- Aug 23, 2015
- 2,652
- 8,489
Not really. The general betting public is honestly pretty shit whatever market you're talking about. You're much better off going for something you know about, which is less popular and therefore the bookies offer better odds on to try and entice people in.
You can look at it mathematically. Take Chelsea vs Roma tonight - Paddy Power have 8/15 Chelsea, 10/3 Roma, and 9/2 for the draw. That equates to probabilities of 65.2%, 18.2% and 23.1% respectively. That adds up to an implied 106.5% chance of there being a result, when obviously the real chance is 100%. That means in the long run you have to do far better than the bookmakers just to make your money back, let alone turn a profit. As has been mentioned above, the "To Progress" market looks very silly. But Sky Bet give Madrid a 100% chance, and then Tottenham 1/100 (99%), Dortmund 13/2 (13.3%), and APOEL 150/1 (0.7%) - a total of 213% when the real chances are 200% and therefore a profit margin of 6.5%, exactly the same as the Chelsea match. We can all see that they're taking the piss there by saying two teams are almost guaranteed but a third still has a decent chance, but they're actually taking the piss just as much with Chelsea vs Roma, it's just that it's nowhere near as obvious as the numbers aren't intuitive.
(Apologies for the statistics nerd rant!)
Eric Bristow should have read this