Betting sites

[Davkaus]

Indeed. Hope he saved his money.

There's no shame at all in not understanding how these things work, but I'd take needing help to understand how the betting sites work to be a really good indication that you should be a bit more cautious rather than lumping on three hundred quid!

[colhint]

Thanks for all the help I didn't bet in the end. There was too many t&c to go through. If I had asked the question the day after the semi i would have done. I will now though i want to build up a kitty for the womens rugby world up in october.

[Genie]

11 hours ago, fightoffyour said:

Odds converters? Guys it’s literally just the fraction + 1 because decimal odds give you the returns amount rather than just the profit of the numerator to the denominator. If you can’t understand that without a table I’d suggest you shouldn’t be betting in the first place.

Apart from the grand national of course, fill your boots (or the bookies’).

4/11 or 1.36, I know which one I can easily do in my head.

[fightoffyour]

1 hour ago, colhint said:

Thanks for all the help I didn't bet in the end. There was too many t&c to go through. If I had asked the question the day after the semi i would have done. I will now though i want to build up a kitty for the womens rugby world up in october.

Lucky escape! Assuming you know that what you would’ve bet on counts for 90 mins result, not extra time.

[fightoffyour]

1 hour ago, Genie said:

4/11 or 1.36, I know which one I can easily do in my head.

I genuinely don’t know the answer. The former if you bet £11 you win £4 or return £15, easy (as long as you bet £22 or £11 or £5.50 or £2.75, otherwise it’s trickier), the latter you bet £1 and return £1.36 or win £0.36, also easy.

[Davkaus]

2 hours ago, colhint said:

Thanks for all the help I didn't bet in the end. There was too many t&c to go through. If I had asked the question the day after the semi i would have done. I will now though i want to build up a kitty for the womens rugby world up in october.

I appreciate that this is unsolicited advice, and you're well within your rights to tell me to mind my own business, but I think this is a big mistake and you should reconsider.

I'm not particularly anti-gambling, I like a bet with spare cash, and I do alright, and any losses, I put down to an entertainment expense. If you want a flutter, go for it. The idea of chucking £300 on a bet when you're new to online gambling is pretty crazy, but I thought "well, it's your money, if you're happy to lose it".

The fact you're planning this months in advance and starting to put money aside for it suggests to me it's not just "this will make the game more fun, if I lose, never mind", but that you're going into this with a serious expectation of making profit, and I've seen too many people go down that path and start chasing to re-gain their losses and losing some very serious money. Be careful, take a step back, and consider the best use of several hundreds of pounds is risking it on chance.

You're new to it, you may well make mistakes, not just picking bad bets, but not understanding all of the terms, etc. If you're going to place a few bets online, cool, but start small, learn what you're doing, and make the rookie errors with a few quid, not a few hundred.

[Genie]

32 minutes ago, fightoffyour said:

I genuinely don’t know the answer. The former if you bet £11 you win £4 or return £15, easy (as long as you bet £22 or £11 or £5.50 or £2.75, otherwise it’s trickier), the latter you bet £1 and return £1.36 or win £0.36, also easy.

We’ll yeah, you said it. If you’re betting a multiple of 11 or 1 then it’s a piece of piss. For the other 99% of bets the decimal way is easier. 

[Genie]

Good advice from @Davkaus above. Tbh, i’ve never come across someone who didn’t gamble but fancied going all in for £300 as an initial bet. Neither have I known a non-gambler want to save up to bet on something later in the year.

Bookies make a lot of money and the reason is very simple. They have the data to know the probability of something occurring, then they offer odds just below the likelihood of it so that they have the edge. Like a slot machine that pays out 95% on every spin or paying double money for red or black in roulette which has just under a 50% chance of happening. Long term the odds are in their favour. They do the same with sports.

Unless you have the edge you’ll almost certainly lose money long term so please consider that. You can’t beat the bookies long term with conventional bets.

[colhint]

Appreciate the advice Dad was a bookie so i'm well aware of the risk . my plan is to only bet on sports i know plenty about . i may bet on the womens euros and then the womans rugby world cup. i think i know  more than most on them . ill never bet on horses i dont know enough about it . and again it will be pre planned bets never on the fly . i  don't intend it to be a regular  income stream 

now people have explained decimal odds include the stake it's easy 

[CVByrne]

16 hours ago, Genie said:

1-1 at 90 mins. Usually a win bet does not include extra time / pens. 

Yeah it doesn't

[foreveryoung]

19 minutes ago, colhint said:

Appreciate the advice Dad was a bookie so i'm well aware of the risk . my plan is to only bet on sports i know plenty about . i may bet on the womens euros and then the womans rugby world cup. i think i know  more than most on them . ill never bet on horses i dont know enough about it . and again it will be pre planned bets never on the fly . i  don't intend it to be a regular  income stream 

now people have explained decimal odds include the stake it's easy 

I'm surprised your not a little bit more conversant if your dad was a bookie. Knowing certain sports is not really gonna help, we all know the Villa, but wouldn't really splash big money on them at any time. It's a mugs game, you can earn a bit matched betting, having the edge, but standard betting is just luck and risk.

[CVByrne]

1 hour ago, fightoffyour said:

I genuinely don’t know the answer. The former if you bet £11 you win £4 or return £15, easy (as long as you bet £22 or £11 or £5.50 or £2.75, otherwise it’s trickier), the latter you bet £1 and return £1.36 or win £0.36, also easy.

The difference is decimal odds include your stake. 

So take a bet where the odds 2/1 that is 3.0 in decimal. 

If I bet £10. 2/1 odds means I bet 10 and I get 2 times that if I win. So if I won I'd win £20 meaning I've now my £20 profit + my original £10 = £30.

Decimal odds means your original £10 is now part of the bet, if it wins you're returned £10 * 3.0 = £30 if it loses you get 0. Your profit is £20 if you win because you placed a £10 bet. 

So to calculate decimal odds just add one to the odds you've got, so 6/4 = 1.5 + 1 = 2.5

 

Decimal odds are also very good for working out probabilities. So say a bet is evens, or 2.0. To work out what the implied probability is you take 1 divided by the decimal odds. So 1 / 2.0 = 0.5 or 50%. So even money bet means you;ve a 50:50 chance. 

If the odds are 15/2. That's 8.5 in decimal odds or 1 / 8.5 = 0.1176 = 11.76% chance. This is very useful as sporting events always have 100% of an outcome happening.

So in horseracing it's very useful as there is a 100% chance one of the horses in a race will win the race or the race will be voided if none finish and everyone gets their bets back. So if I think a horse has a 25% chance of winning, if his odds are 2/1 I wouldn't bet. 2/1 = 3.0 = 1 / 3.0 = 33.33%. So he's priced as if he has a 33% chance of wining and I think he has a 25% chance. If however he was 4/1 = 5.0 = 1/ 5.0 = 20%. The bookies have priced the horse as a 20% chance of winning and I think he has a 25% chance, thus this is a good bet and I'd bet on it.

Same can be applied to any sports betting on outcomes.

Edited July 2, 2022 by CVByrne

[KentVillan]

16 minutes ago, colhint said:

Appreciate the advice Dad was a bookie so i'm well aware of the risk . my plan is to only bet on sports i know plenty about . i may bet on the womens euros and then the womans rugby world cup. i think i know  more than most on them . ill never bet on horses i dont know enough about it . and again it will be pre planned bets never on the fly . i  don't intend it to be a regular  income stream 

now people have explained decimal odds include the stake it's easy 

Remember it’s not about how much you know - it’s about how much more you know than the bookies. Usually the answer to that question is, “less than zero”.

Think of the economies of scale they have. They can invest in teams of scouts & researchers, live data, genius statisticians & econometricians, and everything else you might need to price a bet.

It’s so so rare that you’ll be able to bet on something where you really have an edge. Of course it does happen, but how are you going to find that consistently?

I’ve never met anyone rich who’s made their money from gambling. I have a relative who has lost everything. Don’t mean to be personal, but I can see in your post the same defensive “I know what I’m doing” reasoning, and it’s obvious from your posts that you don’t.

[fightoffyour]

3 minutes ago, CVByrne said:

The difference is decimal odds include your stake. 

So take a bet where the odds 2/1 that is 3.0 in decimal. 

If I bet £10. 2/1 odds means I bet 10 and I get 2 times that if I win. So if I wont I'd win £20 meaning I've now my £20 profit + my original £10 = £30.

Decimal odds means your original £10 is now part of the bet, if it wins you're returned £10 * 3.0 = £30 if it loses you get 0. Your profit is £20 if you win because you placed a £10 bet. 

So to calculate decimal odds just add one to the odds you've got, so 6/4 = 1.5 + 1 = 2.5

 

Decimal odds are also very good for working our probabilities. So say a bet is evens, or 2.0. To work out what the implied probability is you take 1 divided by the decimal odds. So 1 / 2.0 = 0.5 or 50%. So even money bet means you;ve a 50:50 chance. 

If the odds are 15/2. That's 8.5 in decimal odds or 1 / 8.5 = 0.1176 = 11.76% chance. This is very useful as sporting events always have 100% of an outcome happening.

So in horseracing it's very useful as there is a 100% chance one of the horses in a race will win the race or the race will be voided if none finish and everyone gets their bets back. So if I think a horse has a 25% chance of winning, if his odds are 2/1 I wouldn't bet. 2/1 = 3.0 = 1 / 3.0 = 33.33%. So he's priced as if he has a 33% chance of wining and I think he has a 25% chance. If however he was 4/1 = 5.0 = 1/ 5.0 = 20%. The bookies have priced the horse as a 20% chance of winning and I think he has a 25% chance, thus this is a good bet and I'd bet on it.

Same can be applied to any sports betting on outcomes.

I hope I made it clear that I knew all of that, but this is a very good explanation for the rookies!

[CVByrne]

1 minute ago, fightoffyour said:

I hope I made it clear that I knew all of that, but this is a very good explanation for the rookies!

Yes you did. I just wanted to elaborate more on it. Not explain it to you more for the thread in general

[fightoffyour]

Literally not going through the hassle of signing up has saved you £300 already on what you thought was a sure thing, and only to return a profit of ~£140 was it? If that isn’t enough warning then I don’t know what could be.

[CVByrne]

For me there is betting and gambling. If you want to gamble, that's basically for entertainment. Lots of people place football bets for entertainment. £20 bet on this or that is fun. You're not gambling too much and you can afford to lose it. 

Betting is different and is based around longer term to generate consistent profit. You bet in the situations I've outlined above, when you believe the price is wrong and this a "good" bet. To be successful at that you need to a) be good at identifying these good bets, where odds are in your favour and b) bet over long periods of time so any randomness of events is ironed out by law of large numbers. You need the right temperament for it as most people crack under bad runs of form and lose any gains they had back. 

[CVByrne]

7 minutes ago, fightoffyour said:

Literally not going through the hassle of signing up has saved you £300 already on what you thought was a sure thing, and only to return a profit of ~£140 was it? If that isn’t enough warning then I don’t know what could be.

Sometimes the odds on "sure things" are still value. Take Ireland vs New Zealand today in the Rugby. New Zealand were 1.3 to win at home in Eden Park where they've not lost since the 1970s. The real odds were somewhere around 1.1 territory. So placing a big bet at 1.3 is great value. 

What's key is to know that a good bet isn't always a winning bet. A winning bet can also be a bad bet. 

Edited July 2, 2022 by CVByrne

[fightoffyour]

5 minutes ago, CVByrne said:

Sometimes the odds on "sure things" are still value. Take Ireland vs New Zealand today in the Rugby. New Zealand were 1.3 to win at home in Eden Park where they've not lost since the 1970s. The real odds were somewhere around 1.1 territory. So placing a big bet at 1.3 is great value. 

What's key is to know that a good bet isn't always a winning bet. A winning bet can also be a bad bet. 

I get that, and perhaps the England U19s were a good bet, at least until the lineup announcement which by all accounts was the wrong starting 11, indeed they only won after the Villa boys came on. I appreciate that the OP was earlier than that though, so benefit of the doubt they could’ve said “I didn’t bet when I saw the team news”!

[KentVillan]

1 minute ago, fightoffyour said:

I get that, and perhaps the England U19s were a good bet, at least until the lineup announcement which by all accounts was the wrong starting 11, indeed they only won after the Villa boys came on. I appreciate that the OP was earlier than that though, so benefit of the doubt they could’ve said “I didn’t bet when I saw the team news”!

FWIW it didn’t sound like a crazy bet, but summer international fixtures are full of strange results because players have signed off for the summer and managers tend to rotate a lot to protect players. Your best chance of an edge in football is getting some ITK on key players being unavailable, maybe a Covid outbreak.