Sports betting: how much knowledge is too much

[Porfirii]

IMO, and although I have talked about it in another thread a few days ago, the illusion of control is much higher than the advantage all the information in the world about sports, teams etc. can give.

It's typical, at least for me, to hear the case where an old woman with no knowledge at all about football is the only winner of the first prize and gets rich. Or a friend of mine who never bets nor follows the sports and one day bets and wins a decent amount (a few hundred bucks) versus the total fan friend who week after week gets zero. This isn't a valuable argument, however, and it is anecdotical, but just to share my thoughts based on limited experience.

I think that it is on the basis of the dynamic of sports betting: let you think that you have more chances to win if you have a lot of information, while in reality unpredictable variables are so huge that the knowledge you can have supposes near zero advantage versus a monkey betting with a crossbow.

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[Betwrong]

IMO, and although I have talked about it in another thread a few days ago, the illusion of control is much higher than the advantage all the information in the world about sports, teams etc. can give.
~

In many cases, yes, but not always. Let me give you an example. Many bettors place their bets well in advance, and only a few of them keep checking the news all the time. If a sportsman was injured during the last hours before the game, many bettors would miss the news, and wouldn't have a chance to adjust their bets. As a result, you can get some great outcome odds, say, 3.25(+225 American), for something that will most likely happen. Since the team with injured player can still win, a sportsbook won't change the odds by itself, because it's too risky without enough money placed against that team.

So, although it's true that luck plays a big part in sports betting, there are cases when info plays a bigger one.

[carlfebz2]

IMO, and although I have talked about it in another thread a few days ago, the illusion of control is much higher than the advantage all the information in the world about sports, teams etc. can give.
~

In many cases, yes, but not always. Let me give you an example. Many bettors place their bets well in advance, and only a few of them keep checking the news all the time. If a sportsman was injured during the last hours before the game, many bettors would miss the news, and wouldn't have a chance to adjust their bets. As a result, you can get some great outcome odds, say, 3.25(+225 American), for something that will most likely happen. Since the team with injured player can still win, a sportsbook won't change the odds by itself, because it's too risky without enough money placed against that team.

So, although it's true that luck plays a big part in sports betting, there are cases when info plays a bigger one.

In most cases where bettors do always miss out most of the time with those last hour happenings or events that do happen neither on a team or in a player which will really changed up the odds.

Some might not really matter much but there are people who are really after these kind of possible events because they do know that they can utilize and also able to lessen up the risk.

Information does really also have a great factor when it comes to sportsbet but we cant deny that luck will always be the main recipe.Its just a matter of combination on where you do really see
what chances you do have.

[Ucy]

Sports betting is provably fair by itself - you can always verify the result by reading the news(if you missed the live stream of the event).

This should apply to sports-bettings that cannot change/control the outcome of matches/games bettors are betting on.
I think the provable fair we normally refer to is the feature found on betting sites to make the bets fair/fraud-proof.

[Questat]

Sports betting is provably fair by itself - you can always verify the result by reading the news(if you missed the live stream of the event).

This should apply to sports-bettings that cannot change/control the outcome of matches/games bettors are betting on.
I think the provable fair we normally refer to is the feature found on betting sites to make the bets fair/fraud-proof.

I also believe as sportsbook doesn't advertise they are provably fair, what they advertise is they offer the best betting odds, while games like where there's a house edge, popular example is dice, they advertise that they are "provably fair", just for us to understand its difference.

[Porfirii]

In many cases, yes, but not always. Let me give you an example. (...)

So, although it's true that luck plays a big part in sports betting, there are cases when info plays a bigger one.

The point to me is, how often do these cases happen?

Its just a matter of combination on where you do really see what chances you do have.

That's it. It could be great to have some empirical data to calculate the chances for different combinations.

[Mauser]

One concept which is very important in trading is probably also very important for betting in sports fames, it's called "noise". When there is a particular information published in the newspaper and everyone reads it, some people might think its very useful information. But because everyone knows it the information is already reflected in the prices and odds. So it might be the case when we know a lot we that we think all of it is news, when in fact its not that useful. In this regard its definitely possible we know too much. Too much noise might cloud our decision making. Sometimes it's just better to take a step back and reevaluate what we do know instead of trying to find more and more information.

[3meek]

One concept which is very important in trading is probably also very important for betting in sports fames, it's called "noise". When there is a particular information published in the newspaper and everyone reads it, some people might think its very useful information. But because everyone knows it the information is already reflected in the prices and odds. So it might be the case when we know a lot we that we think all of it is news, when in fact its not that useful. In this regard its definitely possible we know too much. Too much noise might cloud our decision making. Sometimes it's just better to take a step back and reevaluate what we do know instead of trying to find more and more information.

It can be even easier... Bookmakers make knowingly low odds on a weak team, people think that it will win... And lose no worse than because of the information noise!

[South Park]

Right, and since we are talking about myths, let's bust another one.

They say "the house always wins", in a sense that you will eventually go bankrupt, but in reality it's not what the house edge is doing. The house edge is there to make all the gamblers, in total, on a betting platform lose a small part from their bets. Almost nobody is losing exactly the house edge after, say, 100 bets. One particular bettor can be either in profit or loss, and it is uncertain, how many bets it can take to lose everything to the house. It can take 20 years of constant betting, or 200 years, nobody knows.

I talked a little bit about this on another post, but this is the law of large numbers, a specific player will have a lot of variance on his results and it will take him a long time before his results line up with the EV but as the number of bets approaches infinity then we will see the EV line up with reality, this is how casinos make money, they are not mad if a particular player is turning out a profit on their platform, assuming they take 10k bets per day and the average house edge on their platform is 5% then they are bound to lose 47.5% of the time and win 52.5% of the time over the long term and even if they suffer from variance from time to time as well especially if a whale bets a lot of money on their casino and they happen to lose as long as their money management is responsible and their risk of bankruptcy is zero the law of large numbers assures them they will get their money back sooner or later.

[Botnake]

One concept which is very important in trading is probably also very important for betting in sports fames, it's called "noise". When there is a particular information published in the newspaper and everyone reads it, some people might think its very useful information. But because everyone knows it the information is already reflected in the prices and odds. So it might be the case when we know a lot we that we think all of it is news, when in fact its not that useful. In this regard its definitely possible we know too much. Too much noise might cloud our decision making. Sometimes it's just better to take a step back and reevaluate what we do know instead of trying to find more and more information.

It can be even easier... Bookmakers make knowingly low odds on a weak team, people think that it will win... And lose no worse than because of the information noise!

You are referring to the public who normally reads that information, they put that in their mind, process it and bet on the team that they read which was only hype, unfortunately it's true that bookies are smart, they make the odds not on the team's real chances of winning but based on the people's perception that is why most of the time the public are wrong.

[goldade]

I've been experimenting with betting on sports, and for now I don't see a difference between when I'm making an educated bet and just betting blindly looking only at the odds. It hasn't been long, however, so I'll keep experimenting.
My question is about a related matter. When I've asked in a different thread what is required to become a good bettor, many have mentioned that knowing the games, the teams and things like that is essential. But I'm sure there's a certain limit to this flow of information, and when this limit is reached, it's not useful and is even potentially harmful for making the decision. If a person is betting on a soccer match and reads about every match of every person on every team, plus weather forecast, plus research on home advantage etc., the amount of information can be overwhelming and probably not that important or useful to bet on the outcome a particular match. What do you think: is there a rule that would help not to drown in information but only focus on what is helpful? Or is it 'the more, the better' in your opinion?

I do not think there is actually exist a point when the amount of information available to one can become too much. I believe there's a difference between an educated bet and just betting blindly and it is that with an educated bet comes the confidence that there's a very high probability of winning the bet rather than being nervous about the outcome of a bet made blindly.
I am sure that the more information available to a bettor, the more calculated his bet would be and the more the chances of winning the bet.

[Onuohakk]

Soccer match is unpredictable now. The big club you expected to win match is now losing match. Look at what happened to Manchester United and Liverpool and Leicester last 2weeks ago.
In football never underestimate your opponent (club). Soccer betting is all about luck, nothing much cos anything can happen

I think the trend of offset is growing in this modern time soccer. In the past, we hardly saw such happening but with the new generation soccer, everything is leveling up. Underdogs have given way to any team's day.

The newly introduction of modern instruments (VAR) in football is lovely. It's not only the referee that has the final say of any match. We now have other top officials put in place to checkmate fouls and goals, using VAR. Football is more interesting now

[Betwrong]

Sports betting is provably fair by itself - you can always verify the result by reading the news(if you missed the live stream of the event).

This should apply to sports-bettings that cannot change/control the outcome of matches/games bettors are betting on.
~

In other words, to all sports betting platforms that accept bets on main events rather than bets on a boxing match in the nearby village.

In many cases, yes, but not always. Let me give you an example. (...)

So, although it's true that luck plays a big part in sports betting, there are cases when info plays a bigger one.

The point to me is, how often do these cases happen?

Not often, that's for sure. But, on the other hand, no one is forcing you to bet often, in the first place. Also, considering that there are so many various events you can bet on, these cases might appear to be happening not that rare.

Right, and since we are talking about myths, let's bust another one.

They say "the house always wins", in a sense that you will eventually go bankrupt, but in reality it's not what the house edge is doing. The house edge is there to make all the gamblers, in total, on a betting platform lose a small part from their bets. Almost nobody is losing exactly the house edge after, say, 100 bets. One particular bettor can be either in profit or loss, and it is uncertain, how many bets it can take to lose everything to the house. It can take 20 years of constant betting, or 200 years, nobody knows.

I talked a little bit about this on another post, but this is the law of large numbers, a specific player will have a lot of variance on his results and it will take him a long time before his results line up with the EV but as the number of bets approaches infinity then we will see the EV line up with reality, this is how casinos make money, they are not mad if a particular player is turning out a profit on their platform, assuming they take 10k bets per day and the average house edge on their platform is 5% then they are bound to lose 47.5% of the time and win 52.5% of the time over the long term and even if they suffer from variance from time to time as well especially if a whale bets a lot of money on their casino and they happen to lose as long as their money management is responsible and their risk of bankruptcy is zero the law of large numbers assures them they will get their money back sooner or later.

Regarding the law of large numbers, consider the following. For most bettors, on average, 600-700 bets could be enough for getting pretty close to the EV. But if there are millions of bettors, there are also outliers, meaning that even after thousands of bets made, they are still far from the EV, either in a negative or positive way.

[Onuohakk]

Some less competitive non-statistical markets, nobody plays them because they have very poor odds. It has value for high stakes.
Some sports are underrated and some overrated, there are markets that people don't care about and some markets that people jump into.
My take: Go for non-statistical markets, compulsory occurring events that have a low loss rate. There is risk in everything but, sometimes you just can carve out something of value.

[Maslate]

Some less competitive non-statistical markets, nobody plays them because they have very poor odds. It has value for high stakes.
Some sports are underrated and some overrated, there are markets that people don't care about and some markets that people jump into.
My take: Go for non-statistical markets, compulsory occurring events that have a low loss rate. There is risk in everything but, sometimes you just can carve out something of value.

You definitely know how to spot value, been doing that, not saying that it's an automatic win on my part but according to my observation, I'm winning more on a popular market and I can easily predict the winner compared to the popular market.