Statistics. How much is tied to this word in the field of sports betting? We have direct sports statistics as one of the important components of forecasting and statistics of different services and third-party forecasters, cappers. However, it does not stop there. Strange as it may seem, many players overlook the most important side of using statistics. It is about their own statistics. In this review, we will emphasize and explain why it is so important, and talk about where and how best to keep and analyze it.
WHY KEEP YOUR OWN STATS
In our articles, we always emphasize the most serious approach to betting. Dozens of real-life examples have gone before our team when only a professional attitude to betting made the difference between long-term success and failure. When sports betting is treated like banal gambling, with all sorts of “popan” and “ludomaniac” tricks, it always leads to exactly one thing – a huge deficit on the account. And since this attitude – is one of the clear signs that distinguish the positive and negative results, then let’s dig in this direction.
Since the sphere of sports betting presupposes financial investments, your own money as a starter bank, then it is worth treating this activity like any other investment, a business. And what does this direction imply? That’s right! Obligatory business or investment plan. And how to conduct reporting, to reconcile results with targets, for the sake of forming conclusions? Keep statistics and then analyze it, reconcile what was not on paper and turned out in reality. Exactly the same thing is done by any betting player who aspires to the level of a pro.
They say that to become a professional you have to spend 10,000 hours doing the thing you want to reach that level. But that’s not quite true. They miss the prerequisite here, the presence of the self-learning factor and constant progress. If you spend 10,000 hours doing the same thing without increasing your level in any way, you will stay at this level. When a locksmith in a factory sharpens the same workpieces for many hours, he becomes a master at making those very parts. To reach a high grade, you have to learn how to sharpen hundreds of parts, increasing in complexity. And so it is in absolutely every industry, including batting. So remember the recipe that will come in handy when mastering absolutely any profession, skill: tens of thousands of hours plus constant development, increasing the complexity of tasks at the operational level.
Perhaps we have coped with the justification of the importance of keeping your own statistics. Let’s move on to the technical part.
KEEPING STATS ON YOUR STAKES
What do we mean by keeping statistics? What exactly indicators you need to record and analyze?
Name of events;
The odds;
The result (“plus”, “minus”, “return”).
From this simple data, it is not difficult to squeeze out all the information we need for analysis. We can calculate:
- The total net profit for the selected distance segment;
- The percentage of passability;
- The average ratio (both for all and for the winning bets);
- ROI;
- The maximum growth and drawdown of the bank for the chosen interval of the distance;
- The maximum length of the positive and negative series of results.
On the basis of all this, it is possible to construct a graph of the dynamics of results. Since many players, while feeling out their own style of play, lead several banks with different strategies, such statistical slices should be separate for each of them. Because mixing everything together will not give us any objective picture. That is why the archive of calculated bets on the bookmaker’s site is not very useful for us, if we bet there simultaneously according to several strategies.
We have published a separate article on our site about calculating the main indicators in betting statistics, so we won’t repeat them here. The basic mentioned indicators are quite simple. Their calculation method is elementary school arithmetic, and what we do is clear from their names.
PAPER MEDIA
The player assigns himself a certain game segment, tied to time (months, weeks), or to the number of bets. As he chooses and makes bets, the bettor writes down:
- Bet number;
- Name of opponents (can be abbreviated, to save time);
- The market, the type of bet;
- Odds;
- Amount of bet;
- Result (“+”, “-“, “return”).
For example, like this:
- №75
- Brazil v Paraguay
- Handicap2 (+2) – 1.94
- 5 000 rubles.
- “+”
Of course, this is all written in one line. You can even draw a table with the appropriate columns. You can add one additional column for some special notes. For example, you can enter there the terms of insurance bets, forks, if such bets are made in play for the fixation of profits or protection of the main bet. It allows you to see a much more objective picture at the end, rather than just the statistics of the pre-match bets. Live insurance is a powerful tool, and it is stupid to neglect it. So it is advisable to record them in statistics.
Let’s estimate the advantages and disadvantages of keeping your betting stats on paper.
ADVANTAGES
Not the most obvious, but still a plus of paper and pen is a mechanical memory. When a player writes down his stakes by hand, additional memory mechanisms are enabled, which is not the case when recording information on PCs and other electronic gadgets. And when a player remembers his bets for the past interval better, it is easier to find them when sorting out. It also helps to quickly retrieve some nuances from memory: why the decision was made to make that particular bet and so on. All of this is important for introspection and achieving the very progress we have already talked about a lot.
The paper medium is autonomous. It is not connected to your electronic devices and the Internet. A small but advantage. Little things, files on the computer, the technology itself – it is more complicated than pen paper, and therefore not as reliable. As they say, what you write with a pen, you can’t cut down with an axe.
One of the advantages of paper reporting is the ability to specify any real bank size and rate, whereas many online services have restrictions on these parameters.
Another major advantage is the ability to record express bets. Practically all of the verifiers either do not have this possibility or it is implemented in a frankly bad way.
Also, paper will survive any odds from any bookmaker’s office. While online services offer a narrow list of several BKs, among which may not be the one you use in reality.
THE DISADVANTAGES
Expenses for paper and writing utensils. The first and the most insignificant disadvantage of this method. Still, these are not the financial expenses, which may become a decisive factor when choosing a method of accounting in betting.
Time costs. This is a very controversial point. Either electronically, or in online services, or on paper, you need to enter data and it takes some time. Another big question is what is faster, to load the line of BC through online services, or to record all the data manually. The same goes for electronic files. Who is used to working with Excel or something similar, is more likely to make a record faster than on paper, but also, individually, and the difference is not great.
ELECTRONIC MEDIA
The same thing can be done electronically, such as with Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. When choosing between paper and this method, the main criterion is personal preference, which is more convenient for you. Of the advantages that can be highlighted, some of Excel’s automation capabilities when processing data. There are built-in formulas that will allow you to count sums, the same arithmetic mean, and so on. More advanced users of office programs can easily use Excel to build charts and automatically display ROI.
VERIFIER SERVICES
And the third option – to use various online services, verifiers to keep track of betting statistics. We have no reason to advertise specific resources of this kind. There are a few Russian-language and foreign ones, they are not hard to find through search engines.
You can create a personal account by registering. There you can add bets by loading the real odds from the line of the provided bookmaker’s offices. The main feature of such services is the automatic calculation of key parameters: ROI, net profit, and so on. They also automatically build charts, which is very convenient for people who are not able to set up these functions in Excel.
There is one unpleasant nuance. About half of such verifiers require entering a description of one’s forecast for each bet. In essence, they want to create free content with our hands, the sly ones. As you can easily guess such resources should be immediately excluded. Writing several sentences to each forecast is an absolutely unnecessary time expense in our case. That leaves us with a very modest list of verifiers which do not require a description.
Second, a sore subject is in-play. Verifiers are not designed for entering in-play bets. And even where they are implemented, by the time you bet in the office, by the time you get to the verifier – the odds can change drastically. So here we see the superiority of the old-fashioned methods. We can manually or electronically type in any of our live bets and the verifier algorithms will not interfere with that. It is clear that the services functionality is designed more for showing results to the audience, selling forecasts and promoting other paid services, than for tracking personal stats.
It turns out you may keep your stats in the verifier only if you use game strategies based on the types of bets presented in the verifier. And without live betting. Hence it is logical to conclude that professional bettors must either use formulas and Excel charts or create functions in other program packages.
Now that we’re talking about verifiers, let’s not get up twice, but leave a remark about these services. Many beginners find such sites and try to look there for free predictions of private brokers and other prognosticators, or even buy access to predictions for a fee. I wonder, does it make sense and is it useful?
The question of using someone else’s forecasts, someone else’s opinion when choosing a bet is very controversial. Our opinion – it is a bad practice. Firstly, betting on someone else’s predictions the player gets into an illusion that he has delegated the responsibility to someone other than himself. This is not the case. Who puts his money in the office – only he is responsible. Not understanding this nuance does not exempt from financial responsibility. So it is better to make those predictions for which you are responsible with your own money. Excuses about your own incompetence in this, or the desire to save time, it’s all in favor of the poor. You will save time, but you will lose the bank. Secondly, betting on someone else’s predictions, you are depriving yourself of that very growth, progress. You have to make your own predictions, make mistakes and learn from those mistakes. If all this stage is put outside there can be no progress by definition, and you won’t be a specialist at the start, or after 10 years in betting, with the corresponding results.
This is in general, as for the forecasts on the verifiers. It is necessary to see who benefits. For what purpose are such sites created in the first place? The owners are obviously not altruistic and are going to make money. You would think that a small commission on some kind of paid services between players and carders is the end of it all. But don’t be naive. Another significant part of income is fake newsletters. Verifier owners create their own profiles. They “draw” from the ceiling absolutely left-handed and impressive plus stats. Stacks of people without brains come to buy forecasts. All of course fly in the negative. Mailing list dies. Then new profiles are added, and the scheme continues to work. Nothing personal, only money. So think about other people’s forecasts in general – and forget about mailing lists from verifiers. Use these services to work with your statistics. If you face the limitations we’ve mentioned before, the advanced Excel functionality should be of help to you.
