Do you want to learn how to make your own picks? Would you like to know what platforms can help you make money? Do you think you can share good picks but don’t know where to start? Every one of us who has thought about sharing picks has had these questions in mind at some point, especially at the beginning.
If you are looking to adventure into the tipster world and make money by offering nice results month by month, this is your guide! Make yourself comfortable and enjoy the read. Don’t rush and pay attention to the detail, I promise if you understand and follow this guide you will be on the path to becoming a GREAT tipster.
Contents
Getting started as a tipster
A vital step for anyone who wants to share picks is to start off by generating and testing a big sample of picks privately. In this sample we will define our style as a betting tipster. We’ll polish it pick by pick by fixing our misses – which will be frequent at the beginning.
It’s very important to categorise every detail we can relate to every pick, such as:
- Sport / Event
- League
- Date
- Market
- Teams
- Stakes
- Odds
By doing so, it’s easier to understand our failures and see what kind of picks are making us lose. This first step will help us with the following:
- Defining style: risky or conservative
- Defining our affinity/expertise: favourite sports/events, leagues, markets, etc
- Defining the best approach to each combination of factors: For example, I would be a conservative tipster for minor leagues
- Understanding our strengths and weaknesses: This can inform us on how to fix our shortcomings
- Defining where can we can actually deliver greens to our followers with our system
At this stage, remember to put on as many picks as you can. It can take us a whole season to get a decent sample. After a wide sample we can start shaping our system and discarding the markets, leagues and sports that are not giving us the results we want.
This is a constant tweaking process that should be done with all the markets we bet on. It’s important to be very methodical when doing this so we can avoid making a mistake like discarding a market we’re good at just because we’re negative on a very small sample.
For example, we can be bad at finding value in the “Over/Under” market because after a 500-pick sample we had a negative yield. If we separate by stakes, we could confirm that stake 1 bets are the ones making us go negative but we are doing great in that market with high stakes. In this case we’ll try to discard stake 1 picks and keep the ones we are more confident with.
Once we have a large enough sample and we have fixed what needed to be fixed, we can start posting our picks. Doing so before the polishing process would be reckless, as it can give you a bad reputation from the start – and reputation is the most valuable asset for a professional tipster.
Now let’s talk about how we can look for picks, what kind of picks we should add to our sample, and where to find them.
How to find the value bets
Screening is just like using a metal mesh to sieve through sand in a playground when we were kids. It will help us select the picks that deliver more value. This will also dramatically reduce the time you spend analysing picks.
Obviously, analysing 500 matches is not the same as analysing just 10 right? During this filtering process we might let a diamond slide, this is inevitable, we can’t just get every single good game. But if we didn’t filter all this, we would spend a lot longer analysing matches.
Depending on the type of pick we are looking for, we’ll go to a different website. If you are looking for picks on corners, we’ll visit a site with the most stats on corners. If it’s a 1×2 pick, we’ll go to others like Betexplorer or Soccerway, these have a feature that allows you to filter your search by streaks.
It’s not enough to use just one reference during filtering, we have to combine it with others so we get the most information on what we are looking for. Once we have our set of matches selected, we have two options:
- We analyse every match and try to find value in each one (not recommended).
- We analyse every match thoroughly, coming out with hypotheses to back up or discard our pick (highly recommended).
If we take a look at social networks, telegram channels, groups, or betting forums, the vast majority of tipsters love the first choice. They post a batch of picks a day, risking tons of money desperately hoping them to pay off and give them those greens they want so much to start selling “premium” subscriptions. If you’re familiar with when and how to look for a Tipster, you already know how these people work; do not follow them.
Alright, when we have our matches selected for the following days we then go on to the analysis.
How to look for the statistical value in odds
At this point we’ll see how to look for statistical value in certain odds. In order to do this we have to understand what the value in a bet means and how to calculate it. We have to place bets with value if we want to make money long term, this is very, VERY important. Let us illustrate this point.
Let’s say we start with 10 events and each has a 50% real chance of success, which means we’ll win 5 out of 10 (which is no better than tossing a coin, really). If all of them had the same odds and we got half of them right, we would probably end up just below breakeven (when accounting for the operator’s margin). That’s not great – but it can get worse.
Now let’s see what happens with different odds betting 1 stake on each event:
Odds with negative value (odds under 2.00 which are equivalent to a 50% chance)
Odds = 1.50
Wins = 5
Units placed = 10
Recovered units = 7.5
Balance = -2.5 units
Odds with neutral value (odds equal to 2.00, which are equivalent to a 50% chance)
Odds = 2.00
Wins = 5
Units placed = 10
Recovered units = 10
Balance = 0 units
Odds with positive value (odds over 2.00, which are equivalent to 50% chance)
Odds = 2.50
Wins = 5
Units placed = 10
Recovered units = 12.5
Balance = +2.5 units
As you can see you have to bet with value to make money long term. You have to look for a good balance between the probability of an event happening and how much money it could make you.
Odds imply probability, and you calculate with this simple formula:
1 / odds = % Probability
So, for 2.00 odds:
1 / odds = 1 / 2 = 0.5 (50%)
What we have to do next is to analyse all the matches we selected and look for valuable odds, select the picks we like the most, and discard those that show low value.
How does sports analysis benefit tipsters?
Now we have our value picks selected. These are the ones we should analyse thoroughly so we can clear which ones are more likely to win and add them to our sample or to our post list.
This is the part of the process that takes the longest. You also have to consider that on many occasions we don’t have enough information until moments before a match. Sometimes we don’t even get enough information at all, if the league is too low.
You are better off using your imagination and looking for sources of information. You won’t struggle if your picks are in the big leagues, there are plenty of sites to get information. But be warned that bookies probably get this information way before you.
For picks on a modest league, it could be interesting to check out their official websites, Twitter or Facebook accounts to see if there are any injured players. You can also check on each team’s forum where fans discuss information we can hardly find anywhere else and can be very useful.
Something that many tipsters don’t consider is the weather. If we are playing an Over bet, it is not the same if they play in a muddy field with 60 km/h winds, than if they play in a smooth afternoon. All this plays its role and you must consider the value of each condition.
After all this, we do our job and build our hypothesis – that’s where we decide if this is a win match, or if we just turn the pick down. If data matches our picks, then we can go on and post that pick with a certain stake based on how much trust we have in it after all this process.
We have to assign our stake based on how comfortable we feel about our pick after all the research has been carried out.
Putting our tipster strategy to the test
When the time comes (and only after going through a large sample as we said earlier, modifying and polishing our method and then optimising it) we can share our work with others. It’s a great responsibility to tell someone you don’t know at all to deposit some money in a pick you have studied.
Sadly in this world very few people take this into consideration, and so many reckless people throw themselves into posting tonnes of picks, whilst convincing others to inadvertently lose their money. After you’re in it for long enough, you’ll have seen quite a lot of tipsters who lose entire banks in just a few days.
As you can see the work is not easy, and is not always valued. If you do get profit from it, your work deserves an economic reward, so do not hesitate to charge accordingly if you do a good job.
One last thing: a tipster is also constantly exposed to “difficult” audiences, who can be quite aggressive sometimes. Keep this in mind before you start your adventure. Think well before deciding if you want to share your picks with a group of friends or post them to a larger audience.
We hope this article helps you begin the process of making your own picks. Get started now by testing your samples right here, at our bitcoin sportsbook.
