How do you pick your own bets?

[snyena]

I am curious to see how your perfect betting day/session looks like. Do you have a routine procedure for picking your own bets or do you play it by ear? Where do you look for a list of events to pick from? What are the vital factors that make you realize something is a good bet? My betting session looks like this: 1. I look at a list of games to be played on a given day, sometimes one or two days in advance. I almost only bet on soccer, so the 'Soccer - Fixtures' section on Betfair does the trick for me. 2. I look at the relevant league tables and confront them with the odds from an odds comparison site. If a price for a certain outcome stands out for me, I shortlist the game. I use goal differences and league position as the key factors. Sometimes I might use my own knowledge of the teams. 3. I take a closer look into the shortlisted games. The list can be anything from 0 to 15, depending on the day. I look at PL's forums and sometimes elsewhere too. If I discover something I dislike, I remove the game from my shortlist. 4. In the end I am left with two or three games and I usually bet on those.

[mr onemore]

Re: How do you pick your own bets? Hi Snyena, Interesting question - always fun to say how others approach this game... I've seen your thread - and you're obviously a very knowledgeable and succcessful punter. It's just with that in mind that I'm really surprised by your first 2 steps.

1. I look at a list of games to be played on a given day, sometimes one or two days in advance. I almost only bet on soccer, so the 'Soccer - Fixtures' section on Betfair does the trick for me. 2. I look at the relevant league tables and confront them with the odds from an odds comparison site. If a price for a certain outcome stands out for me, I shortlist the game. I use goal differences and league position as the key factors. Sometimes I might use my own knowledge of the teams.

I try to make the Bookies odds the very last place that I look when working out a bet. I don't want there influence affecting my judgement before I've worked out what I feel the odds should be. If we had Team A playing Team B, and you didn't know the odds - you'd read up on the teams, find out a few things first, get a feeling for which team you thought was the better, and by how much etc. It would be your judgement pure and simple. However, when you know that the Bookies are pricing this in a certain way, it must affect your judgement. Don't believe it? Try this experiment. Choose a sport or division you don't know too much about. Check Betfair to see if there is a market - but don't look at the odds. Go and read up on the internet about the match - come up with your own judgement and odds. Now look at the odds in Betfair - guarantee you'll find what you believe to be a value bet - works every time. You'll find far more value bets 'jumping out at you' this way. What's the catch? Well, how good is your judgement? It's got to be good to beat the bookie and his overround. At least doing it this way you'll get good feedback. I must admit that in practice, I do find this difficult to do. When you've been in the game you kind of 'know' where the bookie is going to set his odds anyway before you look. Still, I do aspire to this, and do my best to work things out before checking the odds. It's just a thought - as I say, you seem to be doing very well your own way so stick with it:ok I'm just surprised that's all:loon

[WorkingForTheEnemy]

Re: How do you pick your own bets? Ive got to agree with mr onemore. I always decide on games I fancy first and how much I like them. This then gives me an idea of what price I expect/want for them. I do also have a look at the prices of games Ive left out though just to see if theres anything screaming out obvious value.ie. You wouldnt need to study very hard to know 4/1 for Man Utd away to Chelsea was value.

[snyena]

Re: How do you pick your own bets? Hi Mr Onemore, thanks for posting your thoughts. That was exactly the kind of reply I was hoping to get and it was interesting to read. Your comments about my knowledgeable and succesful puntng are flattering, but I feel there is so much more to learn, which is one of the reasons I started this thread. I understand your concern about prices affecting my judgement perfectly well. I feel I should clarify step 2. I actually avoid looking at the prices at first; for me, betting is not about picking winners or the most likely outcome, I try to pick a good combination of probability and price, i.e. bet on value (I am sure everyone on this forum is familiar with this simple concept, it is just some of my real life friends that give me puzzled stares when I tell them betting on Barcelona at 1.35 might not be such a good idea :)). That is why the bookies' prices are one of the key factors I consider when betting. However, bottom line remains I do not look at them before deciding what I want to bet on. An example: Last week I looked at the 2nd Bundesliga table and thought to myself that the Aachen v Erfurt game was a 'nailed on home banker'. Only after that did I check the odds, expecting to find something around the 1.45 mark. Much to my surprise, the Betfair price was fluctuating between 1.65 and 1.7, which was mind-boggling to me, even more so when the bookies' prices were considerably lower. Similar situation today, I looked into the Ipswich v Rotherdam game, which is in many aspects very similar to the Aachen v Erfurt bet (similar divisions, table positions, goal differences). However, the price is only 1.35, so this is clearly no value for me. I very much agree with you that your own judgement comes before looking at the odds. Now that I think about it, our approaches are not that different. 'Confronting the odds' means I pick my bet first, then I look at the price and decide whether it is good enough. In fact, if we disregard steps 3, it is the last thing I do. Step 3 is a sort of safety net to check what's the crack with the games that I feel are overpriced. Sometimes, if there are too many games left even after step 3, I remove those that I feel are less 'valuable' than others. This way only creme de la creme comes to the surface (hopefully). :) I will certainly take heed of your advice and try to come up with my odds for a league I know very little about. Could be entertaining and very educational. :ok

[WorkingForTheEnemy]

Re: How do you pick your own bets?

for me, betting is not about picking winners or the most likely outcome,

I think thats one of the biggest differences between certain punters. For me, betting is 95% about picking winners and the most likely outcome. I'll decide what matches I think I can pick the right result from and then check to see if the price corresponds with my opinions. If I think a team will win but the price is too short then Ill leave them, so Im still looking for value but the picking winner factors comes first for me. I guess its probably as I get downhearted during a bad patch so a decent strikerate is important to me.

[snyena]

Re: How do you pick your own bets?

I think thats one of the biggest differences between certain punters. For me, betting is 95% about picking winners and the most likely outcome. I'll decide what matches I think I can pick the right result from and then check to see if the price corresponds with my opinions. If I think a team will win but the price is too short then Ill leave them, so Im still looking for value but the picking winner factors comes first for me. I guess its probably as I get downhearted during a bad patch so a decent strikerate is important to me.

I understand your sentiments exactly. One part of me wants to pick value winners as often as possible. That is what I strive to do in the Snyena System for example. Then there is another part of me that bets on extreme value, when I believe there is such. An example of this is WTA tennis when two similar players are playing (women are unstable and not always as good at holding their serve as men). I wait for player A to go 1-0 up, get a break in the 2nd set, lay her at 1.1 and wait. Granted, it is not likely that she will lose, but if she bottles it 2 times out of 10, I get 100% yield.

[meatman]

Re: How do you pick your own bets? I would say about 80% of my bets are on European soccer matches. I cover a range of leagues and I always research into every match before I even look at odds or anything. Someone once told me that if you are going to make money out of betting on a consistent basis, then you have to have decent knowledge about whatever you are betting on. I used to bet on events I knew nothing about and I just relied on bookmaker odds for a guide. To be honest it didn’t work. Anyway, after I have made my selections I will always consider other peoples opinions. I will always respect and consider anyone's opinion on any event. For example I do this on the punters lounge. I do not believe you can ignore anyone’s ideas and I look to see whether other people agree or disagree with my selections. If other people agree then it just gives me added confidence that I will be making the right choice. If people disagree then I will proceed to bet with more caution and be more wary. After this of course, if the bookies offer crap odds, I simply won’t take them. I am a punter who always looks for a bit of value, I love a big meaty price. In the past I used to bet more on favourites at really short odds. There’s nothing worse if these short prices don’t win, and I always used to go mad at myself and ask why I had even bothered betting in the first place, when there was no real value. I find that if I back something at a bigger price and it loses, I don’t mind as much because at least I know that at least I got good value. At the end of the day a lot of different factors will affect how I choose my own bets but I don’t mind as long as I win money. For me, it doesn’t matter about strike rate. What matters to me is overall profit. Finally I say that if you are successful or happy with the way you are making selections, then stick with it. ‘If it ain’t broke, then don’t try to fix it’

[WorkingForTheEnemy]

Re: How do you pick your own bets?

For me, it doesn’t matter about strike rate. What matters to me is overall profit.

You have to have a solid staking strategy though. The lower your strikerate means the longer a losing run could last. Value bets are no good if you lose your bank waiting for the winner to come in.

[meatman]

Re: How do you pick your own bets? Point taken mate. Strike rate is very important and i guess what i meant to say was that i'm not one of those people who feels the pressure to have a really high strike rate.

[swooperman]

Re: How do you pick your own bets? I tend to go for a whole week long approach with my football bets. I will buy Sports First (might be Football First??) on the sunday, firstly making a list of any midweek matches I fancy, then the following weekends, & giving them a rating of how highly I rate them, changing the rating as I go through the week. I will then try to read the weekends match reports of these teams & study the form, be it in the papers or on the net. Next stop is the RFO on the tuesday, using their info & views, & as we go through the week I will make my decisions, reading what I have put up or read on PL. Finally, I will look at team news & then prices, & if my picks are suddenly missing 3 key players, I'll look elsewhere. The prices come last for me also, TBH, & sometimes youre pleasantly surprised, others monumentally put off, but this way I'll generally come up with 4 or 5 games at different ratings, & then work out my staking plan. I tend to bet less midweek as its more rushed.

[kiko1983]

Re: How do you pick your own bets? The way i go about it is on the thursday at work, i get all the fixtures together for the weekend and i list the games from each league that i fancy. Then im left with a list of around, say 25, then i would give them a score out of 10 of how much of a chance its got. This is all made by looking at tables, home/away records, goals scored and injuries. Eventually after this im left with about 7 or 8 matches and i decide from that. I also keep an eye out here - like for example with the ICT game, i never knew about hearts flu going around so wouldnt have touched this game. Most likely wouldve went with Hearts but then after hearing it i quickly turned my attentions to betting on ICT. I also like to go to coral and look at their top 10 bets and see where most the money is - for example last nights top bet with them was Cardiff at 5/2, i considered it but bottled it this time. Although some of the time i'll gamble and just go with the flow so to speak.