Value Betting is a common principle in sports betting where you place bets that have a higher probability of winning than the odds offered by the bookmaker imply.

My Crazy 14 months of ValueBetting

There’s a lot to read in this blog. Here’s a summary of the most important points:

1. ValueBetting does work. I was honestly still slightly dubious after 1000 bets, but after almost 6000 there’s not any doubt. Everyone I know who has done this has made money and many have made substantial amounts.
2. This is an investment so you do need capital that you can keep invested for at least 6 months. You’ll need to have a minimum of €/£500 or 5000 kr when you start out. If you don’t have this yet, start with Matched Betting. You can do this with minimum investment and quickly build your bank by taking profit from sign-up offers.
3. You’ll need patience and discipline. It takes time. Although 1 to 2 hours a day doesn’t seem like much it does become quite mentally consuming and often the best value bets are early in the morning or late at night so can interrupt your sleep.
4. You’ll have barely believable good runs and desperately depressing bad runs. If you celebrate the good days, you’ll suffer on the bad days. Stick with the system and on a downswing, just keep on it and try and place more bets. Your profits WILL keep increasing as you place more bets.
5. Don’t keep checking on every bet you’ve placed. This is quite hard but if possible, place as many bets as you can in the morning and then don’t check them until later that day. Checking every bet is going to lead you onto an emotional rollercoaster.
6. Eventually, you will get restricted by bookmakers. Having said that, some bookmakers will restrict some stakes but you’ll still be able to keep placing higher stakes with certain bets so don’t just give up immediately.
7. Bet365 is by far the most valuable bookmaker as they consistently take the longest to restrict you. Look after them. Don’t get greedy and Back/Lay big bets and accept the small qualifying loss as much as you can. This helps.
8. Most (not all) tipsters are scammers. Even the ones who aren’t would not be able to come close to the yield that Value Betting provides.
9. Don’t ever be tempted to gamble. RebelBetting automatically calculate your stake for every bet according to a minimum-risk staking strategy. Don’t ever go outside of this, especially when you’re on a downswing. Bookmakers are insidious and evil. Don’t be who they want you to be. They love losers. They only restrict accounts of winners.

Episode 16: Day 550, Profit 459,144 kr (approx €40000).

The Bookmakers Strike Back

Dear Diary, it’s been over 107 days since my last update. Events have taken a turn for the worse. The gloriously innocent days of waking up to another 5000 kr profit thanks to some random Argentinian 2nd division games are but a distant memory. In many ways, ValueBetting is a metaphor for life. We thought this was our time, we thought it could last forever. Yet, here we are. 107 days later, with a pitiful 15000kr profit since the last update. That’s less than 150kr a day. How I long for the days of 16% yield and 14,000kr profit from 202 bets with Comeon. I’ve even got some nostalgia for Casumo and their distressingly poor site and interface. There’s no denying it, we’ve lost a lot of good (and terrible) bookmakers over the last few months but there is a light that never goes out and if we can keep going now, who knows what we can achieve. Also, in a couple of paragraphs from now I’m going to show you how you can make even more money from Value Betting.

Despite my overly dramatic first paragraph, there are a lot of things to still be very excited about. I was fairly slack for a few months and not placing as many bets and I knew that the crazy gains I had for so long wouldn’t go on forever. I’m still way above the CLV and can still find plenty of value bets with a little bit of effort. The “hide lower tier” bets option is your friend and, although it’s a bit more effort, I can still get some decent size bets through with restricted bookmakers. I’m confident that I’m going to surpass the 500,000kr target that I randomly set myself at some point. For anyone starting out now, I will say that the days of 100,000kr+ profits with Bet365 may well be over but if you’re careful and patient then with all the bookmakers that RebelBetting have these days you’re going to make some money. It is somewhat dependent on which country you reside in. If you’re in Sweden, Finland, UK and possibly Norway (I understand they’re clamping down a little on their predominantly unregulated betting market) you’re good to go. Other countries I don’t have so much knowledge of but you’re going to make money wherever you are.

Here’s how my overall stats look now:

There’s a few factors that have contributed to this very uneven line. Firstly, the run I had for a few months was way too good. My results were so far ahead of CLV that it became quite surreal. Since I’ve been restricted by many bookmakers I now place value bets for anything over 2% rather than the default 3% to get more bets so it was natural there would be some drop-off. Having said that, when I first lowered the min value settings I still had a crazy run. The crucial take-away from this is that your results don’t matter. What I mean by this is that no single person’s statistics are an accurate reflection of the overall results. It’s tempting to discount markets, sports, bookmakers after a particularly bad run but really you just need to keep placing the value bets and not discriminate.

I did take a bit of a break for a couple of months which also gives some explanation to the flatline, but I did have exactly the same settings as I have now when I went from 390,000 to 450,000 in a few weeks so it goes to show what variance can do to you. I plan to keep going until I’ve taken every last krona out of the bookmakers. I also want to thank anyone who’s reading this who has signed up using the link on my page. I started this blog for fun but then RebelBetting very kindly gave me an affiliate account. It’s not like I can go out and buy a new Tesla but getting an extra €200 to €300 is absolutely incredible for just rambling on about something that has basically become my full-time job (I do some Amazon fba but that shit is harder than they make out on tiktok). So for those of you who did join RebelBetting through me, I’m incredibly grateful and happy that you’ve taken the step.

If you’re value betting now, want to earn some extra money and are better than me at social media (not hard) then it’s worth checking out Rebel Betting’s affiliate scheme:

I am (very slowly) doing other content on other platforms and will be starting a new blog soon about some new revenue streams I’ve discovered. If you’re interested, then enter your email address in that annoying pop-up that occasionally comes up on this website. If you’ve already done that, sorry for the slow response but I will be in touch with every one of you at some point!

With any luck, my next post will celebrating the big 500,000kr milestone although with the SEK so weak these days I might have to stop quoting the amount in Euros as it just makes it look like I’ve wasted hours of my life.

Value Betting on holiday

Episode 15: Day 443, Profit 444,505 kr (approx €40000).

Value Betting on holiday

The thing with Value Betting, it does become a bit of a grind after a while. Although I’m only placing bets for an hour or two a day I am constantly waiting for the notification signalling more bets. It still gives me a buzz when I see a sudden flood of high-value Swedish hockey bets coming through but at the same time, it can be quite disruptive having to drop everything to place them (you’ve got to be quick!). So this year, during my annual 2 week pilgrimage to Southern Spain in May, I didn’t place a single bet. Admittedly this was also partly brought on by a recent fall from grace from the heights of 470,000 kr to the current 444,000 kr but it was also great to take a break. I can only imagine the stress that would go with placing multiple bets if I wasn’t making this money.

It’s felt like slow progress in recent times but seeing as I’m still up by 100,000 kr since I last updated this blog I”m not complaining too much. I still have a surprising number of bookmakers with whom I can at least get some decent-sized bets placed. If you think you’ve been restricted by a bookmaker it’s always worth checking to see if you can still place some higher tier bets (there’s an option to hide lower tier bets within the RebelBetting software) as this can greatly increase the life of some of your accounts.

I still have my bank set to 110,000 kr which is relatively conservative considering my profits. This still results in some pretty scary single bets of around 3000 kr. With some games, you’ll get a whole load of value bets on similar markets such as over 4.5/5.5 and 6.5 in hockey. This can lead to the right or wrong result on a single game giving me a 10,000 kr swing or more. At the end of the day, a value bet is a value bet but I do tend to try and limit the amount in one game to around 5000 kr unless the value is particularly high. My max odds are set to 4.0 which is some way above the recommended of 2.9 and probably goes somewhere towards explaining some fairly wild recent swings.

There are still quite a few bookmakers that I haven’t signed up for yet although many of these are Curacao based which gives you very little recourse if they decide to keep your money. This happens more than you might think so tread carefully if you go for this route. I haven’t yet had the chance to try Sure Betting and I’ve come across a new company that apparently offer some very good inplay betting opportunities. Hopefully I’ll get the chance to try this out soon and update my progress on the next blog post. All this means that I think I have some way to go before this income dries up and I’m fairly hopeful I can get way above 500 000 kr with a little work.

Episode 14: Day 317, Profit 343,745 kr (approx €33000).

I did briefly hit a new high of 350,000 kr which is honestly quite ridiculous before a slight dip down to 343,000 kr. One of the most common requests I get these days is to share my settings. I am more than happy to do this and will do it at the end of this post but it’s important to understand that there’s no secret combination of settings that will suddenly send your profits skyrocketing.

In truth, the stake-sizing, kelly criterion and all the other tweaks are only there to enable you to have some control over the variance and the risk to your bankroll. If you’re starting out with limited funds it’s critical that you use the recommended stakes and max odds. There’s only one sure-fire way of consistently increasing your profits and that’s to keep placing more bets.

Flat Staking vs Stake Sizing

My bankroll (currently set as 90,000kr) is relatively modest compared to my actual profits. This does limit my profits but decreases risk. I’ve been increasingly just flat-staking (placing the same size bet whatever the odds) or just randomly increasing my stake if it happens to be a team I quite like. Also, although I do think it’s good to stick to specific markets or sports with some bookmakers I really don’t read too much into my profits per market or sport. If it’s got value, place the bet.

Setting targets

I regularly place bets where the odds have changed even if the value is only around 1%. After 8000 bets I’ve discovered that it doesn’t make much difference. So rather than having a specific profit target, you should really focus on placing a specific number of bets.

As I mentioned earlier in my blog back in those heady days of summer, Bet365 and waking up at 5.30 am to place tennis bets, my target was to place 8000 bets before the end of the year. I figured that as long as I managed this, I would come out with a profit of around 250 000kr. As it happens, I didn’t quite make my bets target, but the profit was way higher than what I expected or even CLV.

Bookmaker Restrictions

There have of course been casualties along the way. Betway and CasinoStugan restricted me after just a few bets. My partner and I have both lost our Comeon and Bet365 accounts and there are some restrictions with other bookmakers but apart from that I’m confident we’ve got enough accounts to get up to 12,000 bets. If you do get stake-restricted by a bookmaker then always try a few more bets before you give up on them.

Check if you are restricted an all bets

Episode 13: Day 278, Profit 311,786 kr (approx €31000).

Just sat down to write a quick update and realised that my last update may have been slightly innacurate. I can’t remember exactly when I did it but I know that it wasn’t 250 days in. I’m fairly certain that I haven’t made SEK 38000 in the last 28 days. It’s been a strange couple of months. The last 6 weeks have actually been very slow progress. There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, I decreased my bank to a very conservative SEK 80 000. This is well below my actual profits but does take away a lot of the stress.

I’m placing smaller bets which may sound counter productive but it does take away the stress of any crazy downswings. When I started out, I set my bank way higher than it actually was and it worked out well. I do not recommend this. If I’d had a bad run (of which I have had many) I would have been down to nothing. It’s important to realise that if you stick to the recommneded staking strategies and set your bank to what you actually have it’s statistically almost impossible to lose your money.

Protecing your bankroll during a downswing

While I’m on the subject, always, ALWAYS, keep the “Adjust for open bets” ticked. This is something that I believe is not emphasised enough. In fact, on the rebelbetting community, many people are actually against it but almost all my downswings would have been so much worse if my stakes hadn’t have automatically reduced when my bank was low.

Profit per month

So where am i now? I have a low bank figure (SEK80 000 compared to SEK311 000 profit) and I’m only placing around 20 bets a day. I am however, making a consistent SEK10 000 to SEK15 000 a month right now. I’m happy with this. I still have lots of bookmakers that I haven’t signed up for yet. My current bookmakers (mainly ATG,  SvenskaSpel and Interwetten) keep accapting bets with minimal restrictions and it’s relatively stress free. It’s not as much fun as it used to be and I do miss the occasional SEK15 000 profit in a day. On the plus side, I get to sleep through the night and it’s way less stress in my life.

For those that are interested, these are my current stats:

and my chart (hopefully with a new fancy zoom feature):

Episode 12: Day 250, Profit 273,716 kr (approx €25000).

Hey you! So apparently the summer doesn’t last forever and here we are again, gainfully trying to ignore the inevitable descent into another long dark winter. If you don’t live up in the Nordics, then congratulations, although you may still have a winter you won’t have to suffer the crippling anxiety of not yet having the winter tyres on and being far too demotivated to spend two minutes to check exactly when it becomes illegal.

The inevitable Bet365 restriction

As far as ValueBetting goes, I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that I’ve made way more money than I ever imagined in the last 6 months. The bad news is that after around 185,000 kr profit (a little less after some BlackJack losses and qualifying losses from some back/lay bets early on) from one Bet365 account I finally received the inevitable email that the account has been restricted:

Sad day indeed although it was also something of a relief for a couple of reasons:

1. There was way too much money tied up in that account.
2. Placing anywhere up to 100 bets a day is a real grind after a while especially as to place that many bets, you generally have to stay up late and get up early.

My husband was simultaneously placing a large mumber of bets with his Bet365 account as well as lots of other bookmakers which helped boost the profits considerably.

These are the final results:

As well as my triumphant final 165,000 kr withdrawal from Bet365:

I’ll probaby wrap up this blog now. It’s been a crazy few months and thanks for everyone who has ever visited or is still coming by now! We (mainly my husband as he’s slightly more motivated to answer random questions at weird times) will continue the Slack group so come join us there if you’ve got any questions or want to find out if everyone else is making money from this (HINT: they are).

Episode 11: Day 117, Profit 78045 kr (approx €7800).

Only 6 days since my last update and what a stunning and slightly surreal few days it’s been. After a month of placing the most bets I’ve placed in a month but finding my profit figures stubbornly sticking around the 45000 to 55000 kr range suddenly it all goes a bit crazy. I did manage to place over 110 bets on Tuesday (the most I’ve managed in one day) but was definitely not expecting anything like these results:

The big increase represents a jump from 53000 kr to around 76000 kr in a little over a day. Latest detailed results now look like this:

Naturally, I’m fully aware that these figurs can go down as well as up and that another 20/25% dip could be coming any time but after almost 4 months, I have little doubt that Value Betting works. Now I just need to focus less on the ups and downs and just press ahead and place as many bets as possible. My aim is to get up to 8000 value bets before the end of the year.

Episode 10: Day 111, Profit 54080 kr (approx €5400).

Almost 2 weeks on from the rather spectacular 20% crash in profitability and the situation is improving slowly. Reducing my max odds and bank size appears to have done the job so far and I’m back to a nice steady increase in profits. I’m also placing far more bets now. June was by far my least successful month so far:

On the plus side, I did end up in the black for the month with a small profit of a few hundred kronor but I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was a little demoralising after placing so many bets. I”m still placing the vast majority of the bets with Bet365. The main reason for this is purely down to lack of capital. I’m determined not to withdraw any profits from this account until I eventually get restricted.

Dipping below CLV

Right now I have around 48000 kr (from my initial 2 x 5000 kr deposits) in the account so just going to keep going with this for now. Onwards and upwards. Hoping for a positive month and with any luck a new ATH (All Time High). It would be reassuring to get back above the CLV line but as long as the profits keep coming then I won’t lose sleep over this.

Episode 9: Day 99, Profit 46354 kr (approx €4600).

So I guess I always knew this was coming. Running so far ahead of Expected Value, a seemingly infallible strategy of placing all tennis bets with Bet365 and with almost 3 months of unhindered profits it almost felt like it would go on forever. Maybe it was my complacency in thinking I could just go to Spain, place a few bets whilst chilling by the pool, and cover the costs of the trip. Then, out of nowhere, a veritable bloodbath! Anyone would think I was “investing” in crypto. In truth, it’s more of a correction really but the dive down to the Expected Value line was no less brutal.

Here’s the stats for those who are interested:

The Big Drop

This dip represents a fall from 65213kr in profit down to 46354kr in the space of 4 days. Now although I fully understand that these dips can happen and it’s about long term investment rather than short term profit, it would take a practical mindset and emotional maturity way beyond me to not be just a little deflated by the results. So what now? In truth, I maybe got a little too excited when I increased the maximum odds and my bank at the same time. Both of these will greatly increase the variance and thereby the chance of big swings.

Decreasing Risk

I’ve now gone back to my previous bank size of 50000kr (this automatically decreases your stake size) and put the max odds back to the recommened 3.50. It’s obviously tempting to keep them the same in the hope of an impending upswing but this is purely the gambler’s fallacy (the erroneous belief that a random event is less or more likely to happen based on results from previous events) kicking in. Also, attempting to chase your losses is probably the number one reason why anyone loses large amounts in gambling or investing.

When to Value Bet

So here we are. It’s a Monday evening. I’ve set my alarm for the morning when there should be another huge batch of tennis value bets available on Bet365. I’m also planning to start up again with some of the other bookmakers but am now being way more careful to only deposit money that I don’t need to withdraw until I’m restricted.

Not withdrawing is one of the best ways to keep your accounts open. So with admittedly some trepidation, I’ll get back on it tomorrow and just keep increasing the number of value bets that I’ve place. Even with the downswing, I’ve still made an average profit of 23kr for every bet that I’ve placed (1945 so far). Considering it only takes a few seconds this is still an amazing return. If you want to find out more or find out how others are getting on, then come join our Slack group.

Episode 8: Day 84, Profit 62337kr (approx €6200).

“Holy Shit, an update” I hear all of you 8 people per day who visit this website shout out in unison. Seriously, are any of you any good at SEO? I feel this should get more traffic. Anyway, let’s get on with the usual blog author convention and apologise for the lack of recent updates. I’ve been in Spain on holiday if that’s any excuse. I (when I say I, I mean mainly my husband) did manage to keep up with a decent amount of Value Bets while we were away although probably around half the bets that we’d normally place. It was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster as ever.

Downswing

I got a little too confident with the big profit increase before the trip and assumed I could just sit by the pool with my glass of wine and pay for the holiday. What actually happened was a fairly depressing 20% drop in profits in one day and roughly the same profit at the end as the start of the holiday. This was followed by a short period of turning off my phone to make it all go away before I decided to follow my own earlier advice which is when you get a dip, place more bets! At the end of the trip I was slightly ahead of where I started which was a relief after the dip but then since Saturday, this happened:

Now for any of you who are Value Betting for a while, you’ll know what this means. This is around a 15% profit jump. 2 weeks of (literally and figuratively) treading water in Spain followed by a 4 day jump from the low 50000kr (€5000)s up to 62000kr (€6200). Here’s the full chart for those that are interested:

It’s been a good couple of days, but with around 32 outstanding bets it could well drop down. It’s important to realise this is an investment, albeit an investment with a proven ROI of around 30% or more a month so there’s going to be swings. The ideal Value Bettor would deposit the money, place the bets and not constantly check the results or watch random tennis streams for hours but where’s the fun in that?

Episode 7: Day 60, Profit 36950kr (approx €3695).

Hi everyone. 12 days since my last update and what a 12 days it’s been. We’re now getting a lot more consistent with placing our bets, with my husband showing some decent hustle by placing bets early in the morning and late at night. This has really helped to increase the average number of bets placed per day and subsequently the profit:

The up to date profit graph looks like this:

I’ve had a couple of drops but nothing too major and I’m certainly still way ahead of where I expected to be. Other good news is that we’ve now set up a Slack group so if you want to get all the latest updates, strategies or just ask some questions then come join us. It’s a pretty small group right now but you’re welcome to come join us on this adventure.

Apologies for the short update. If there’s anything that you’d like to know please leave a comment below or join our Slack group. I’ll try and do a more in depth update soon.

Episode 6: Day 48, Profit 25741kr (approx €2550).

A good sign of how well this has been going so far is the fact that I’m almost disappointed with the last few days. After almost hitting SEK2800 I now find myself dipping under SEK26000 again. After a concerted effort over the last few days, I managed to place just over 150 bets in 5 days. This is what RebelBetting recommends if you want to hit the profit target of doubling your money after 3 months. 30 bets sounds like quite a lot but once you get used to this you can easily place these bets within an hour if you check your phone regularly which, let’s be honest, everyone does.

Bet365 is still my main focus but I’ve started to branch out a little now with other bookmakers. Here’s the latest breakdown of my profit per bookmaker (By the way, all these reports on this blog are generated by the RebelBetting software):

Continuing profits from Bet365

I’m still amazed that the Bet365 yield percentage is still holding up after so many bets. I do expect it to drop at some point as it doesn’t feel that this figure is sustainable over time. SvenskaSpel have been a bit disappointing having dropped from around 9% to just 0.6% but the value of their available bets tends to be lower. Nice results from Betsson so far from just a few bets.

More bookmaker accounts

I’m going to try an increase the number of bets with the other bookmakers. The main stumbling block at the moment is the fact that I’ve got almost SEK30000 in Bet365 which I’m trying to avoid withdrawing. This hasn’t been helped by my bad-idea-in-hindsight of betting on Liverpool and laying them on the exchange in the hope of them not winning EVERY SINGLE GAME and getting the money out that way. At least it does show that you can make some decent money out of Bet365 before you get restricted:

At this point, I think I may just have to bite the bullet and withdraw at least some of it to enable me to reinvest it with other bookmakers.

As far as other bookmakers go, I’m probably going to try and avoid ATG at least on mobile as their site is very slow (although I only have a lower end android which probably doesn’t help.) and those few extra seconds it takes to place a bet really make a difference. After only a few bets, it also appeared that I’d been restricted as my stake was limited to aroun 150 kr. However, once I changed sports and went for lower odds then it was all fine again and I was able to place 500 kr bets. Will be interesting to see how that works out though seeing as so many of the bookmakers use that same platform.

Episode 5: Day 43, Profit 22497kr (approx €2250).

My initial plan for this blog was to document my various ups and downs with Value Betting, show people that it is possible to make money from bookmakers, and hopefully, just occasionally, find someone who clicks on my affiliate link and signs up so I can make a little extra on the side. Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked out as I planned. Partly because no one clicks on affiliate links anymore and also because it’s been such a crazy couple of days that it’s starting to look just a little unrealistic.

Anyway, the reason for the big jump in profits has been almost entirely down to a winning run on Bet365 with a total of 14 wins from 16 bets. Here’s a screenshot of some of it:

Staying ahead of CLV

Sorry, I can’t post the whole thing but this is all I could fit in one screenshot. Just off-screen is my biggest ever single Value Bet win with a 500 kr bet at 3.5 (max odds) bet coming through on Jaimee Fourliss. Clearly this is not normal and whilst I’m running way ahead of CLV I’m prepared both financially and psychologically for the inevitable downswing.

Betting on low tier games

Despite trying to approach value betting unemotionally it’s been quite hard for the last couple of days not to get excited by all the wins. I ended up watching the Kathinka Von Deichmann stream on Bet365 for a good part of the afternoon. Great game but I had no idea that in some of these games, they don’t just not have any spectators, they don’t even have ballboys/girls (ballkids?). If you’re into watching random obscure games it’s a lot of fun (my husband supports Bristol Rovers so I’m used to this). I’m quite surprised my account is still active considering the random low-level nature of the games I’m placing the bets on but apparently you can run the Bet365 account for quite a while even if you’re making a profit.

I’ve made a lot of money through Bet365 and unfortunately, despite looking promising for almost an hour, my lay bet against Liverpool from the previous post didn’t work out so I have even more money in Bet365. I’ve now placed an additional 15000 kr bet on Liverpool for the Champions League tomorrow and laid it with Smarkets for around 350 kr loss. Hopefully, it’ll come off (although I’m not confident). I’ve decided to slow down on the Bet365 bets for a few days and just back and lay a few bets to try and keep my account in good order. It’s worth taking a bit of a hit to keep this account as it’s by far the most profitable for Value Betting that I’ve come across so far.

Another reason for the increase in profits is that I’ve been spending a bit more time on this and placed a lot of bets over the last few days:

The majority are still placed early in the morning and later in the evening. I have started checking for bets more in the day but I find you can spend a lot of time without finding good bets. If you’re working from home or don’t have a boss watching over you then it’s quite easy to keep an eye on it and place bets during the day although they’re not that frequent. I’m still placing the majority of my bets with bet365 and SvenskaSpel. I’ve started to deposit some money in other bookmakers to increase the number of bets I can place. My breakdown so far of bets placed so far per bookmaker:

I’m not going to post my full results as I’m not sure it’s that interesting but will put them up on the Slack group in case anyone wants to look more closely into what strategies I’m using. If you’re interested in joining then please enter your details in the pop-up that should come up on this page.

Episode 4: Day 41, Profit 16600kr (approx €1600) Holding steady.

So with the rush of bets over the last few days, I have to admit to being a little disappointed that it’s not slightly higher but seeing as I’m still way above the CLV (Closing Line Value) I have to remind myself that it’s still a lot of money. I’m also now in a position where I can leave the money in the bookmakers and reinvest it by placing more bets rather than having to withdraw. This should help to prevent restrictions as well as increase profits over the long term.

CLV vs Expected Value

The CLV is a concept that I wasn’t sure about at first but after some research, I discovered why RebelBetting use this as an indicator of where your profit should be. Originally they used the common term of EV (Expected Value) which just took the percentage value of all your bets and used this to calculate what your EV should be. This proved to be inaccurate and judging by the RebelBetting community, made a lot of people a bit upset that despite the fact they were profitable, it wasn’t as much as they felt it should be. Apparently, there’s no pleasing some people.

To make this estimated profit figure more accurate, they ditched the EV figure and changed it to CLV which is way more accurate as the calculation is based on the value when the event actually starts rather than when you place the bet. From other users’ results, it appears to be a better method as I think most of us are just happy to be above that line however it’s calculated. It also brings up an interesting psychological point that even when you’re making money, you get used to it very quickly and are just looking to make more. This is why it’s important to both be prepared for the inevitable downswing and also be happy about the fact that you’ve made money. I never would have believed I’d be this far up after just over a month. It’s a lot of money (at least for me) for really not much effort, yet it’s hard to celebrate as I’ve pretty much already spent in my head on a nice holiday.

Best time to place bets

Although it’s a relatively short time I’ve been doing this, I’ve already noticed specific patterns and times it’s good to place bets. Sometimes you can sit for most of the day waiting for good value bets to come through with very little to show for it. However, I’ve found that when my alarm goes off in the morning (around 6.30am6.30 am) I can usually check and place 10 to 15 bets in the first 10 minutes before I get up (I use two mobiles, one with the value bets on and one with the bookies as I just find this easier than doing it on one). Also, late at night, I can generally find quite a few. Match days are also quite good although the odds tend to move so a lot of the value bets that come up will be gone by the time you go to place it.

Different bookmakers – same platform

Also (and bear in mind I’m doing this from Sweden but it may be relevant elsewhere) from a Swedish perspective, there are really only 5 bookmakers when it comes to the specific platform that they use. RebelBetting has around 15 bookmakers that are included in their package that are licensed in Sweden (they’re super-strict here) but when you look into it, ATG, Leovegas, PAF, SpeedyBet, Unibet, Expekt, and WilliamHill.se (different from the UK one) all use the same SBTech platform with the same odds but just a different layout.

Betsafe, NordicBet, and, Betsson all run under Betssongroup so are also identical except for layout. 10Bet, Bethard, CasinoStugan, and Comeon also all have the same odds. I’m not sure what platform they are on. CasinoStugan and Comeon were always part of the same group but they appear to have joined up or bought into the same platform as the Bethardgroup. Interestingly, SvenskaSpel the government-run operation (I live in Sweden, even alcohol sales are government-run) bought into SBTech but still have their own odds and apparently don’t ever restrict people (I bet on every single random market however obscure with them) so not sure what happened there.

Bet365

This brings us to Bet365. Without a doubt the biggest bookmaker in the world and if you have time to look into it a very interesting back story. They have always been completely separate from everyone else and developed their own systems. They have a crazy number of value bets and over 12000 of my profit has come from them. The tricky aspect here is that they will restrict winners at some point. From my limited research it appears that if you’re not taking advantage of the various bonuses that they offer you can make at least €4000 to €5000 before they restrict you. I’ve no idea how true this is but so far I’m €1200 up with no issues. Thanks to the fact that this account is valuable I’m taking some steps to try and prevent myself from being restricted which, seeing as I’m a couple of glasses of wine in, I’ll share with you now.

Grouping bets – I pick a particular sport or market (such as Asian Lines or 1X2) and stick with that. I feel that it just looks less suspicious than placing random bets all over the place.
Follow a good team and place crazy high bets when they play but LAY the bet with a betting exchange. For example, today I had around 14000kr in my Bet365 account so placed a 10000 kr bet on Liverpool but layed the bet on Smarkets for a 372kr loss.

Betting Strategies

Honestly, I have no insider knowledge here and have no idea if it works but I do know that it’s a common strategy for gamblers to bet on “sure-fire” wins at low odds to slowly increase their bank-roll. Bookmakers love this just because sport is so unpredictable and it’s exactly how people lose a lot of money. Even though I’m placing hundreds of small value bets I feel like placing a big percentage of my payroll on one “sure-fire” win will improve my profile and at some point, that bet will lose and all the money will be in the exchange who don’t care if I win or lose. If you don’t yet know about lay bets and betting exchanges I recommend you take some time to understand these concepts as it’s going to be crucial if you’re serious about making money from betting.

Finally as far as this update goes, if you’re interested in trying this out then please do click on the link above. If you click on the link you get a free 2-week trial, money-back guarantee and as a bonus, access to my Slack group which I’ve set up thanks to the interest in my one youtube video (I’m planning more, but holy shit, it’s time consuming).

Episode 3: 38 Days, Profit 14310 KR (approx €1400) Still heading upwards!

Quick update: So been trying to spend a bit more time on the Value Betting over the last few days to get my number of bets (and hopefully profit) up. On average I’m spending no more than 2 hours a day on this but managing to place 30 bets a day. Now that I’ve got more used to it I find I can place 10 to 15 value bets as soon as I wake up, a few in the day and then there’s often more later in the evening.

Obviously, I’m very happy with the results so far. I’m still mainly using SvenskaSpel and Bet365 but have also gone with Unibet, and LeoVegas and will start looking at others soon. So far, I haven’t come across any stake restrictions but I imagine that will happen at some point.

Episode 2: First full month’s results are in!!

So what are the lessons I’ve learned from my first full month of Value Betting? Well firstly, although it’s great how you can do it at any time, you do need to schedule some hours otherwise, if you’re anything like me, you’ll end up leaving it for a few days which is just giving up potential profit. Also, it’s difficult but very necessary to not get emotional and understand variance. Just as I got way excited in the last few days when I went from 4000 kr to over 9000 kr, I couldn’t help but get a bit down when I suddenly had a huge downswing. This downswing led to me stopping for a few days partly because I became a little demotivated but also due to the fact that because rent was due imminently and I couldn’t afford another downswing.

I should point out that even though I set my bank as 30,000 kr I don’t have this but can afford to set it higher as I still have other money coming in if it’s required. All the results so far have been generated by a 5,000 kr deposit to Bet365, 3,000 kr in SvenskaSpel, and 2,000 kr with other bookmakers.

The majority of the bets that I’m placing are with Bet365 and nearly all on tennis. Bet365 consistently have the most Value Bets and I chose tennis just because it’s a good idea to group your bets or stick with one sport to help prevent restrictions. I’m not sure how true this theory is but so far it’s worked well. Ideally, RebelBetting recommend you place 30 bets a day. I got close to that a couple of days but in total only had an average of around 10 bets a day (299 in total). Despite this, the results were great and managed to end up well above the Closing Line Value (this is expected value but calculated against the odds when the event starts).

Here are the actual results. Very happy with 9133 KR and an ROI of 30%.

This is how it turned out over the month:

The downswing in the middle of the month was both brutal and unexpected! It started with a brief dip which then recovered before a huge fall down to less than 2000 KR. At this point, I was tempted to tweak the options slightly and change the max odds to 2.9 or lower as this should reduce the variance but decided, in the end, to keep it at 3.5.

So here are the stats…a bit of a rollercoaster but obviously very happy in the end.

Crucially, the decision to keep the max odds at 3.5 paid dividends in the end with 3 big wins all inon the last day (1125, 1125, and 1000). Some of these were very high value (over 10%) which I’ve heard are good to avoid but obviously, high  it worked out well so going to stick with high odds if they have hight value.

Thanks for reading guys, I’ll update again soon.

If you’re interested in joining me in this ValueBetting adventure you can get a 2 week free trial with this link.

As well as getting the free trial and a no-profit money-back guarantee for any paid subscription, you can also get access to our Slack group. This is independent of RebelBetting and as well as checking other people’s results you can ask any questions and find other ways to make money.

Episode 1: €350 in my first weekend of ValueBetting!!

Having spent a few years using Matched Betting to make a steady but regular profit, I recently came across a small Swedish company called Rebel Betting who had designed some software that can reliably identify Value Bets. They’ve been going for a few years and the results on their site are impressive. Reassuringly, they have an active community with actual members’ results that suggest that these figures are accurate.

For many years, I’ve been convinced myself that Matched Betting was the only reliable way to make money from bookmakers. Despite the impressived figures, I was hugely sceptical about Value Betting. Surely if I could just continue making money from bookmakers, I would have heard about this before and more people would be doing it. Once again, I decided it was time to put my natural cynicism aside and give this new system a go.

So first a small disclaimer. I made the €350 over 5 days so a little more than a weekend however the vast majority of the bets were placed on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. The results were a little over the Expected Value but nothing out of the ordinary when you look at other members’ results. In total, I placed 100 bets and the total time I spent was 2 to 3 hours a day at the most.

The company I signed up with was Rebel Betting and the first thing you notice is that they’re not cheap. Currently, their starter package is €89 a month and the Pro package is €179. The starter package is recommended to get used to the layout and different options, but it does restrict the number of value bets you receive. After some internal deliberation, I decided to go with the Pro package. If nothing else, this should make for a more interesting article.

Signing Up

Sign up is quick and easy and after setting a few filters and options (I just went with the defaults), you’ll start receiving value bets almost immediately. I started off with just a couple of bookmakers to make it easy to keep track of my money. I’m predominantly doing these while sitting at my desk on my laptop but found it just as easy to view and place the bets directly on my mobile. This is a big plus as it enables you to place bets anywhere and at any time. One of the keys to being successful with value betting is placing lots of bets so being able to do it on the move is a big plus.

I decided to try and place as many bets as possible over the first few days. This was quite scary as I suddenly had a lot of money tied up with bookmakers while waiting for the results to come in. I do not recommend staying up late to check the North American basketball scores, but unfortunately, the temptation was too much for me. It was the early hours of the morning before my losing bet on Over 151 points on Western Kentucky Hilltoppers v Memphis Tigers was confirmed.

After 3 days of placing bets, I decided to stop and wait for all my bets to settle. Every bet you place is logged in the software so there’s no need to keep your own records and the bet tracker gives you a breakdown of all your results and, most importantly, cumulative profit. This is the figure that you will be excitedly checking every morning.

Starting capital and covering costs

Once I stopped placing bets it took a few days for all my bets to settle (I placed nearly 150 in the end). There was a slightly disappointing dip in the cumulative profit towards the end but overall, the figures were beyond what I’d hoped for. In the end, a total profit of around €250 (I live in Sweden, hence the figures are in SEK). My profit was a little bit above the Expected Value figure of €190 but even this would have more than covered the cost of the software in just 3 days.

For the first 3 days, these were impressive results, but what are the risks of using this system?

Rebel Betting stress that this should be treated as an investment. As such you will need some capital to start. The system will automatically calculate your stakes depending on the size of you your bank. Therefore, you can start with any amount, but you want to make sure you at least cover the cost of the software.

Psychologically, Value Betting can be tricky. You will inevitably get large downswings as well as impressive winning runs. It is important to look at the overall long-term picture and the overall return on investment. I do not recommend staying up all night hoping that Memphis v Western Kentucky are going to score over 151 points in their game.

As with Matched Betting, you must be disciplined in your approach. Keep to the recommended stakes and don’t be tempted to gamble.