Positive EV (valuebet) – What is it?

Reasons for Positive EV appearance

EV bets occur daily and frequently. Many factors may affect their occurrence, but there are only four main ones:

1. Errors in analysis of the bookmaker event outcome. This factor is especially important in the lower leagues with minimum data accessible in open sources.
2. “Betting dropping odds” on the side of the bettors. Bettors often bet heavily on top clubs, overloading the already dipping line to the maximum. If the odds become abnormally low, then it makes sense to catch the value in the opposite outcome.
3. The bookie is slow to correct the odds. Sometimes the bookie may not keep pace with the odds swings or may deliberately neglect to reduce them. At such moments, the bettor may be able to find a positive ev bet by choosing the bookie with more attractive odds.
4. Bookmaker’s error. Sportsbooks do not always have time to correctly set a betting line, especially with a huge influx of matches. However, such Positive EV (valuebet) often turn into a cashback and attract too much attention from the bookies.

Can I find a Positive EV manually?

Newbies often assume that all punters are looking for Positive EV unassisted. In fact, almost all experienced bettors use specialized software for that. Of course, you can find a value bet on your own, but this will take a lot more time and effort. This is completely ineffective, especially at the present time, when all the effort can be done by a machine in a matter of seconds.
You can use a special formula to manually search for Positive EV. First, you need to determine the real probability of a win for the event, and then compare it with the bookmaker’s odds. The formula is as follows:

where V means the probability of success, and K means the odds set by the sportsbook. If the result of this formula is over 1.0, then the event may be considered a value bet. The crux of the matter here is to correctly determine the probability. If you decide to search for value bets on your own, use our tips:

• track a small number of leagues / teams in order to better understand their internal workings;
• keep an eye on the news about the selected leagues / teams;
• carefully conduct a preliminary analysis of the odds.

An example of an unassisted search for Positive EV

For example, let's take the World Cup 2022 qualification match between the national teams of Turkey and Norway. Turkey was set as the favorite, with the win odds set at 2.192. We estimated the probability of the home team winning at 50%, after entering the odds in the formula, we've got the following:

The obtained result is higher than 1.0, so we have found a Positive EV. As you can see, the advantage of the Positive EV we’ve found is very small. It is much more logical to use a specialized software designed to automatically scan for lucrative Positive EV.

BetWasp – How does it work

One of the best Positive EV software is BetWasp. This software performs a laborious process of searching for Positive EV, so all you have to do afterwards is wager a bet on the chosen matches and wait for the win.

The BetWasp service uses a customized calculation formula comparing the odds of your bookie with the odds of ideal bookies. Moreover, the odds of the ideal bookies are to be integrated without taking into account their margin, since in order to scan for Positive EV, you must use a real probability (and not a probability excluding the margin).

How to calculate the bet in Value betting

In any betting strategy, you need to clearly understand how much money to bet on a single event. For a value bet, it is quite simple:

where K means the odds of the event, V means the calculated probability. Let's use this formula with an example: let's say the odds on the chosen outcome is set at 1.75 and the probability of success is estimated at 65%. Therefore, S = ((1.75 x 0.65) - 1) / (1.75 - 1) = 0.183. This Positive EV shows the share of your stake, meaning that if you have a $100 bankroll, you are to wager a bet in the amount of 100 x 0.183 = $18.30.