We’ve created an instant alert which detects value bets. We find outliers where one sportsbook offers significantly higher odds than the rest of the market. These are positive expected value bets, so you’ll have an edge on the sportsbook and a good chance at long term profit!
For example, this was the latest alert:
Brion
Gen.G
League of Legends
Time: 8:00 AM Thursday 29th Jun
Expected value
+2.23%
Subscribe to the alerts by entering your email address below. We guarantee 100% privacy, your information will not be shared.
The value bet alerts are also tweeted here and posted on our Facebook page.
Definition of a value bet
For every selection in our odds comparisons we calculate the probability from the odds averaged across all sportsbooks. We do take the sportsbooks’ overround into account. Then we alert for any odds that give more than 2% better probability than the average.
So if the average odds are about right, then our alerts give opportunities to bet with an edge in your favor!
You can understand this intuitively from the example below. The average odds on Chelsea were 2.176 but Stake offered odds of 2.37. That’s a value bet!
Keep in mind that most sportsbook’s terms of service allow them to refund bets if the odds were obviously incorrect due to human error. If the short priced favorite at all other sportsbooks is the high priced underdog at one sportsbook, that is most likely due to human error and is not a value bet.
We filter these out for you and we have done real world testing to confirm the bets we alert about are available at the sportsbooks.
Crypto sportsbooks will not block or limit you for making these bets
Because government currency sportsbooks often block or limit profitable bettors, the most common question we get is will crypto sportsbooks do the same? The answer is no, because they can’t.
We only include anonymous end-to-end crypto sportsbooks. If they blocked or limited your account for being profitable you could simply make a new account, so they don’t.
Unfortunately some of these crypto sportsbooks have asked bettors for IDs. However this only happens when the sporsbook suspects fraud, such as double spends, bonus abuse, or betting from a blocked country, not for profitable betting.
Calculation of a value bet
Implied probability = odds converted to probability
True probability = odds minus overround converted to probabilityValue bets are detected by using each sportsbook’s odds and overround to determine the true probability that each sportsbook assigns to a bet winning. Then taking the average of these true probabilities across all sportsbooks and assuming that is a good approximation of the true probability of a bet wining.
Using this average true probability we can then estimate the expected value of betting at the best odds available. If the expected value is over 2% we consider it a value bet.
We only alert about value bets where the decimal odds are less than 5, and the game is less than 3 days way.
Real world example
To understand exactly how value bets are found, suppose the odds for Real Salt Lake @ Minnesota United FC are as follows and keep an eye on Sportsbet’s draw odds:
| Salt Lake | Draw | Minnesota | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudbet | 4.39 | 3.51 | 1.87 |
| Stake | 4.3 | 3.45 | 1.85 |
| Sportsbet | 3.71 | 3.91 | 1.85 |
| Nitrogen | 4.2 | 3.35 | 1.81 |
| BetBTC | 4.367 | 3.497 | 1.876 |
| Betcoin | 4.3 | 3.45 | 1.85 |
We first calculate the “implied probability” for each of these odds. This is what the probability would be if the sportsbook’s edge was 0. The implied probability is:
implied_probability = 1 / odds × 100%Applying this formula to the table above we get:
| Salt Lake | Draw | Minnesota | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudbet | 22.8 | 28.5 | 53.5 |
| Stake | 23.3 | 29 | 54.1 |
| Sportsbet | 27 | 25.6 | 54.1 |
| Nitrogen | 23.8 | 29.9 | 55.2 |
| BetBTC | 22.9 | 28.6 | 53.3 |
| Betcoin | 23.3 | 29 | 54.1 |
We know the implied probabilities are not what the sportbooks believe the true probabilities are because the sportbooks reduce the odds to give themselves an edge. We can estimate what the sportsbooks believe the real probabilities to be by dividing the implied probabilities by a measure of the sportbooks edge known as the “overround”.
The overround is how much the sum of the implied probabilities exceeds 100%. For example, in the table above Cloudbet’s overround would be:
overround = 22.8 + 28.5 + 53.5 - 100 = 4.8If we calculate the overround for each sportbook we get:
| Overround | |
|---|---|
| Cloudbet | 4.75 |
| Stake | 6.3 |
| Sportsbet | 6.58 |
| Nitrogen | 8.91 |
| BetBTC | 4.8 |
| Betcoin | 6.3 |
We can use the overround to estimate the sportbooks’ predictions of the true probabilities using:
sportsbook_probability = implied_probability / (1 + overround)Applying this formula we get:
| Salt Lake | Draw | Minnesota | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudbet | 21.7 | 27.2 | 51.1 |
| Stake | 21.9 | 27.3 | 50.9 |
| Sportsbet | 25.3 | 24 | 50.7 |
| Nitrogen | 21.9 | 27.4 | 50.7 |
| BetBTC | 21.9 | 27.3 | 50.9 |
| Betcoin | 21.9 | 27.3 | 50.9 |
We can then take the average across all sportbooks to get our best estimate of the true probability:
| Salt Lake | Draw | Minnesota | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average probability | 22.4 | 26.7 | 50.8 |
Finally, we can calculate the expected value of each bet using our estimation of the true probability and the sportsbook’s odds:
expected_value = probability × odds - 100%This results in:
| Salt Lake | Draw | Minnesota | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudbet | -1.6 | -6.1 | -4.9 |
| Stake | -3.6 | -7.8 | -5.9 |
| Sportsbet | -16.8 | 4.5 | -5.9 |
| Nitrogen | -5.8 | -10.4 | -8 |
| BetBTC | -2.1 | -6.5 | -4.6 |
| Betcoin | -3.6 | -7.8 | -5.9 |
We now look for positive values and find that betting on a draw at Sportsbet has an expected value of 4.5%. This implies that this bet will, on average, produce a 4.5% profit.
Good luck and have fun!
Kendall
Hi BitEdge team,
I like your content but this one doesn’t explain enough.
Your examples are confusing, can you explain in further detail?
I.E. “expected_value = probability × odds – 100%”
What does 100% mean? 1.0? 100?
All I see is blueprint formulas, but never used in real values, can you show us 1 consistent example on a game?
1. “Implied probability = odds converted to probability”
2. “True probability = odds minus overround converted to probability”
3. “Implied_probability = 1 / odds × 100%”
4. “overround = 22.8 + 28.5 + 53.5 – 100 = 4.8”
5. “sportsbook_probability = implied_probability / (1 + overround)”
6. “expected_value = probability × odds – 100%”
What is the implied probability?
Can you use some put real values in your formulas from 1-6 so I can understand what you mean?
Regards,
BitOdds
Hi Kendall,
Thanks for your questions.
What does 100% mean? 1.0? 100?
100% means 1.0. We could represent all the probabilities as fractions between 0 and 1 but percentages are easier to read.
All I see is blueprint formulas, but never used in real values, can you show us 1 consistent example on a game?
Let’s work through the formulas using the odds from the Salt Lake vs Minnesota market referenced in the article. First we calculate the implied probability which is the probability that would correspond to the observed odds if the sportsbook had 0 edge. The implied probability is not directly useful but it allows us to determine the sportsbook’s overround and from that the sportsbook’s estimate of the probability.
The formula for implied probability is:
To apply this formula we take each value from the table of odds and plug it into the formula. For example, Cloudbet’s odds produce the following implied probabilities:
We repeat with the odds for the other sportbooks to get the complete table of implied probabilities.
We then calculate the overround for each sportsbook by adding up the implied probabilities for each possible outcome (Salt Lake, Draw, Minnesota) and subtracting 100%:
We then calculate the sportbook’s estimated probability for each outcome:
For example, Cloudbet’s estimated probabilities would be:
Salt Lake: 22.78% / (1 + 4.75%) = 22.78% / (1 + 0.0475) = 22.78% / 1.0475 = 21.75% Draw: 28.49% / 1.0475 = 27.20% Minnesota: 53.48% / 1.0475 = 51.05%An estimate of the true probability for each outcome is found by averaging the sportsbook probabilities:
average_probability = (cloudbet_probability + stake_probability + sportsbet_probability + nitrogen_probability + betbtc_probability + betcoin_probability) / 6This comes out to be:
And finally we can calculate the expected value by assuming the average probability is the true probability and using:
For Cloudbet’s Salt Lake bet, the expected value is:
We use the same formula to calculate the expected values of the other bets and the results are displayed in the final table in the article.
Hope this makes more sense. Let us know if you have any other questions.
Anonymous
Love the new alerts. The old arb alerts would often not be available for long enough to bet on.
Sumo
I like this change!