Quote Originally Posted by ross View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Silkeyjoe View Post
Quote Originally Posted by ross View Post
You must be very confident that Fury will become world champion if you were willing to part with "significant" money over it?
Not confident but 5/1 is too big. I dont bet because I think something will win, I bet because the odds are too good allowing me to make money in the long run.
Ok

You placed a "significant" bet on something you have no confidence in happening.....

You would also have no confidence in David Cameron becoming a world champion boxer this year. Would you part with the same money?

You need to understand odds to make money from gambling. For example a coin toss is 50/50. That means fair odds are evens heads and evens tails. If me and you were to have a 10er bet on every toss of a coin for 1000 tosses we would be pretty close to getting 500 wins each meaning we would have 500 wins and 500 losses. If the odds are evens we would break even. What bookies do is over "unfair odds" on this. 5/6 on each side. If this was the case we would still have the same amount of winners but as the odds are less then evens you would lose money. If you could get better odds then even (say 2/1) you would still have 500 winners but as the odds are better you would turn a very good profit.

Above is easy because its easy to calculate the odds on a coin toss but its not so easy in most sports. This is what gives some customers a chance of taking money off bookmakers. I believe fury is a 2/1 shot. What this means is if the same scenario came up over and over again Fury would win a world title once every 3 times. THe odds I got suggest he will only win once in 6. If you consistently beat prices like this you will turn a healthy profit. From my bet on Fury, given the odds I have an expected profit of 100% of my stake. Obviously should the bet win my profit will be 500% of the stake (as the odds are 5/1). I made 9% profit from my personel stakes in 2014 but my expected profit was 15%. This could mean my prices werent as good as I thought but still consistently beating the bookies odds.