In order to be able to play successfully in the betting market, it makes sense to learn the ability to make your own assessments for the games. In the classical sense, this would be making odds. However, it would be more general and better to work with probabilities. But how do you determine an odds or a probability?
My experience has taught me that the classic bookmakers only operate according to feeling. They hear a match from the Bundesliga, they know the two teams, they know roughly the positions in the table (in an emergency: look it up), they actually have a basic assessment of the two teams, which is not necessarily congruent with the position in the table, they intuitively know more or less exactly what the home advantage in the league is and they note down odds.
After noting the odds on the favourite, they look up their odds scheme and get the odds for the X and for the underdog. Done is the assessment. They don’t waste a thought on the word “probability”.
Now, at first glance I cannot judge whether this list of abilities has a deterrent or an encouraging effect on you. It could be a deterrent in the sense that you might think, “Well, what they put down there with their years of experience, how am I supposed to compete with that?” Encouraging could be that the numbers are all “guesses”, just following an intuition.
However, there are, of course, numerous sites on the internet where estimates are displayed. The odds of many bookmakers are often entered there. Even the average price is shown, so that in principle you can get a relatively good estimate by looking at them. But nevertheless it is questionable whether one can work with profit advantages in the long run with pure comparisons and “relying on others”.
So, if possible, one should make one’s own assessments. And you can certainly develop further in the process. Personally, I have my tool for that, my computer. Of course, I also make odds from my head. That’s no problem. But if my intuitive assessment differs from the computer, I am forced to think about the course. I can compare the basic assessments of the teams, check the most recent results, home advantage and also the goal average. And then I either correct my computer by changing some assessment manually. Or it corrects me. But we are good friends and therefore usually meet in the middle.
