Value bets in sports

What is value, how to calculate and use it?

Value is a term from investing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_investing) .

“value investing is buying stocks at less than their intrinsic value” In sports value is when the odds is bigger than calculated odd. If you calculate(think) that under 2.5 goals percent is 50, then the fair odd for 50% is 2.00. So every odd above 2.00 is a value.

03.05.2013 Genclerbirligi (6) – Kasimpasa (4) our software calculate 59% for under and 40% for over 2.5 goals in match. Average odds are 2.05/1.72 . To find the value we calculate the fair odd first. The chance for under 2.5 goals is 59%. The odds should be 1 / 0.59 = 1.694 and every odd above this is a value bet. To convert odd into percent (1 / odd) * 100 . For our example (1/2.05)*100 = 48.7%.

The value in this bet is 10% (59% – 48.7%)

Using value betting is most rewarding system. The value can be used to calculate optimal stake for bet (Kelly criterion). In our system on http://www.prosoccer.eu/football-predictions/under-over/ we use flat stakes of 1 unit.