Here at Bet Dynamo we love bashing the bookie and we’re got plenty of articles here on this blog about what to look for in football stats to give them a hard time. On our Facebook Page too, you’ll find loads of users who are getting the best out of our software and are happy to share their tips for success.

Something though that we should consider is asking, as bettors who are we against; is the bookie then enemy or is it the market? You won’t find much written about this on the betting blogosphere though, it seems to be a closely-guarded secret and from just doing our own bit of research we might be telling you something you shouldn’t even know.

How do bookies make money?

We wrote before about the quote from Chinese warmonger Sun Tzu ‘To know your Enemy, you must become your Enemy’. If the bookie is then enemy we must know him. We must know two things in particular if we want to really know our bookie. How does he come up with his odds and how much of an overround is he charging on top of our wagers.

We’re written about these subjects before, How do Bookies Set Betting Odds and How to Calculate a Bookie’s Overround, but they bear repeating. Bookies set their odds thanks to years of experience and the usage of incredibly powerful algorithms to compare teams coming up against each other. Some of the things they look at include; recent form, head to head form, injuries, new players/manager, weather, keeping odds competitive to attract punters etc. Have a look at our articles about the subject and try to learn as much as you can on the subject, once you see and understand why they set odds in a certain way you’ll be able to make better, more informed picks.

Sports Betting Secrets

Knowing your bookie’s overround is incredibly useful too. You will quickly come to realise that the majority of the more famous European sportsbooks are taking their customers for a ride. Some of them are adding up to 10% extra on their betting odds. For the most part, European bookies are happy to add an extra 5-8% onto their odds to keep them on the gravy train and in profit. For example, in an upcoming Premier League match between Brighton and Leicester the Over 2.5 goals odds with a very famous UK bookie is 1.85, if you used one of the famous Asian Sportsbooks you’d get odds of 1.92. If you’re getting a better price with the Asian sportsbooks you really need to ask yourself why are you continuing to use a European sportsbook when it’s so obviously they don’t care one jot about giving punters fair odds.

We have kind of come to think of the bookie as the enemy, but are they really? From a business perspective they’re just companies that offer a certain service and charge a bit (too much) on top for themselves, no different than a delivery/courier company, or a taxi company or a rental company. The bookie might be stingy in his odds on offer but the Euopean bookies pretty much just copy each others’ odds. If you want to beat a bookie then really you need to start beating the market because it’s the other punters you’re really against and not the bookie.

It’s a bit like when you’re in school, yes your History teacher was a dope and he had all kinds of emotional problems but it wasn’t him really that you were up against, you had to beat your classmates and indeed, other pupils studying history up and down the country when it came to your state exams. We’re against the market.

Learn Sports Betting Markets

Once we know the overround and know that we should be using sportsbooks with the lowest overrounds (so Asian sportsbooks or Betting Exchanges) then we know that we’re in competition with other punters because we have the fairest odds we can get for sporting events.

Armed with this knowledge then, what can we do? The next bit isn’t easy, but you’re going to need to spend time learning how to read market and learning to read why they react in certain ways and know this too; 90% of the market isn’t winning consistently, going against market trends, i.e, finding value, will lead to profitable betting.

Most punters are happy to follow the crowd and go with what they think is a good or fair price, but that’s the kind of attitude that leads to losses, if a price is dropping rapidly it’s not going to hold any value and the value may well be on the opposite side of the market. Stop thinking that you’re looking to pick the right results, you’re looking for the value pick.