Do not index
Do not index
The majority of dropping odds alerts you receive on POD will likely not lead to a value bet but that’s totally normal.
If you are new to the dropping odds strategy you can expect to place one bet for every five alerts. If you’re more experienced and have knowledge of ‘prime times’ and ‘fruitful markets’ then you will be able to improve significantly on that but even then you’ll still have to sift through alerts that don’t lead to a bet. You may even have times when you go on a streak of 10-15 ‘dud’ alerts but that is par for the course. Remember we get paid for placing good bets but don’t lose money for allowing bad bets to pass us by. Remain disciplined and don’t be disheartened by dry spells. It's also worth mentioning that your alert-to-bet ratio is going to vary massively on what country you are in and what bookmakers you have access to so don't think you're doing something wrong if someone has a better ratio than you because it may well just be because they have different market conditions.
With that being said, in this article, I’m going to look at the two main reasons why an alert might not lead to a bet and how we can improve our alert-to-bet ratio by using some simple tricks and ideas.
Reason 1: The Soft Bookmakers Have Already Dropped Their Odds
Just because the softs are slow to adjust their odds some of the time doesn’t mean they are slow to adjust their odds all of the time. The most common reason you won’t be able to get a bet off is because the odds have already shifted in accordance with Pinnacle meaning there simply isn’t any value in the odds.
Speed up Your Process
You can’t control how long it takes for the soft to adjust but you can control, to a large extent, how long it takes you to react to the alert. Don’t waste time in getting to the market and placing the bet.
Tips to speed up your betting process:
- Have your softs open in a separate tab and the bookmaker’s search bar ready
- Have your alerts unmuted and volume turned up
- Practice reading the team names, market and NVP from your alert quickly so you don’t have to return to POD before placing the bet
- Used a fixed stake strategy so you know exactly how much to bet on each bet meaning you don’t have to waste time doing complex calculations
Work in Markets that are Slow to Adjust
Once you have been betting with the strategy for a while you will start to notice patterns. Perhaps a particular competition is throwing up consistent value or perhaps a certain bookmaker is particularly slow across the board… your response to this should be ‘great now I know where to fish’.
Set up your filters to target these rich hunting grounds and you will see your alert to bet ratio improve. Given the fact that each country has different bookmakers which offer different markets and have differing price sensitivity for different sports and competitions I cannot point you to those bookmakers/markets that will be best for you but I will say that in the normal course of betting you will stumble across your fair share of them so keep at it and stay vigilant.
Reason 2: Your Softs Don’t Have the Market
Not every bookmaker has every sport, league, market type or derivative on offer. You will frequently find that an alert won’t yield a bet because you simply have no softs to place a bet on.
Add markets to your coverage
You can reduce the occurrence of this by opening more accounts at soft bookmakers and by betting on softs that have good market breadth and depth like Bet365.
Check Derivative/Correlated Markets
If the odds drop for the over 3.25 market on Pinnacle and your softs don’t cover that market but instead they have the over 3.0 market don’t despair because the odds will have dropped for the over 3.0 market as well given they are heavily correlated.
You can check all of the available markets for an alerted event directly from the alerts tab using the ‘QuickLook’ feature which is found by clicking on the blue magnifying glass in the SideKick.
Exclude Competitions
Another way to correct for this is to filter out the competitions that your bookmakers do not cover by using the competition filter’s exclude function. Here’s what I would input in order to filter out alerts for the Nigeria - NPFL competition:
Why Value Betting isn’t Baseball
The good news is that value betting isn’t baseball, there aren’t any strikes. You don’t pay a penalty for allowing a bad bet to pass you by so if an alert pops up and there’s no value to be had then no worries just wait for the next one.
On the other hand you do pay a penalty for placing a bet at negative expected value so do not get tempted to place a bad bet during a period of slowness . As I said earlier you will inevitably hit a dry spell where you receive 10-15 alerts in a row that don’t lead to a bet. Discipline is the most important trait when it comes to value betting so be strict with yourself and don’t shoot yourself in the foot during these slow periods by either quitting or by placing negative EV bets.
Summary
- Dropping odds alerts often don't lead to value bets
- Newcomers might find only one bet for every five alerts
- Experienced bettors can improve but still face many false alarms
- Reasons for alerts failing:
- Soft bookmakers may have already adjusted odds, eliminating value
- Soft bookmakers might lack the market for the alerted event
- Tips to improve success:
- React quickly to alerts
- Target markets slow to adjust
- Open accounts with more soft bookmakers
- Use QuickLook feature to explore available markets
- Exclude competitions your bookmakers don't cover
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