identified as smart choices.
By only betting to betting value, you end up placing less bets but better ones.
Let’s say you think Ravi Ashwin should be 4.5 to be India’s top bowler in a T20I match against Sri Lanka.
At Betway, he’s 4.75, so that’s already betting value.
But why not also check say Pure Win and 10 CRIC? And better still, have accounts at both those sites as well.
Maybe he’s 5.0 at Pure Win and 5.5 at 10CRIC. By betting at the highest odds possible, you’re getting the most betting value.
