When identifying value bets and trades, there’s one thing I’m consistently reminded of — to find the most profitable betting opportunities, it very often pays to be looking beyond the obvious.

Take horse racing, for example…

Your typical losing punter will usually look through a bog-standard race card before deciding which horse to back. Most likely, he’ll then come to a semi-informed decision based on the trainer, jockey and horse’s recent form. While this might be a reasonable starting point, the problem with this approach is that everyone has access to the same information. Finding a winning edge becomes virtually impossible.

To become a successful bettor, it helps to think like a shrewd detective . Ask yourself, ‘what is it that others haven’t spotted, which will guide me to the value bets?’

We can easily improve on a basic race card analysis by taking things a step or two further. For instance, we could take the time to look at the classes of a horse’s previous races.

If the horse has been running well, is it now running in a higher class for the first time? If so, we might have found a good horse to lay — that would require further inspection on the odds, distance, going, draw, quality of other horses (after all, it’s probably not worth laying a horse who doesn’t have much competition for the win) and so forth.

On the flip side, if the horse has been placing in a higher class, is it now dropping to a lower class once again? If so, we might have found a good horse to back — again, it would require further ‘detective work‘.

Regularly, I find horses at long odds with seemingly suspect form and then find the horse is dropping down in class. Sometimes, these horses lead to nothing, but I often follow this approach to find value bets at long odds.

You could take this even further by looking at different, more-unique angles. For instance, perhaps there’s an unfancied horse at long odds and you discover he tends to run well only at left-handed courses… this attention to detail is what can give you edge you need to profit.

The possibilities of angles you can explore are endless. Because of this, I generally recommend that punters SPECIALISE on just a few types of betting approaches that suit them best.

To illustrate my point, here are a couple of real-life examples…

1. One successful punter I’m in contact with specialises in the performance of different trainer/jockey combinations. He typically backs trainer/jockey combinations who often win and lays those who rarely win. Of course, his approach is slightly more complex, but it does pay off for him.

2. Another friend I know has a season ticket to watch Woking Football Club and is particularly knowledgeable about lower league football. Seeing as boomakers don’t spend much time analysing the lower leagues, Greg often finds value bets and, during most months, this betting niche of his earns some nice spending money.

What follows is worth remembering…

To stay competetive, bookmakers HAVE to offer odds on all worthwhile sporting events. As punters, one of our biggest advantages is that we can CHOOSE which sporting events we bet on… and specialising in you’re own betting niche is a great way to maximise that benefit.

And that’s all from me for today. Stay tuned next week and the weeks that follow… I have some great content lined-up for you.

Tipping Services Testing

I’m about to start testing various tipping services to see how well they perform over a period of time and then I’ll report the results back to you on a regular basis.

Initially, I’m going to test the most popular services, which you will decide, so if you’d like a service tested, please add a comment at the bottom of this blog post and I’ll start testing the various services you require over a period of time.

Have a good one,

- Josh.