In 2022, Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston starred in a fun little movie called Jerry and Marge Go Large. It’s not the greatest movie ever made – people won’t be talking about it ten years from now – but it’s based on an intriguing premise: beating the lottery with math. Now, as everyone with half a brain knows, you can’t beat the lottery in the traditional sense, but the movie was actually based on true events.
We won’t go into detail about how the system worked, but it was effectively based on tracking state lotteries that reached a certain jackpot threshold. Once that was hit, prizes would be rolled down for non-jackpot winning tickets. The movie’s characters – and several people in real life – calculated that they could make a profit by playing those lotteries at certain times. Later, the lottery operators caught on and changed the system.
Now, the reason we cite the above in a sports betting article is that those lottery players did not consider the odds of winning the lottery; they calculated “the value” of the ticket. For example, if you buy a standard Powerball ticket, it has a “negative expected value,” which basically means the ticket is worth less than the purchase price. What Jerry and Marge did was work out that certain conditions in lottery draws meant the ticket had a “positive expected value,” i.e., it was worth more than the purchase price.
Sports betting can follow the positive expected value ideal
The concept does not fully translate over to sports betting, but the ideals of it do. When you use data – good data – to work out a betting system, you should not be thinking of whether it wins or not but the value proposition represented by the bet. For example, if you trawl through the NBA betting odds for the Playoffs, you want to be weighing up instances where the value of the bet is higher than its cost.
If we can return to the analogy of Jerry and Marge. They weren’t saying, “This ticket is going to win.” They were saying, “Given the structure of the payouts and the probability of certain outcomes, this ticket is worth more than it costs.” That’s the essence of what sharp bettors look for: positive expected value (+EV).
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Let’s say Team A has a true probability of winning a game 40% of the time. If the sportsbook is offering odds of +200 (2/1), then that implies a 33.3% chance. That means you’re getting value. The bet might still lose 6 out of 10 times, but over the long term, you’ll likely profit. Of course, it’s not just as simple as that. How do you look at an NBA team, for example, and say with certainty that they have a 40% chance of winning? You can’t, but you can reason it through with probability by looking at advanced data.
Look out for promos that offer positive expected value
Sportsbooks don’t usually make mistakes, as such, so it is rare (but certainly not unheard of) that they will offer bets with positive expected value. However, the best strategy – even for novice bettors – is to look through different sportsbooks and weigh up their betting promotions – odds boosts, win bonuses for parlays – and so on. Those are the instances where, although not always, you can pinpoint positive expected value.
Of course, you will want to root any strategy in statistics that are measurable, so try to stay away from bets that are not based on quantifiable data (avoid random props bets, for instance) and use your system to weigh up the value of the bet, not the potential winnings. It doesn’t guarantee success – nothing does – but it gives you a new perspective on sports betting that could be invaluable.