Value: Profiting From The Games

Value is a tricky subject to define in the world of gambling and one that throws up all manners of differing opinion. I’ll be honest in my opening lines of this article; it was something that took me a long time to grasp!

So what is value and how can we apply this to Betfair Games?

If we imagine an event where there are 4 runners. They all have equal chance at the moment of being the first past the winning line. If we were to create “fair odds” on this the betting would all have them up as 3/1. Now to understand this further we need to understand how we came up with 3/1. If we add the 3 and the 1 together we come up with 4. We then divide 100 by 4 which gives us 25%which is the true chance any of our 4 runners has of passing the winning line first.

Now of course this is not how it works in the real world and a bookie will price the event up so that the odds would not be so generous! His book will be priced up so that the overall percentage will be 110% + ensuring his long term profit. Our 3/1 chance will be more like 5/2 or 2/1. In monetary terms we are not receiving the correct amount of money back that we should be about something that has a 25% chance.

Now this is where value comes in. If we study harder into our “event” and believe that something has a 25% chance (3/1) and the price available is 5/1 (16.66%) then this is where we have value. We are receiving more money back than we should about our runner.

I hope this makes sense but how we do apply this to Betfair Games?

It’s not easy as Betfair Games offers odds on its games that are of the correct value. However there is a way of exploiting this to an extent if we take the time to understand the percentages a little better.

Take the time to have a look at http://www.pokerstove.com/pokerstove/

Once downloaded (it’s completely free!) we can use it to understand percentages within the game of Texas Hold’Em. You will notice that the odds available are correct to the percentages but the idea here is to gain a better understanding of  these percentages and thus make sure we are only betting with more knowledge.

I will be writing a further article this week on using staking plans in combination with our now better understanding of percentages. This is how we can exploit our knowledge and look at making long term profits.

Moving on from Poker and before I finish off I’ll leave you with a little technique I use with X-card Derby. Going back to a previous X-Feeder Review article you will need this software. Just to add… please use the test mode first so that you can make sure you are happy with this before risking your own money.

Have a look at the suit that has the highest handicap. Now in round three if that suit has not moved out then take the price as this is often a lot bigger than it should be. A bit of value for you! As soon as the next round commences then look at laying it off for the same stake if the odds have shortened. If that suit goes on to win then you have won. If it doesn’t then you have lost nothing. There will be times when the odds don’t shorten and you will have a losing bet but remember we’re looking at long term profits here.

I hope you now have a better understanding of the percentages involved and this helps you in your journey to being a better Betfair Games player!