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What is Turnover?
If you take a one-month period and add up all of the money that you staked across that month the sum would be your turnover for that month.
Optimise Don’t Maximise
If you can’t find enough value bets or are too timid with your staking then your turnover is going to suffer and as a result, your ability to earn money off value betting will follow. So we must know what levers to pull to sensibly increase our turnover if/when we find ourselves struggling to keep it high enough.
You might notice that I emphasised sensibly, that’s because there is a big pitfall that bettors often fall into while chasing higher turnover that I am going to demonstrate to you now.
Let us compare two months of betting…
Month 1:
- Turnover = $5,000
- Expected Value = 5%
- Profit = $250
Month 2:
- Turnover = $10,000
- Expected Value = 5%
- Profit = $500
In Month 1 we would expect to earn $250 ($5,000 x 5%) while in Month 2 we would expect to earn $500 ($10,000 x 5%).
It’s obvious that Month 2 was a better month for us than Month 1. However there’s one key assumption in this example that would often prove to be false in reality which is the expected value remained constant as the turnover increased.
In reality, higher turnover often comes at the cost of expected value due to a reduction in the expected value hurdle that a bettor sets for themselves when placing bets. We don’t like to admit it but expected value reduction is the most potent and frequently used lever that we as bettors pull, consciously or subconsciously, in order to increase turnover. To some extent, that’s okay and even encouraged because as I will demonstrate reducing the expected value hurdle to increase turnover can increase your profits but if you take it too far you will most definitely be hurting yourself and in the wise words of 50 Cent start ‘hustling backwards’.
Let’s bring Month 2 closer to reality…
Month 2:
- Turnover = $10,000
- Expected Value = 3.5%
- Profit = $350
Even though our overall expected value across all of our bets for Month 2 dropped 1.5% from Month 1 we still would have made $100 more than we did in Month 1 (Month 1 = $250, Month 2 = $350).
So we were better off lowering our expected value hurdle by 1.5% across all of our bets because it allowed us to double our turnover.
As you might have predicted already though if we are forced to reduce our expected value too much to achieve a higher turnover then we end up worse off. Let’s once again reimagine Month 2…
Month 2:
- Turnover = $10,000
- Expected Value = 2%
- Profit = $200
In this situation, we would expect to profit $200 which is $50 less than Month 1 even though our turnover has still doubled.
More turnover doesn’t necessarily = better returns, it can but it’s all about optimising not maximising.
With all that being said I am going to show you the levers that you can pull to increase your turnover so please use them wisely.
How to Increase Turnover
There are two routes to increased turnover;
- Place more bets
- Stake more on each bet
In this article I am going to mainly focus on placing more bets because there’s simply greater potential for turnover gains down this route. One can only be so aggressive with their staking strategy before it becomes completely idiotic so it’s more important to figure out how to increase the number of bets you are placing than how you can risk a greater and greater percentage of your bankroll on each bet.
1. Create more alert configurations
More alert configurations means more alerts, which means more chances to catch slow moving bookmakers off guard, which means more bets which means more turnover.
If you only bet on soccer then consider creating an alert configuration for basketball or handball or volleyball etc., the dropping odds strategy is sport agnostic meaning you can find value across any of the sports we cover so don’t limit yourself to just one or two.
2. Make Your Configurations Less ‘Restrictive’
By definition a restrictive configuration sends few alerts and an unrestrictive configuration sends many. As I said above more alerts, generally speaking, means more bets.
There are many ways you can make a configuration less restrictive like increasing your odds range or setting your lower limit to $0 for the limit range filter but the most effective way is to reduce your minimum drop %.
There are far more markets that drop 5% across a five minute period than there are markets that drop 20% across the same period so if you are happy to catch smaller drops in exchange for catching more of them then consider decreasing your minimum drop %. Once again this is a balancing act, we still want high quality drops that are actionable so don’t decrease this filter too far anywise you will be left with useless alerts!
3. Open Accounts at More Soft Bookies
Bet365 might have adjusted to a drop too fast for you to catch the value bet but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t still value at other bookmakers so quickly move over to another tab that you have open with one of your other soft bookmakers and see if there is value they haven’t adjusted yet.
Not only do different bookmakers react to the same market movement at different times they also have different markets from each other.
If you receive an alert for a handball game that DraftKings doesn’t offer odds for then don’t panic head over to another bookmaker and see if they do.
Having multiple bookmakers accounts is one of the biggest strengths a value bettor can have.
4. Bet Closer to Match Start
Let’s imagine that we place two almost identical bets with an expected value of 5%. One of the bets is for a match that starts in three days and the other is for a match that starts in two hours.
If we could only place one of the bets then of course we would place the one on the game that starts in two hours because we are going to lock our capital up for a far shorter amount of time. Once this bet has settled we can place another bet at 5% EV whereas with the first bet we have to wait three days for our bet to settle before we can re-deploy that capital. I might be able to place nine or ten bets in the three days that it takes for the second bet to settle!
If all else is equal then a bet that settles sooner is a better bet to take than one that settles later.
5. Add to your Bankroll
Probably the most obvious and most easily said advice is to add to your bankroll so you can place more on each bet. If you are working a job alongside betting then consider putting aside a certain percentage of your paycheck so that you can add it to your betting bankroll. If you have an old guitar lying about that you don’t use then perhaps chuck it on ebay.
Always be responsible when doing this, bills need to be paid before returns can be made so make sure you are only putting aside what you can afford to put aside.
6. More Aggressive Staking Strategy
Kelly Criterion is considered to be an aggressive staking strategy, to put the aggressiveness in perspective if you were being offered odds of +100 (2.00) which have an implied probability of 50% and you think the odds should be -150 (1.67) which have an implied probability of 60% then full Kelly would have you staking 20% of your net worth.
I say that to say this, if you aren’t happy with your turnover, are comfortable with significant drawdowns and are using a less aggressive staking strategy like a low percentage of bankroll fixed unit strategy or fractional Kelly then you might want to consider going full Kelly.
Closing Advice
We should always be trying to grow our turnover when sensibly possible. It all comes down to how much time and thought you are willing to put into your betting.
If you work a day job and can only bet in the evenings and at the weekend then it is vital that when you do have time to sit down and bet you are spending that time as effectively as possible which means you need to be setting up your configurations, staking and just generally betting with turnover in mind.
Summary
- Turnover is the total amount staked across a set of bets
- Increasing turnover can improve your returns but there is a point at which it can start to be worse for your returns if it causes you to decrease your expected value hurdle too much
- There are two routes to increased turnover; 1. Place more bets 2. Stake more on each bet
- Tactics to increase turnover include; creating more configurations, making your configurations less restrictive, opening accounts at more soft bookmakers, betting closer to match start, betting during peak times, adding to your bankroll, using a more aggressive staking strategy
- If you want to be spending your time most effectively then you need to be betting with turnover in mind
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