Betting Strategy
Why bet on Rugby?
Rugby is a great game to watch and play but it is also great to bet on. Given the nature of the game, it is a good target for win/loss betting as draws are very rare, the scoring system punishes foul play & cheating effectively (unlike so**er), play acting almost never influences the outcome (unlike so**er), match fixing is unheard of and because the team which dominates the field usually wins.
How I bet
You might describe me as an intuitive bettor as I do not rely totally on a computer program to pick a result based various known factors such as a weather, recent points scored etc. Instead I use my knowledge of the game and some statistical tools to get to what an accountant might call the “fundamentals”. Accounting, like betting, is described as both an art and a science and I use both in my approach.
Each week I look at those matches which are coming up and review the team info, weather, recent form etc to form an opinion. This opinion is either, home win, away win or no decision. I rarely bet on every match played on a weekend, doing so will lose you money as you can’t be sure on up to 20 games and I hold a regular job too, this is just a hobby.
I do use some statistical tools I have created for myself to apply a match rating to a team but these are not designed to pick the winner using a computer, just give an indication of the probability of that team winning. In order to successfully bet over the long term, you need to know something about the game, who plays it and who coaches it.
I look at bets in three ways, high risk, moderate risk and low risk. Assuming you are not prepared to bet thousands of dollars per bet (and if you are you might well have a problem), then let us assume you are prepared to risk 5 dollars on a high risk, 10 on a medium and 15 on a low risk. You should identify your own level of risk.
So if I pick a team to win with high risk, you should bet a smaller amount and be prepared to accept the loss and so on. I do not often bet on high risk matches. If you bet to earn 6% (i.e. bet on South Africa to beat England in the pre world cup summer tour of 2007) each week, you can expect to double your stake quite quickly.
Long Term Betting
This site is about betting for the long term and by focusing on the long term, I try to make up for the fact that I am sometimes wrong. I’ll be frank there, I am sometimes wrong, sports odds throw up results a statistician would call “noise” but over the long term I have learnt to beat this.
I bet for teams to win and nothing else as it works for me. It is possible to bet on anything and lose your money on anything, there are some idiots out there who have taken odds on “by what year man will first walk on Mars!” I do not bet on points scored, I did once as an experiment and got nowhere. Points betting is, in my view, a waste as one intercept try will blow your calculations (or your wild ass guesses) to hell.
The same is true for first scoring play, name of first scorer etc etc etc. All, over the long term, a waste of money, in my view. If they work for you, great but I won’t be offering tips on them.
Impluse Betting
As I said before, if I am not sure, I don’t bet. I also don’t change my position during a game using live betting. In my early days this resulted in either the team I originally backed going on to win anyway or throwing good money after bad. Therefore I now no longer bet while matches are in play.
Some terms
Over round. You might think the bookies are quoting fair odds but they are not, they are quoting odds to make a profit, whatever the outcome. If you consider the chance of picking the ace of spades from a card deck as 1 in 52, a bookie will never offer you these odds. Instead he will give you say 1/48, thus, over the long term, locking in profit for himself. Typically bookies lock in 10-12% over round. This can be calculated easily by taking the inverse of all the odds, adding them up and multiplying by 100. A bookie with the least over round is often offering the fairest odds. This is not to say best, but fairest.
Arbitrage. A situation where two different bookies are backing different teams to win the same fixture. You can, in theory, then bet knowing you will win regardless of the result. These are rare, require significant capital to make anything meaningful and are also influenced by bookie commission and currency exchange rates. You also need money with different bookies. I do not look for these very often.
Match rating. An expression of the recent form of a team based on the number of points scored minus the number conceded, averaged over a period of time, say the last 6 matches. This can give an indication of what the fair odds of that team winning really are, and therefore help in the decision of whether to bet and with which bookie.