How to Build a Sports Betting Model
If you are looking to build a betting model, particularly sports betting model, there’s more than a few steps to consider. It takes a lot of graft (you only get what you put in), and there’s absolutely no guarantee that your betting model will work. However, we’re sharing our top tricks of the trade to build your own quantitative sports betting model, and get you at the top of your sports betting game.
What is a betting model?
In simple terms, a betting model is a system that determines the probability of all outcomes of a particular game or match, by identifying unbiased reference points. A sport betting model can judge the probability of the outcome and the team more accurately than that of a bookmaker. Basically, a betting model – particularly a football betting model – can highlight hugely profitable outcomes for games, and provide impressive betting opportunities.
However, there’s no easy way around how to a build a sports betting model. If you’re serious about building a sports model, it means a lot of hours entering data, arranging spreadsheets, setting up plenty of databases, testing and then re-testing. Then some more re-testing. It’s a lot of work to undertake, and you have to be willing to put effort into building a betting model.
There are various steps you must follow to implement and build a successful betting model. To create an efficient sport betting model, we advise you read carefully. Once you have researched how to build a sports betting model and have done so successfully, you will gain access to a world of betting opportunities not available to the general public. We’ll outline how to build a sports betting model with this article, in the hope of saving you precious time. But, if you expect to beat the bookies in just a few hours, you’ve got it wrong.
1) What do you want to achieve?
One of the biggest mistakes many punters make when attempting to build a bet model is that they don’t have an aim in mind. It’s one of our basic points on building a sports betting model, as, without an aim, you have no idea what your betting model is looking to accomplish.
If you don’t know what you want to achieve with your football betting model, for example, you could lose sight of your overall goals. Starting with a specific aim is our top tip. Yes, when you get the data for the bet model, there are different aims to test out, but that one major goal will keep you on the right path.
Essentially, what you are trying to do is give a truer expression of a team with your sports betting algorithms, than what the bookies do. You are trying to beat the bookmaker and create an independent point of reference to ascertain the probability of all outcomes of a match.
2) Probability Theory & Statistic
Before we even start discussing the probability theory, we know it sounds daunting. In fact, downright terrifying. As your football betting model is going to identify all probabilities for a particular outcome, you need to understand the fundamentals of probability theory. You’re, effectively, wasting your sport betting model before you begin if you don’t have a clue.
To produce a cunning bet model that does beat the bookmakers, read up on the relevant statistics and probability theory. Not only will the basics assist in how to build a sports betting model, but provide you with inspiration and ideas you had not thought of before. The more you understand the process and how it works, the more you can create ideas around the theory. You may have to do a bit of homework, but it’s worth it in the end for your football betting model.
3) Understand Sport Betting
If you’re thinking about building a sports betting model, know the sport you are doing it for. If it’s a football betting model, have a good knowledge of the leagues, the players and all sorts. By good knowledge, we mean know more than your own family. You cannot begin the process of building a betting model, if you have no idea of how sports gambling works. Your football betting model, for example, aims to provide you with all possible probabilities of a footy match for betting opportunities. How are you going to understand those opportunities without a working knowledge of how sports gambling works?
Without the prior expertise of sports, your bet model is a waste. It’s hard to know where to start when it comes to how to build a sports betting model, if you don’t understand how to assess the team’s performance.
You should also keep in mind (at all times) the betting markets for your particular sport. If you go to the trouble of creating a model for an obscure footy league, are you going to get out what you put in? Can you bet at a rate that makes money and is worth the hours upon hours spent? You can also bet (literally) that the bookies will clamp down on you as soon as they see you’ve got on edge on these types of markets.
For your first bet model, you are better off sticking to a well-known football league; this is where the money is. You can come away with huge profits if you aim for the major players, such as the Premier League, with your sports model. Therefore, you need to know how sports gambling works if you are shooting for the top.
4) Time for Data Entry
Now you’re on to the boring stuff when it comes to building a model for sports. Every good betting model, such as a football betting model, needs data – and lots of it. You have to be willing to put the time in, as data entry is not a quick process. For successful sports betting algorithms, you need in-depth data. That’s not just final scores of a particular footy league, but juicy stats that can be broken down and you can incorporate into your sports betting algorithms.
Luckily, for you, there’s a whole treasure trove of data, readily available on the internet. If you are not looking to produce your own data (which will be even more time consuming), you can get a lot of essential data, with many websites offering the information for free. There are some websites that will require payment for more in-depth data.
You also need to determine what data you are looking to input into your sports betting algorithms. If you take a particular league, are you just taking the data from the matches of that league? What if the team is in the UEFA Champions League and the Premier League, do you take all of those stats? This is where you determine how much of a resource you would like your sports betting algorithms to be.
5) Build the Sports Betting Model
You’ve got your aim in mind for your model, sports in particular, and now it’s time to actually build it. This may seem the biggest task, but sourcing the data and data entry is, probably, the most time consuming. This step is relatively simple, with plenty of bet model tools available to assist with the process. You can use the likes of Excel, Java, MatLab, VBA and even more that you can find.
You don’t need a huge amount of knowledge on computer programming, as there are plenty of guides on the tools we have mentioned, to get you through the process. However, an understanding of the functionality of the betting model, knowledge of the sport and in-depth data will streamline the bet model. It’ll make testing the betting model much easier, and you can’t forget about that.
6) Test the Betting Model
You wouldn’t see the likes of Ladbrokes or William Hill sharing an app without testing it beforehand, so you shouldn’t do it either. This is one of the most important processes of how to build a sports betting model, as you need to know how precise it is at picking out the correct probabilities.
You also need to make sure your bet model, sports and others, is making a profit. You’ll need to test that specifically, and run through the testing cycle as many times as possible. Building a sports model takes time, but if you are dedicated – you’ll get what you put in.
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