1/5 Banker - 99% Certainty - Eh?
I read some strange stuff on blogs from time to time, and came across one recent post titled Can A Value Bet Ever Be Too Short A Price? which contains the following ramblings:
I often find myself facing this sort of conundrum, where I strongly fancy something, but short odds put me off. But if it is a so called banker (I am aware nothing is certain), then surely it’s worth doing, is it not?
Is a 1/5 banker I’m 99% certain off, a worse bet or worse value than an even money shot that I’m about 75% certain off, but carries more risk?
This is the kind of situation that I really seem to struggle with. When does a short price become too short? And what is value?
Is it just me who finds all that complete nonsense? If something is available at a price, and the true price is less, then it is value. What does being 75% certain of an even money shot mean? All this 'banker' talk, and '99% / 75% certainty' stuff suggests a complete misunderstanding of how to calculate probabilities and from that, value. It appears that he has some way to go before achieving his mission statement of
my attempts to go from mug punter, to serious gambler
Would have thought it's pretty obvious to anyone what he's trying to get at to be honest. More fun to mock though I suppose.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, and there are different ways of looking at this, I don't often think there's much value in, say, 1.0x shots. As someone who looks for 5% value minimum on any bet, simple maths dictates it's not easy to find sufficient value for me at those prices. Perhaps other people work out value differently though.
The shorter the odds the less likely the selection is to have value long term. It's so much easier to price up clear favourites and you will make more money backing the even money shot but the 1/5 shot will have less variance.
ReplyDeleteI did some calculations recently and the price that shows the most value based on odds alone in English football are selections around the 1.9 mark.
I guess it all depends on your style of betting and stakes etc. If I was a big stakes player like this John Wilson geezer I would prefer to go for the 1/5 shots. The ROI would be less but so would the variance and betting at such huge amounts you only need a very small edge to make a lot of money.