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What is Value?
Copyright 2014 goalprofits.com. All rights reserved




















What is Value?
by
Kevin Laverick
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What is Value?
Copyright 2014 goalprofits.com. All rights reserved


LEGAL NOTICE
Disclaimer & Terms of Use


This e-book has been put together for educational purposes only; it is not a guarantee that you will make a
profit from football. Traders who have the correct mindset can make a very good living from football, but
trading decisions must be made with a view to long-term profits and steady bank growth rather than a hope to
"get rich quick". This book shares a trading strategy which can be highly successful, but if you decide to trade
using the ideas contained in this manual you are taking full responsibility for your own actions. Your success or
income level cannot be guaranteed.

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What is Value?
Copyright 2014 goalprofits.com. All rights reserved

What is Value?

Where do I start? In essence Value is when you bet on an outcome where you think the chances of it winning
are better than the odds available. Odds are probabilities, and if you can master the art of understanding and
managing probabilities, then you will do very well as a Football Bettor/Trader.

The first thing to say about Value in terms of sports betting, is that no-one can actually put a true price on the
outcome of any sporting event. There are so many variants, that it is quite impossible to accurately reflect the
true odds or probabilities with any certainty, in any sporting fixture. From that point of view we have an
advantage over the Books. They can make their best approximations, but it will still only be an approximation,
and certainly will not be definitive in any way. They do however, have the advantage over us, in that, whilst
they do the Laying, we as Bettors will do the Backing and they are able to alter their odds, in order to balance
their Books, to make sure they come out in front no matter what the outcome of the event is.

To be successful at Football Betting/Trading you need to be able to identify Value bets consistently.

Often this will be just a case of going against the public flow of money. Bookmakers take into account the way
they think the public will bet in any particular match. So if Chelsea are at Home to a lower table club the odds
on Chelsea will be so cramped because the Books know that 95% of the public will want to back them, and
they will Back them at any price. So the Value here is to go against the flow and either Back the Dog or Lay
Chelsea. If you are using Betfair you can always Trade out after 15/20 minutes with a profit, as long as Chelsea
have not gone in front.

My preferred way though is to use statistical information. This is where Team Stats comes in, and along with a
little bit of Maths we can work out our own odds, in any situation and check if we have got any Value by
comparing the odds on offer at the Books or on Betfair. So for instance, if we have calculated that the odds on
the Chelsea game going Over 2.5 goals should be 1.80 but on Betfair you can Back it at 2.00 then I would
suggest you Back Over 2.5 goals because the chances of it winning are better than the odds on offer by 25%.

Now please dont get too worried here, I am not about to bore you to death with stats, numbers and
equations, nor will I go into how the Books derive their odds in the first place, but I will show you a simple way
of determining the perceived true odds of an event, from a purely Stats based viewpoint, using the Team Stats
pages at Goal Profits.

Seeing as how we will be looking at Strategies involving Overs/Unders in the next e-Book I will use that market
in particular, to illustrate how we can do this. It is a very simple procedure and can be used to determine the
correct odds in any market you wish, not just the Over/Under markets.



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What is Value?
Copyright 2014 goalprofits.com. All rights reserved
Lets look at a few examples using Team Stats. We go to the Over/Under page on Team Stats. These are the
games available in the Championship for this particular day. Pencilled in red are the Over 1.5 goals and the
Over 2.5 goals.





If we look at the Over 1.5 goals in the Bournemouth v Burnley game you will see that they have played 30
games between them and that a total of 22 games have gone Over 1.5 goals. Here comes the maths:-

Total number of games / Total number of Over 1.5 goals

30 / 22 = 1.36, so we think the true perceived odds of this game going Over 1.5 goals is 1.36, based purely on
the Stats. Lets have a look at what Betfair say the odds should be.





Betfair have it priced at 1.39, so pretty much spot on with what we have and no real Value. Even though we
might think it is a certainty to go Over I would not Back it because we have no Value. Obviously I didnt Back
this option. The game ended 1-1, so would have been a winner, but I would rather leave a winner than have a
bet without Value. That takes discipline and is an art that you must learn.
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What is Value?
Copyright 2014 goalprofits.com. All rights reserved

Lets look at a game in League 1, Swindon v Crawley.






We can see they have played 28 games and that 23 have gone Over 1.5 goals.

28/23 = 1.22 so we think the true odds should be 1.22 for Over 1.5 goals

Lets see what Betfair think.






Betfair have the odds at 1.39 against our 1.22. We look to have quite a bit of Value in this bet, even though it is
a good odds-on. I waited 8 minutes after the start and Backed it at 1.44, which means we will get double Value
in this bet. You could have Backed it before kick-off as there was plenty of Value but seeing as it is rare to get a
goal in the opening minutes I usually wait 5-10 minutes before placing the Bet, you just get even more Value.



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What is Value?
Copyright 2014 goalprofits.com. All rights reserved





There were no goals at all in the first half which was a bit worrying. However we did get one right at the start
of the second half. As long as we get a goal before 75 minutes I will always stay in this Bet, after all this is
meant as a straight Bet rather than a Trade. If there are no goals before 75 minutes then I would Trade out and
at least save a little bit. If you did want to make sure you could not lose anything you do have the option of
making at least a scratch once the first goal goes in by Trading some of your profit, leaving a scratch on Unders
and a smaller profit on Overs.

In this game though we did get the first goal on 49 minutes so it was my intention to stay in for the duration.
We did finally get the second goal after 80 minutes and it was a winning bet, though it made us sweat a little
bit.

When you have a bet with Value it doesnt always win but it is still the right bet to make. This was a good
winner for us though.








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What is Value?
Copyright 2014 goalprofits.com. All rights reserved
Dont get too carried away by the fact we can Back at 1.44 when it should be 1.22, because in truth the real
odds will lie somewhere in between the two, so we never have quite as much Value as we think. Still, this was
a very good bet to make and it shows that you can still get good Value with odds-on shots.

How do you know how much Value you have got in any bet? That is pretty straightforward too. In the example
above we were Backing at 1.44 when we thought it should be 1.22, so what is our Value? Here we are working
in decimals, so we have to take 1 off the odds because that is our stake so,

1.44-1.0 = 0.44 and 1.22-1.0 = 0.22 then all we do is

Odds we Back at / Odds we think it should be

0.44 / 0.22 = 2.0 so we are getting 2x the Value on this bet (100%)

If the odds we Backed at were 2.40 and we thought they should be 2.00 we get

2.40-1.0 = 1.40 and 2.00-1.0 = 1.00 so,

1.40 / 1.00 = 1.40 so we are getting 1.4x the Value on this bet (40%)

The principle is always the same. It is a quick and easy way to find if you have Value on your side and by how
much. In betting terms too, the bigger the Value the bigger the bet should be, so you lever out bigger profits
when you have bigger Value.

If you are someone who likes to play the Unders rather than the Overs then you can do exactly the same with
the Under 1.5 goals if you wish, it is the same principle, Number of games played/Number of Under 1.5 games
and you will quickly find out if you have any Value. If you dont, you just leave it, if you do, you can Back the
selection in the knowledge that you do have Value on your side. Of course this does not mean the selection
will win, but you have a lot better chance of coming out in front in the long term than you would by betting
against the Value.

Again you can do the same with the Over 2.5, or Over 3.5 goals, it is all the same. In fact it is a quick way of
finding Value for any bet you want to make,

the number of games played/the number of times the selection has occurred.

This is, of course, a very basic and quick method. There are many more complicated methods of determining if
you have Value or not. Once you have identified that you do have Value, you may then want to delve a bit
deeper into the game before making a final call on it. If you do want to look at it deeper then you know where
to go, straight to the Team Stats Pages, where you have everything you will ever need.

Remember the one Golden Rule when Betting/Trading is to:-

ALWAYS BET WITH VALUE ON YOUR SIDE

It may take a little extra effort to make sure you do have Value but believe me it is worth it in the end. I am
living proof of that fact. Four years of betting without Value put me 40k down, but once I realised what I
needed to do the only way was up, and that is just as true now as it was then.