Betting tips and money management in football betting

Football experts provide you with betting tips, media outlets publish the latest news about opposing teams and their key players, bookmakers support hundreds of betting methods. However, when he finally places his big bet on a sure favorite, now is the time to start praying. Unfortunately, the world of soccer betting is quite unpredictable. There are thousands of factors that play against us. How can we reduce our betting losses? The only way to do this is by using money management strategies. This article summarizes betting money management methods and strategies and provides a statistical comparison of their performance based on betting odds and match results from major European leagues.

The most common betting money management strategies today are: Martingale, Number Row and Kelly Criterion. While the first two do not require any prior information, the Kelly criterion requires the bettor to know the probability of winning.

Definitions

Before presenting the performance analysis, a brief description of the aforementioned strategies is necessary:

— The Martingale strategy means doubling the stack after a loss and returning to the starting stack after a win. This strategy is the most popular today and promises positive earnings, but requires money-intensive investments.

— Row of numbers means planning a series of constant wins. Given the betting odds, the bettor calculates each bet in a way that will allow him to make the planned profit. In case you lose, you need to increase the next stack in such a way that the win returns you both the already lost money and the expected winnings for the lost games. This strategy is less aggressive than the Martingale but is still dangerous.

— Kelly Criterion: mathematically proven to be the best long-term strategy. However, it requires knowing the probability of winning. The stacks are calculated in proportion to the size of your bankroll and according to the relationship between the probability of winning and the betting odds. When probability and odds are high, a high stack will be placed and vice versa.

Data and Methods

To evaluate the performance of each strategy, we analyzed the betting odds set by the bookmakers for the main European leagues. Imagine that the bookies are punters betting on a favorite with minimal betting odds. One can easily estimate the probability of a win by dividing the average number of home/tie/away results by the total number of games in a season.

The betting odds and results are taken from the four main European leagues that played in the 2008/2009 season: English Premier, French Ligue 1, German Bundesliga 1 and Spanish Primera División.

Summary

— The results show that the Kelly Criterion is the best money management strategy of the three with an average return of +5% compared to +1% (Row) and +1.2% (Martingale).

— The most profitable was French Ligue 1 with betting profit of +22% (Kelly), +9% (Row) and +10% (Martingale).

— The least profitable was the English Premier League with betting losses of -10% (Kelly), -9% (Row) and -8% (Martingale).