One of the most important things you can ever do to help your betting profits, is to make sure you always, always get the very best odds that you can take on any bet placed.
It’s one reason that over the past year I have been highlighting what I call the ‘football odds conspiracy‘ that costs so many punters (and something the betting industry consistently turns a blind eye to). As that article outlines, the simple act of placing your football bets with a bookie such as Pinnacle Sports could increase your odds by as much as 25%.
I want to take this one step further today by illustrating how you can squeeze out even better football betting odds, by using a simple odds calculator. If betting on the Spurs – West Ham game in my example below, you can get 11.09% better odds through this simple method and it’s something repeated countless times every weekend. Let me show you how…
Find Your Own Best Odds – Quickly
All Smart Betting Club members gain access to something we call our ‘Cover Draw Calculator’ which is a fancy tool that can enable you to hunt down greater value if betting in the popular Draw No Bet or Double Chance football markets.
A Draw No Bet (also called a 0 Asian Handicap bet – it’s the same bet just written differently) allows you to back a football team but with added cover if the game ends all square. For example, last week you could back Spurs DNB against Chelsea at around 1.83, and as the game ended 1-1, you would have received your stake bet. Had Spurs won, your bet would have won and the only chance of losing were if Chelsea had taken all 3 points.
(By the way, if you ever wanted to find out the historical odds on any football game, I heartily recommend the OddsPortal Results Archive, which keeps a detailed record)
Let’s take the Spurs – West Ham game this weekend as a case in point. If we fancy West Ham as a Draw No Bet here are the options:
- West Ham Draw No Bet: Best odds are 6.5 with Bet Victor, with the next best 6.00
However, if we take the best odds on West Ham to win the game (9.0 with Totesport) and to draw (4.77 with Pinnacle) and enter them into our Calculator, it tells us we can get odds of 7.11 by creating our own ‘ad-hoc’ bet.
- West Ham ‘Ad Hoc Bet’: Best odds are 7.11
(Please note – in all these examples I am only using proper bookmakers and so avoiding Mickey Mouse firms like Marathon Bet and Bet Fred. All odds are correct as of 11am Friday 4th October)
How To Calculate The Best Odds
The calculator is effectively telling us how to create our own manual bet, by splitting our stake amongst the best win and best draw odds available.
To achieve the odds of 7.11, we simply need put 79% of our stake on West Ham to win and 21% of it on them to draw (The calculator tells you the split needed).
By doing this in the Spurs – West Ham game, you can get an extra 11% value simply by looking around, which can make a massive difference to your overall profits.
Whilst at first glance a boost of 11% might not sound huge, the reality is if you bet regularly it can make a significant difference to your profits. At £100 stakes, you would make £611 profit from our Ad-Hoc bet as opposed to £550 without…so that an extra £61 lining your pockets and not the bookies!
Don’t forget, Betfair live off the maximum 5% commission they take from all winning bets – proof that even small gains (if repeated a lot) can make a huge difference!
Other Better Odds Examples
The West Ham – Spurs game is not the only game where you can get better odds this weekend if following this method. I have picked out a few others I quickly found this morning as follows:
- Crystal Palace to beat Liverpool. Draw No Bet odds of 13 compared to our ‘Ad-Hoc’ odds of 14.73 (14.41% better)
- Tranmere to beat Swindon. Draw No Bet odds of 4.50 compared to our ‘Ad-Hoc’ odds of 5.54 (29.17% better)
- Hull to beat Aston Villa. Draw No Bet odds of 1.70 compared to our ‘Ad-Hoc’ odds of 1.75 (7.14% better)
- Nuneaton to beat Lincoln. Draw No Bet odds of 1.72 compared to our ‘Ad-Hoc’ odds of 1.79 (9.72% better)
Please note that the above bets are used as an example only, I am not advocating you back them this weekend.
Fighting Back For The Punter’s Interests
The above example is just one simple way you can improve your betting odds and of course if backing winners, line your profits further (and not the bookies)
This is all part of our quest at the Smart Betting Club to fight back against the power of the bookmakers and help ordinary punters with their betting. As we are 100% independent from all bookmakers, tipsters and anyone else in the betting industry, we can really tell it like it is.
If you enjoy this article and want to find out more, you can access a copy of our ‘Cover Draw Calculator’ as a Smart Betting Club member, which will automatically help you find the best odds if betting in this manner with the minimum of fuss.
We also have a range of expert football articles to help you, from identifying the best tipsters and systems to use and follow, through to advice from pro gamblers on how they make betting pay.
Sign-up now and get started right away.
