What is value?

Finding value is essential if you are to make a profit. Put simply this means that on average you need to find bets that win more often than the odds suggest. So if you bet at evens you need to win more than 50% of the time to make a profit.

A lot of new people to betting fail to understand the significance of this and think about their bets purely in terms of will it win and this is a big reason why they don’t make a profit. If you are prepared to back at any price you are not going to make a profit.

Once you’ve understood the simple maths behind value you then need to devise a method of actually finding it. This is a difficult skill but you can often apply common sense to help you decide when a bet is likely to be value. For example, there are times when you know a favourite will be over bet in your country like the England football team or Andy Murray to win Wimbledon for the English. It’s then possible to lay these selections or take advantage of value on other selections.

Betting against teams or individuals when motivation is likely to be low is another common tactic but the best strategies will take into account all these types of things and much more. The more you can include aspects of a bet that could be significant and that few people are likely to have considered, the greater your chance of making big profits.

To find out if a price is truly value in your opinion, estimate how many times you think your potential selection wins out of 100. Then find out what the best decimal odds are and do this simple calculation:

100 divided by Odds = % chance the bookies are giving this selection

Now if your percentage estimate is greater than that of the bookies then that is a value in your opinion and it’s a bet! If your estimate is very close to the market then you may choose not to bet. Remember that not betting on every market is one of the biggest advantages we have over the bookmaker. The other big one is that we get to shop around to make sure we get the best available price.