Aapo's Sports Betting Articles / Strategies Thread

[Aapo]

The roots of my betting career go back to high school, when I got interested in profitable betting. Until then I had made bets as a hobby – and with poor results.

At first the world of betting seemed really difficult, but excited as I was, nothing seemed impossible. I used a lot of time reading and studying betting articles, and discussed with a lot of professionals from different fields. I started to draft different methods to base my betting on. At this point I played with a small bankroll, and financially it didn’t make a huge difference if I won or lost, but I believed that someday all this work would start to pay off. I did start to make progress pretty fast, because I was able to out rule my old method with a new one! After high school I decided to focus a 100% on betting and see where it could take me. I got a job as an odds calculator and my own bankroll started to grow at a nice pace. My bets made where then a couple of hundred Euros worth. Between August 2006 and June 2007 I bet with nearly a million Euros, but due to a small return percentage my bankroll didn’t grow radically. I didn’t place those bets all on my own, a lot of it consisted of other players tips.

In July 2007 I entered the finnish military service, which took my six months to complete. Then my betting wasn’t as active, when I didn’t have much extra time. I did however manage to crush my military service buddies in betting (regards to Sir Kepola ), but otherwise things were slow. After the military service in January 2008 I continued my betting as before. I had conversations with some of the most prestigious sports bettors in Finland. We talked about the problems in betting and tried to find solutions to them. During that spring I was able to perfect my methods even further and started seeing results. Since early summer betting has been even more profitable.

I’ve increased the amount of my own bets compared to the assisted ones. On a normal Saturday morning I can have 15 000 Euros riding on my leagues, which tells a bit how serious I am about this.

Until now I have given out my tips for free, but now after clearly becoming more professionalized I want compensation for the analysis I make, to which I’ve used years to develop. Setting up a tipping service to Winnergambling has been the best way for me to work just as I please.

Regards,
Aapo Mutanen
betting@winnergambling.com

[Aapo]

To become a profitable player is a long process, which includes hundreds and hundreds of hours of learning and practice. A lot of you are interested to scratch a little deeper, so I thought I’d tell you some basics which work as a solid foundation for my betting. I won’t give out any secrets, but I’m sure it’ll be useful information to those interested in sports betting.

I start to analyze the coming season as soon as the previous one has ended. Then I update the rankings measuring the level of the teams to their final forms. This is a very important procedure, because these rankings work as a base for the coming season. I then fix these rankings according to player changes, coach changes and the changes that have followed these changes, but sometimes more peculiar things can influence the rankings, such as a renovation on the home stadium. Also changes in other teams may give pressure to higher or lower other teams’ rankings.

During the season I think it is important to update the teams’ information after every round, as to not give the markets any advantage. In addition to scores I have the habit of following shots, corners and ball possession statistics, which give valuable information when estimating whether a 1-2 visitor win was earned or did the home team control the game. It’s good to also have good knowledge of the teams’ compositions, for even a single player’s absence can make a serious impact on the games probability estimates. On the other hand, one must also bear in mind that especially with the rich teams, it makes no great difference if a few players are missing in the opening composition, for they have equally good players sitting on the bench, with good motivation given the opportunity to show off their skills. One of the key things during the season is not to react too strongly to the results of individual game results, because statistics have a way of evening out when the sample grows. Nevertheless you must be able to make even radical changes. For example a change of coach can have a definitive outcome on the teams’ estimated goal score. In this case a change of one or two percentages can be too small, when you should be able make a 5-10% change.

To reach the best result it is not enough to have good estimates, you must also act rationally in other fields of betting. Estimates are a good way to get out as quickly as possible after the previous round, to hit the starting odds in the market at once, which often have good bets to make. It is often impossible to predict which way the market moves, so as a rule of thumb, it’s worth it to play all the value bets available at the time and if necessary update the betting entirety later. You must also be careful with placing the bets, because even with the best estimates it’s possible to lose if the betting is off. Equal weighted betting as an absolute amount of money to all bets is usually never a bad option, but optimally it is not wise to play a 10% probability with a 11 coefficient with the same bet as a 60% probability target with 2,30 coefficient. My own betting method is available at the game types and betting -section. To give you a better insight, this method is based on the Kelly formula, which has been proven efficient with certain requirements, but that’s all for that.

There’s a lot to take in, before you can fight against the ever wiser growing market. A lot can be read on rankings and betting on the internet, so if you’re willing to learn there’s a lot to chew, but the hard work will eventually pay off.

Regards,
Aapo Mutanen

[Winnergambling]

Welcome our new sports betting pro, Aapo. We are finalising the sports betting tipping service details and the order details plus old tracking should be available later today when our tech department has everything finalized. No real hurry, since the first tips will be availabe 9th of Dec.

Hopefully everyone welcomes this new advantage gambling source well at WG!

[PMmarkus]

Great to get you on the forum, welcome

[Peixinho]

Welcome! I'm looking forward to your tipping service!

[Johny]

Great to see Sport tips here also!

[Aapo]

Variance is a word that is often heard when talking about sports betting (and poker and casino games). Variance is a measure of statistical dispersion, averaging the squared distance of its possible values from the expected value (EV). I don’t have any fancy mathematical formulas to show here, but through own experiences I have learnt to understand it a lot. Later I will tell one example of variance from my own betting career, but first a couple of facts that I hope everyone will take a note of.
1) In sports betting, there is and always will be variance NOT depending of the level of analysis.
2) Respect variance. When you’ll understand it’s existence in winning or losing streak, you don’t start to think about too much and you can continue on working without it affecting quality of your work. Because you know that it luck will level itself eventually.

Almost three years ago in the first days of my betting career when my bankroll was small, I read a lot quality articles about bet sizing. After several turns I ended up to Kelly/4 level with my bet sizing placing 4,5% (of bankroll) as my maximum bet size to a single bet (10/10). These numbers sound crazy at the moment even to my own ears, but facts were on my side and I wanted to grow my bankroll fast. My bankroll actually started to raise fast from the very first bets and there was no even word “losses” in my vocabulary. Because of the small bankroll (a few thousand euros) doubling it happened in a short period of time, when I was able to bet even marginal sports without limits on every booker.

After ~6 months in betting I encountered my first big downswing. My bankroll dropped 40% in a couple of weeks, which lead me questioning my and other’s tipped bets. At that time my feelings weren’t great, but I still managed to develope my analysis methods and all in all to continue as “business as usual”. And after a few months passed, the whole downswing was gone and life smiled again.

With this example I don’t mean that downswings shouldn’t be taken seriously, because if your power ratings and analysis methods are wrong in betting the the downswing will never turn around. Because of this from time to time it is a good idea to sit down and think through and develop your methods so that you’d be able to beat the market in the future too. After that you know you have done your work well and when there is quite a long history of winning betting behind you it is much easier to live with occasional, unevitable double digit percentage downswings.

To go back to downswing, which occurred to me a few years back – it really actually made me change my betting style. I ended up with a bit more conservative bet sizing method, which I still use nowadays. It is Kelly/6 combined to a 3% maximum bet size, from which I also produce my tips bet sizes (1/10…10/10). It has proven to be a good method. I don’t doubt a moment that I wouldn’t be able still use more aggressive bet sizing system and even get faster bankroll growth that way, but it is much less stressful to work when the worst downswings are size of ~30% at worst. Lower bet sizing has also come to me as a compulsion, because at times I made analysis and played five different leagues at the same time on fall and I could have 75% of my bankroll tied in bets at the same time because of that. When we add others tips on top of that, I wouldn’t have been able to place all the bets if I used higher bet sizing.

[Aapo]

Betting year 2008 was very twofold for me. First, weaker period I encountered in the beginning of the year, and the latter, very solid and profitable period lasted from May until the end of the year.

After finishing my military service in January 2008 I started to relearning process – or well, not learning process but development process. During spring time I continued to calculate estimates to Serie A, Finnish Floorball League and somewhat to La Liga. Profit was shown, but not even close as much as I had wanted. Actually March ended down and was therefore my worst month of the year. However, overall profit was on green the whole time, but my goal was not at 102% ROI, but much higher. That’s why I had plans to develop my systems and take more professional grip on sports betting.

At the end of April I had implemented my new systems to Finnish Football League (Veikkausliiga), which had a honour to act as my first gold mine on my “new” career (or at least I hoped so). After first 50 bets I was down a bit, so there was no other option than just to put it aside as variance on my mind. It was successful thought, because the rest of the season was great run from day to another and I crushed my profit goals. In addition to Veikkausliiga, summer was filled with football European Championships, from which I personally didn’t get much after England blundered (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2x4YmdXwoU ) their place at the championships already last winter.

In August I started to work towards starting European football season 2008-2009. Work included for example examining the leagues, teams, players, goal averages and power ratings (more about these in future theory entries at this blog). Methods were very similar to the ones I had already used at Veikkausliiga estimates of mine from spring. I didn’t put up any official result goals, because I hate result goals in general. My guideline is to live in the moment and act accordingly now and in the future. Well, some kind of unofficial goal I had in mind; over 105% ROI for the whole season, and I’d be pleased.

Profits started to run in from the very beginning of the season, so it was motivating to work, even though I have very seldom had any problems with motivation after all. Not taking a few small bumps into account, profits were surprisingly steady whole year. The brightest moment of the year was 20.9 Premier League matches, when all the bets hit and I made almost 40 units profit in a single day . Single mega big wins are impossible to achieve when playing rationally single 1x2 or moneyline bets, so usually the best moments are those overall great rounds or weekends.

Overall the year left positive taste because of solid second part. From the results point of view the expectations were met better than thought and it’s very great that I got things to a point where I can focus only on betting with 100% in the future too.

Regards,
Aapo

[Urban]

Please continue posting about powerratings etc. You have had some success in live sports too lately

[Winnergambling]

From now on, all Aapo's sports betting articles / strategy posts will go into this thread. This "strategy corner" type of format is better format than a "blog" for his quality articles on sports betting.
Next entry (about live betting) is coming already later today, so stay tuned!


Comments and questions are welcomed of course!