Today we want to speak a little about how to find value in the betting markets but using the odds that bookies give you. We can then combine these numbers with Bet Dynamo’s Insights to find value in the markets.

Firstly we’ll write about working out the Implied Probability of betting odds, from those we can calculate the true probability of an event occurring and then we can look at the movement of odds to see how the market is reacting to the odds.

This being a week of international matches when it’s being decided who will take their places at the Euro 2020 tournament there’s not much league football occurring around Europe, of course the lower leagues are playing but for the purposes of this article and, indeed, for the purposes of finding value in the markets we need to find matches with plenty of liquidity. Liquidity is betting jargon for money in the market.

Let’s have a look then for a match happening this coming Friday night.

Erzgebirge Aue take on St Pauli in the Bundesliga II, while not a top flight matches, this league is very popular with regular punters and as kick off approaches it will attract a good bit of money. This being early in the week, we can get an early look at the betting odds before the rest of the public even thinks about these matches.

Currently the odds for the Bundesliga II match are: Home win: 2.50, Draw 3.05 and Away win: 2.83 but we want to look at odds where the bookie’s commission is lower. So let’s look at the Asian Handicap market. The reason being is that in football because of the possibility of a draw the market is split three ways, when we remove the draw and only have two outcomes then the bookies have a lower overround and ‘charge’ less per wager. We should also look to Asian sportsbooks too rather than European bookies as they tend to have a far lower commission on their odds. You can read more about this in a recent blog post.

To find the Asian Handicap line for a match, you need to look through the odd and find where the odds are closest to each other, as you can see the line here is 0:

So you can see the Asian Handicap line is 0. This is the same as a Draw No Bet wager, so if we bet on the home side if they win, the bet wins, if the match ends in a draw the bet is refunded, or voided, if they lose the bet loses.

Now, let’s calculate the implied probability. Click on the AH 0 and you’ll get this:

Marathonbet have the lowest commission at 97.9%, some websites would write this as 102.1%, but it’s the same thing.

1.84 as a probability is 1/1.84 = 0.5434 * 100 = 54.34%

2.09 as a probability is 1/2.09 = 0.4784 * 100 = 47.84%

So, the home side have a probability of 54.35%, while the away side has a probability of 47.84%

However, 54.35 + 47.84 does not equal 100, so we need to get the fair odds. Let’s show you how to do it:

We need to add the 54.35 and 47.84 and we get 102.18. Now we divide the numbers:

54.35/102.18 = 0.5318 * 100 = 53.18% convert this back to odds, it’s 1/53.18 = 0.18804 * 100 = 1.88.

47.84/102.18 = 0.4681 * 100 = 46.81%, that back into odds is 1/46.81 = 0.02135 * 100 = 2.14.

Now we have the true probability of each teams chances. Erzgebirge Aue AH 0 has a real chance of 53.18% while St Pauli AH 0 has a real chance of 46.81%.

Let’s look at odds movement:

At the bottom we see the ‘opening odds’ so it was Aue AH 0 at 2.03, St Pauli AH 0 at 1.89, it’s now Aue AH 0 at 1.84, St Pauli AH 0 at 2.08. We can see that the market is favouring the home side and the prices have changed to reflect that.

So then, where’s the value here? By our maths, Erzgebirge Aue should be 1.88, but the bookies are offering 1.84, so no value there. St Pauli, should be 2.08, the bookies are offering 2.08 so it’s spot on, but not a value pick.

As you can see it takes a while to calculate value picks based on bookies odds but when looking for value this is one of the methods you should add to your arsenal when searching for value. If you use this method and combine it with Bet Dynamo’s Insight Page you’ll go a long way in your search for value in the football betting markets.