Betting value: what is it and why is it important?

So, what is betting value?

Let’s go back to basics. A coin toss is the ultimate 50/50 chance.

If someone offered you odds of 1.9 on heads or tails, those are poor odds. If someone offered you odds of 2.0 that’s exactly what they should be. But if someone offered you odds of 2.1 on either outcome that’s a value bet: you’re being offered greater odds (and a bigger potential payout) on an outcome than what they should be mathematically.

Unfortunately, sports betting doesn’t throw up such clear-cut odds as a coin toss. There are lots of factors at play.

So, it’s up to you, the punter, to follow a similar approach as P3 did in taking as many factors as possible into account when trying to work out odds for yourself.

Your results will, by definition, be subjective.

Punter 4 may come along, take other factors into consideration such as which team he thinks will score first or give more importance to some factors than others compared to P3. In other words, the odds P4 comes up with on Fernandes and Grealish are likely to be different to those that P3 came up with.

That’s fine but the important thing is you have a method in place, you’re loyal to your approach and only bet at bigger prices than expected, further aided by having several accounts, meaning you’ll be able to get the best price on a particular player across those accounts.

Why is betting value important?

No-one is going to win all the time. An active punter may place dozens of bets every week and depending on the odds in question, the wisdom of those bets and getting the rub of the green or not, a fair few of those will lose. Again, that’s just part of the game.

But what you as a punter must do is give yourself the best chance of beating the house in the long run. And the best way to achieve that is to get betting value so that every bet you win on, gives you as big a payout as possible. That will go a long way to cancelling out those losses and better still, allow you to show a profit.

At this stage, some punters may be thinking ‘what difference does it make if that bet was value as it lost anyway?’ or ‘it may not have been value, but at least it was a winner.’

Fair enough but that’s missing the point. The point is that your method and strategy need to be correct from the outset every time rather than looking at the end result and deciding it didn’t make much of a difference.

Greater value on outsiders

Of course, in the middle of all this are examples of poor value, spot-on prices, slight value and really good value, the latter meaning that you’re getting considerably bigger payouts than what you should be getting. And you’re more likely to find those when betting on outsiders than favourites or short-priced bets.

Let’s say it’s Chelsea v Arsenal and in your head, you priced up Arsenal at 2.8.

Assuming you did a good job of pricing up the market, you might be able to get 2.9 or 3.0 if you’re lucky. It’s a high-profile match, Arsenal are slight favourites and no bookie wants to take a risk by offering generous odds knowing that thousands of punters may wade into Arsenal, resulting in a bigger payout than usual should the Gunners go on to win.

But you might be surprised to find far better examples of betting value on say Declan Rice to be first goalscorer, Ben Chilwell to score a goal, goalkeeper Aaron Ramsdale to be shown a card, or for the match to finish 3-1 to Arsenal.

Bookmakers know that there will be far less interest in these markets than the straight match-winner so may be prepared to offer generous odds to attract interest. Alternatively, they may not put in the same amount of effort pricing up those markets as the most popular ones, which could result in bigger prices that way. All the better for you.

Other examples of betting markets where you’re likely to find considerable value are horseracing markets (particularly those with lots of runners) or golf tournaments where any one of 80+ players could win.

Whereas the prices are likely to be tight on the favourites, outsiders may be far bigger than what you’d think.

Best value of all on Betfair

And nowhere is this more the case than when betting on the Betfair Exchange. Because of the mechanics of how the Exchange works (peer-to-peer betting) there’s a far greater chance that a layer (someone acting as bookie and offering you odds) out there will take a risk on a few outsiders by offering considerably better odds than what you’d get with the bookies.

So, let’s say you’re looking to bet on Keegan Bradley to win the upcoming US Masters. You might make him a 60.0 chance, only to find a couple of bookies offering odds of 75.0. But don’t be too surprised if someone on Betfair is offering odds of 100.0.

Of course, when using Betfair, the opposite is also true when it comes to laying.

If you decide that our old mate Haaland should be around 1.9 to score a goal for City against Arsenal and you’re able to lay him at odds of 1.7, you’ve got a value bet, as well.

In this case, you’re playing bookmaker, but the principle is still the same, just in reverse:  you yourself are offering a smaller payout than what you should be offering, have the better end of the bet and therefore have struck a value bet.