More Winners v Better Prices?
 Ask most punters how you can make more money from gambling and they’ll tell you to pick more winners.
But it doesn’t need to be that difficult. Most punters would be able to increase their returns substantially simply by obtaining better prices.
Hopefully you’ve realized by now that consistently finding value is the key to making long-term profits. But just because something appears value to you it doesn’t mean you should pile in without checking to see if a better price is available elsewhere.
In this article we will demonstrate two major realities of betting
1. The odds on any selection will often vary by 50%
2. Just getting 20% better odds may well double your profits !!
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Huge Variations in Prices
Take a look at the examples below and you can see that the range of prices available with each bookie is huge. It doesnt matter which sport you look at or which selection the story is always the same - the bookies price things up differently. If you think these examples have been cherry picked then go see for yourself on various Valuechecker pages - these sort of differences are quite typical.
| Wimbledon 2005 |
Maria Sharapova |
4.33 |
3 |
67% |
William Hill |
Bet Direct |
| Arsenal v Everton |
Draw |
5 |
3.75 |
45% |
Betfair |
Coral |
| 16.30 Folkestone |
Imperial Rule |
5.5 |
3.75 |
67% |
Sporting Odds |
William Hill |
| World Snooker |
Stephen Maquire |
6 |
3.75 |
82% |
VC Bet |
Totesport |
| Ryder Cup 2006 |
Europe |
2 |
1.72 |
39% |
Betfair |
Ladbrokes |
| Cricket World Cup |
England |
6.5 |
4.5 |
57% |
Paddy Power |
Sporting Odds |
| NFL Superbowl |
Indianapolis Colt |
5.75 |
4.5 |
36% |
BetDaq |
Bet Direct, Paddy Power |
| Six Nations |
France |
2.9 |
2.35 |
41% |
Gamebookers |
VC Bet |
There are no particularly bad or good bookies, where the bookies above are the best/worst for the selection we chose, quite often they are the opposite for some other selection. So you really do need to have a good choice of bookies if you want to be on at the best price. To illustrate this our Bookmaker Chart gives an indication of which bookies are offering the best value on premiership matches each week. What this shows is that typically if say you back all your weekend football picks at the same bookmaker, at best you'll be 5% and at worst 25% worse off than if you'd shopped around and made each bet at best price.
You can see in the table above that the difference between best and worst is quite variable but regularly over 50%. Now clearly even if you have a limited number of bookies you are not always going to be on at the worst price, but assuming that you average somewhere in the middle, then its clear that it should be quite easy to get 20% better odds with a bit of effort.
So is 20% better odds really worth the extra effort?
What if we told you that this could DOUBLE your profits.
20% Better Odds Can Mean 100%more profit
That's right, 20% better odds could easily double your profits.
Now clearly everyone is different but lets say on a typically day you place five bets at £5 a bet.
On average you pick out one winner at 5/1 and the other 4 lose. This means you will make £5 a day (25 for the win and -20 for the losers). If say you bet for 300 days in a year this would result in a profit of £1500.
Very nice.
At £5 a bet you might think shopping around for prices isn’t worth it but say you did and say you found just 20% better odds.
That would make that winner 6/1 and your daily profit would be £10 or £3,000 for the year.
That's double your profits for 20% better odds.
The reason this works is because its your RETURN that you INCREASE BY 20% (while your stake stays the same)
EG. You bet £100 per day & make £20 profit on average per day.
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Normal Odds |
20%+ Odds |
| Stakes |
100 |
100 |
| Return |
120 |
144 |
| Profit |
20 |
44 |
Thats more than double the profit!
Turning The Odds in Your Favor
We’ve mentioned before how bookies set odds so that in theory they should make a profit on each market they price up. The more bookmakers’ odds you compare, the more you can narrow that advantage. In the table below we can see that by choosing the best odds on each selection, the odds can actually swing in the favor of the punter.
In this example by backing Arsenal with Paddy Power at 1.83, Everton with Betfair at 10.02 and the Draw with VC Bet at 2.9 you could actually back all three outcomes and make a small profit!
Don’t be lazy. Always use valuechecker before placing a bet. Price means Profit.
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