I learnt how to find value courtesy of Warren Buffett. I know that sounds odd, but part of the premium charge is based on the commission you generate, so generating more commission is helpful in terms of mitigating it. When Betfair introduced the premium charge, I also suddenly had an incentive to be less efficient.
So this opened up the door to finding value bets. Matched betting volumes rose over time, the books became much tighter and prices more variable. In every problem there is an opportuntityīut several things changed that for me. You also couldn’t get much on, even if you found a price you wanted. It was difficult to get the price you wanted on the exchange. This was because, in the early days, spreads were wide and fill rate poor. Value betting was off the agenda for a long period of time. But soon I brcame one of the first people to ‘discover’ Betfair trading and the rest, as they say, is history.
When I first started on Betfair, I started by arbing. Alas, I didn’t know bookmaking that well so the idea faded, until betting exchanges came along and I could bet at odds that I knew were value! I knew if I could indentify if their offered odds were wrong then I could get en edge over the bookmaker. The key question I wanted to answer was are bookmaker odds created. A long time ago I started modelling sports betting markets.
