Strategy Overview
Making money from sports betting or making money gambling online may seem like a pipe dream or a fantasy only reserved for a Hollywood movie, but it’s more achievable than people think. If you have the correct temperament, willingness to learn and a little direction you can profit.
In this article I want to point you to the best starting points for people looking to turn gambling from a hobby into a career and learn how to become a professional gambler.
I’m not going to go into the nitty gritty details of each strategy as I wouldn’t be able to do them justice in only one article. However, I will try and provide some resources on each strategy for you to you’ll like to learn more.
But before we get into the strategies let’s cover some key traits you will need to possess to have a successful career as a professional gambler:
– Bankroll Management:
You could be playing the best poker of your life, analyzing sports bets like the richest gamblers in the world. However, if you’re betting too big you will go broke no matter how good you are. If you bet too small you’ll miss out on value. Pro gamblers use many staking strategies such as Kelly Criterion to optimize this and you should do too. Always way up the worst case senario to ensure you have enough in the reserves to whether down swings.
– Emotional Stability:
When gambling professionally, losing streaks are almost guaranteed. When they happen you need to have the emotional control to not chase losses and to trust that the ups and downs of making a living from gambling will all average out to the expected value we have generated.
– Analytical Skills:
The difference between a recreational gambler and pro gamblers comes down to obsessive levels of analytics. Rather than bet on your favorite team or play a casual game of poker. You will have to analyse every team, player, hand of poker. Every decision you make needs a high level of thought. This can be very mentally exhausting.
No matter if you’re targeting a casino or sportsbook. These traits are necessary for success.
The next step to enter the world of professional gambling is a simple one that many people overlook, but it was the best advice I was given whilst at university which applies to almost every aspect of life.
ALWAYS LOOK FOR THE LOW HANGING FRUIT!
Rather than diving straight into the toughest forms of betting with a low chance of success. Take all the smaller wins and use it to build your bankroll and gambling expertise.
In my opinion, the low-hanging fruit of the betting and casino world is Matched Betting. If you haven’t heard of it before it’s the quickest and easiest way to make a full-time income from betting.
How to Make Money Sports Betting
Sports Betting can be a great way to make money gambling online.
Unlike casino strategies. You don’t need to drive and sit in a dark casino for hours on end. As in most states and jurisdictions, you can place your bets from the comfort of your own home.
The average gambler loses money! That is no secret, but by learning a few key concepts and applying some simple math we can turn the odds in our favor.
Below I’ve listed 6 proven profitable sports betting strategies that professional gamblers use to make money from gambling. Don’t worry I’ve only include strategies where the betting is completely legal. No Cheating!
First, we will look at the simplest strategies in which we can make to quickest and easiest profit. We will then progress through to some of the more advanced betting strategies.
The first strategy is my recommendation to anyone who new to the world of sports betting. It’s the strategy which I first started with and it made me my first $50’000 of profit in the sports betting world.
Matched Betting
Basic Concept: Exploiting Sportsbook Promotions and Free Bets for Risk Free Cash
Matched Betting sometimes referred to as Free Bet Conversion is the easiest way to become a professional sports bettor.
It is a sports betting strategy that involves taking advantage of sportsbook promotions, loyality schemes and sign-up bonuses to guarantee a profit.
Using this system we don’t try to determine which team is more or less likely to win. In fact, most of the time when matched betting we don’t care whether our bet wins or loses!
This is because we bet on both teams or outcomes of a betting market to win, at two different sportsbook. When done correctly this remove the chance of losing money.
For example, if there was a football game of Kansas City Chiefs vs Baltimore Ravens. We would bet on Kansas City Chiefs at one sportsbook and then bet on Baltimore Ravens at a different sportsbooks. This way one bet will always win and cover the losing bet.
We don’t win or lose any money doing this. We only ever breakeven or make a small loss. However, the purpose of these bets are not to make money but to encourage the sportsbook to start giving us bonus money, cash rebates and other incentives.
This is where we turn our profit!
Check out my Matched Betting Video Guide to get started with this strategy.
Arbitrage Betting
Basic Concept: Exploiting Mistakes in Sportsbook Odds to Win Everytime
Similar to Matched Betting, with Arbitrage Betting we can profit by betting on both sides of an outcome.
The Arbitrage Betting strategy focuses on taking advantage of mistakes sportsbooks make in their lines and odds. Sportsbooks often differ in their opinion on which team or outcome is more or less likely to happen.
As a result, the odds being offered by two sportsbooks can be so far apart that we can make a guaranteed profit by placing bets on both outcomes. This is often referred to as an ‘Arb’
An example would be an NHL game between Colorado Avalanche and Seattle Kraken. FanDuel has Colorado Avalanche as a slight underdog at odds of +105. However, where as Draftkings has Seattle Kraken as the underdog at +105.
If we bet $100 on each team, $100 on Colorado Avalanche @ +105 with Fanduel and $100 on Seattle Kraken @ +105 with Draftkings.
No matter which team wins the game we are guaranteed to make $5 overall between both bets
If Colorado Avalanche Wins:
We win $105 from our bet on Colorado Avalanche at FanDuel and lose the $100 we bet on Seattle Kraken at Draftkings. Leaving us with $5 in profit
If Seattle Kraken Wins:
We win $105 from our bet on Seattle Kraken at Draftkings and lose the $100 we bet on Colorado Avalanche at FanDuel. Leaving us with $5 in profit as well.
Now we know how Arbitrage works.. How do we find these situations where the odds are far enough apart?
We can use Arbitrage Betting Software. These software tools scan through all the odds available at all the online sportsbooks 24/7 to finds these mistakes when they appear.
Best Arbitrage Betting Software to find profitable Arbs
If you are betting in the USA my absolute top recommendation for arbitrage would be Oddsjam. The have a whole host of sports betting software to find Arbitrage bets.
If you’re Outside of the USA then the best software to start arbitrage betting is Rebel Betting.
Positive EV Betting
Basic Concept: Exploiting Mistakes in Sportbooks Odds where we will profit over a large number of bets
Positive Ev Betting also known as Value Betting is when sports bettors assess the chances of winning a bet compared to the sports odds being offered by the gambling industry. This is a much harder form of betting to get right but by making smarter bets we can profit.
If you want to make serious money as a professional sports bettor you’ll eventually have to start accessing the betting odds offered by the gambling industry where there isn’t a simple arbitrage bet at two sportsbooks.
soccer handicap markets.
Unlike the arbitrage betting system, we can’t guarantee a profit every single time. However, if we correctly access and place Positive EV Bets we should make long-term profits over 100’s or 1000’s of sports bets.
For Example, let’s say we could bet on a coin toss. However, we know the coin is weighted to heads meaning that throughout 1000 coin flips the coins should land heads around 55% of the time.
The bet is double our money if the coin lands heads and we win. Lose our bet if the coin lands tails.
If we bet $10 on 3 coin flips we can’t guarantee we’re going to be in profit after 3 flips, but if we went through 1000 flips we can almost guarantee we will turn a profit on the weighted coin.
Right, how can we apply this to sports betting?
There are several cases where we can determine when the probability of winning is better than the current odds offered by the gambling industry.
One situation is when a player is injured and this has just been announced. If a key player is missing for an upcoming match we can assume the odds should shift in favor of the opposing team. If we’re quick we can get a bet on before the odds change if that team’s favor.
Another method we can use is comparing the odds at what called ‘sharp books’ against ‘soft books’. A sharp book is a sportsbook that doesn’t usually limit winning players. A soft book is a sportsbook that does limit winning players.
As a result sharp books tend to have more accurate up to date lines and odds. We can then use these sharp odds to find positive EV bets at soft books.
Sports Trading on Betting Exchanges
Basic Concept: Trade Sports Like Financial Markets on a Betting Exchange
The next strategy works on betting platforms called betting exchanges. Unlike traditional bookmakers where you only have the option to bet at the odds offered by the sportsbook.
On a betting exchange, you can offer your own betting odds into a market and allow other bettors to take the other side of the bet.
Think of a betting exchange like a stock market for odds. You can both buy and sell a bet in the form of betting for an outcome to happen and against an outcome to happen. Just like the real stock market, we can apply financial trading concepts to a betting exchange to profit.
My personal favorite betting strategy to use on betting exchanges is called market making. With market making we act like a sportsbook by offering odds into the betting exchange for other customers to match against. Just like a sportsbook, we can add our own vig to turn a profit.
This strategy is great because we don’t need to ‘beat’ the market. Just follow it!
Some other popular sports trading strategies are scalping, swing trading and trap pricing.
If you’re looking to learn more about sports trading caanberry.com is a good place to start.
Court Siding
Basic Concept: Betting on sports whilst at the event to profit from time delays
What if you could know the outcome of a game before placing your bet? That would be the dream right!
Well this is exactly what court siding does. The strategy involves placing bets whilst watching a sporting event live at the actual physical venue.
Sportsbooks that offer in-play betting rely on data feeds to adjust their odds. Often these feeds have a slight delay between the touchdown, foul, goal etc happening in real time at the venue and the sportsbook receiving the data and adjusting their odds. We can exploit this delay for a profit.
This strategy works best for smaller leagues and sports with fewer resources such as lower-division college football, lacrosse etc.
The name court siding comes from the fact that people would do this at tennis matches in Europe and was referred to as betting courtside. The data for tennis used to be input manually by an employee of the data company. There was one employee so slow at recording the data that a number sharp bettors would go to extreme lengths to find out which sporting events he was covering.
Market Manipulation
Now Market Manipulation is a bit of a dark art and depends on the internal mechanics of the sportsbook or betting exchange market you are attempting to manipulate.
However, I can share with you how some professional gamblers used to manipulate the markets at a betting exchange I used to worked for in London. Our market makers would reference other betting exchanges and sportsbooks for odds and pricing.
On smaller markets, the professional gamblers would input value bets at the other betting exchanges (Usually in the early hours of the morning) and wait for these bets to alter how our market makers would price the market on our betting exchange.
Once our market maker’s odds had been altered to create a value bet the professional gamblers would take the bet from our market maker and cancel their value bets on the other exchange.
This strategy does come with the risk that the value bets they placed at the other exchange will get taken by other punters. Hence why they would place these bets in the middle of the night. As there was less chance these bets are spotted by other customers.
How to Make Money Gambling at the Casino
Blackjack Card Counting
When most people think of professional gamblers they will often think about the many movies about or including people counting cards in Las Vegas. A few examples are the movie ’21’ about a group of MIT physicists and mathematicians, the 1988 movie Rain Man and even the comedy hit ‘The Hangover’ includes some card counting.
If you’re not familiar with counting cards or what card counters do, I’ll try and give a brief summary. In a game of blackjack, we are aiming to beat the dealer by having two cards that are closer to the value 21 than the dealer. If you win the casino will double your money, but, If we go over 21 or the dealer’s card are closer to 21 than our cards we lose our bet.
We have the option to stand (stop drawing cards), hit (draw another card) and a few more options for special scenario’s
If we play statistically perfect blackjack we would expect to lose about $0.40 for every $100 wagered with the casino.
However, as the name suggests card counters turn the odds of winning in their favor by counting the cards that have already been played from the deck. BY doing this they can estimate when the probability of getting higher cards is increased. When this happens they increase their bets sizes to win bigger during these periods.
Thankfully, if you want to make money playing blackjack you don’t need to be an MIT physics professor or an autist savant to stand a chance.
If you want to learn more about card counting or learn to count cards yourself check out Blackjack Apprenticeship. They can teach you the whole card counting process with handy training tools, guide and blackjack simulators. They also connect you with real blackjack teams and investors to get you out into real casinos making money.
The youtuber Steven Bridges took their course to become a professional gambler and he documented his journey on his youtube channel.
Online Casino Bonuses
Basic Concept: Exploit online casino bonuses that tip the odds in our favor
Another huge area to make money gambling online can be found at online casinos. Often online casinos are overlooked as under normal circumstances you are guaranteed to lose in the long run when playing slots or table games online.
Unlike sports betting where you can have an edge over the market. Most slot machines and online casino games have a set loss a player will make called an ‘RTP %’. This stands for ‘Return to Player Percentage’ this is the percentage a game will pay back to a player in winnings from the amount wagered.
For example, If the RTP for a slot game was 95% on average over 100’000’s of spins that slot machine will pay $95 for every $100 wagered, making the casino $5.
However, just like matched betting online casinos provide huge promotions for their online casino games to both new and existing customers, which we can use to turn a profit.
By using the RTP % we can calculate how much we would theoretically expect to lose from our bonus funds and calculate if promotion offered by a casino will make us a profit in the long run. Professional gamblers refer to this as having a positive expected value.
ProfitDuel has a whole section dedicated to casino game promotions in states where online casinos are permitted.
Slot Machine Advantage Play
Basic Concept: Wait until the jackpot of certain slot machines have increased enough to make gambling on them profitable
As I mentioned previously all slot machines have an RTP % which is the average amount returned to players from money wagered. This means every spin on most slot machines has a long-term theoretical loss.
However, this is not always the case. As some machines have jackpot mechanics where a percentage from all money wagered is added to a jackpot which grows over time. A situation can occur where the jackpot grows so large that the theoretical RTP % increases above 100% meaning each spin on the slot machine becomes profitable.
This can happen in casinos and there are Advantage Play team that search for these situations. When they find a machine or group of machine where the jacket pot is large enough the whole team will swoop in and occupy all the machines and play until one member wins the jackpot.
Visual Ballistics Roulette & Roulette Advantage Play
Basic Concept: Predict where the ball will land. i.e. either with insane practice or using a roulette computer.
Let’s move back to table games and look at the classic casino game of roulette. Now roulette has a history of people beating the game using a variety of strategies. From Biased wheel, to dealers subconsciously spinning the ball from the same point at the same speed to James Bond style lazers, Roulette advantage play has seen it all.
Biased Wheel: In 1947, two University of Chicago students wanted to test how random casino roulette wheels were. They travelled to Reno over the summer and recorded the results of thousands of roulette spins and came to the realization that each wheel had its own bias. This could come from the wheel’s manufacturing or from the dealers wearing down the rim on one side of the wheel from starting the ball spinning from the same place each time. Unfortunately, casinos now have wheel bias monitoring so any defective wheels are quickly removed
Dealer Signiture: The dealer signature is another bias that’s created from the dealer manning the roulette table. Much like a person’s handwritten signiture over time a dealer tends to spin the ball at a similar starting speed and from a similar starting point on the wheel. This results in the ball landing in the same are of the wheel more often. This can be exploited. However, casinos often rotate dealers around different games to minimize this effect and stop people from tracking one persons spins for too long.
Roulette Computers: In March 2004 group of Serbian and Hungarian guests stepped out of the Ritz Hotel with over £1.2 million of roulette winnings. Greeting them were several police officers who had been called by the Casino after they grew suspicious of the group. After searching a woman from the group. The police recovered a lazer attached to a handheld computer. The group of professional gamblers had been tracking the ball speed using the lazer and calculating the ballistic trajectory of the ball. Amazingly the Police and British legal system let them keep the £1.2 million deciding it was the casino’s job police their customers play.
Although the legality of using computers at a casino is different around the world and in some places is highly illegal (like Las Vegas). Some people have learnt to predict roulette without the aid of a computer. This may sound far fetched but if you have ever spent time with a professional classic musician you know the amazing accuracy of their ability to recognize notes and sounds.
In a similar vein a few advantage roulette players have used a similar ability to translate the oscillating sound of the roulette ball spinning along with visual speed to accurately predict the point at which the ball will fall from the rim.
This strategy is extremely hard to learn and takes practice but the potential reward is astronomical. Famously magician Darren Brown set out to learn this ability for a live tv show.
If you search online there are a few open-source software projects on Github for roulette prediction software you can check out. Just don’t go getting locked up using it!
Poker
Finally, the most popular and well-known form of professional gamblers are professional poker players. I started my betting career playing the game in the hopes of following in the footsteps of the poker celebrities I would see on the tv show. I would watch ‘Poker After Dark’ and live coverage of the world series of poker to see Phil Ivey, and Daniel Negreanu. The life of a poker pro just seemed so cool to me. I was never that great but still pulled a few hundred dollars a month from grinding low-stakes cash games.
Poker has evolved exponentially over the last 10 years, especially online poker. Artificial intelligence has created ‘Game Theory Optimal’ strategies and the rise of unbeatable bots creates an unfair advantage of the tables. The online poker world is tough. Playing games at your local poker room may be more favorable.
One aspect that people often overlook is the casino or poker room ‘Rake’, which is the % of each pot that the casino takes as profit. In order to profit from poker you don’t just need to be better than your opponents. You need to be better than them by so much that you beat them enough to cover the rake and make a profit.
If you do want to learn poker for the modern game you need to train with people who know the ins and outs of making it in this new AI age. The people I do know who have played poker at a professional level recommend joining a serious poker community of like minded people looking to study and learn poker.
A name I have run into many time is Runitonce which seems to always be recommended as the place to be if you want to make money playing poker.
How to Become a Professional Gambler: My Steps to Making Money from Gambling
- Step 1: Start Matched Betting with Profit Duel.
- Step 2: Complete the casino bonus section with Profit Duel.
- Step 3: Use the profits made with Profit Duel to start Postive EV Betting with Oddsjam.
- Step 4: Transition to Sport Trading on betting exchanges and Value Betting at sharp books
If you want to start making money from sports betting as quickly as possible. My top recommendation is to start with matched betting. It’s guaranteed easy profit and you should be able to make $50’000 – $100’000 depending on your state or province. After a while the soft sportsbooks will stop offering you promotions
You then want to start Postive EV Betting and Arbitrage betting with Oddsjam. After a while the soft sportsbook such as Fanduel etc will just not accept your bets. When this happens we need to start betting with sharp books and betting exchanges
The profit margins at the sharpbooks and betting exchanges will be much smaller so we need to increase our bet size to make a good profit. This is why it’s important to complete the first step and take the easy wins so we can build our bankroll.
Leave a Reply