The Ultimate Guide To The Best Soccer Betting Strategies (For Serious Bettors)

Many people who engage in soccer betting like to ask ‘how to win a bet every time’. Unfortunately, that is the wrong question. The correct question is ‘how do I become profitable at soccer betting in the long term’.

In this definitive guide for serious bettors, we’re going to dive into the science behind the best betting systems and strategies in the sport of soccer (or football, if you like).

Let’s answer this question:

What is the best strategy to make consistent profits from soccer betting in 2019?

Before we begin, we need to first understand why it is so difficult for most people to win profits from their bets (especially over the long run). The answer: House Advantage.

In ALL forms of gambling – whether it’s sports betting or roulette at the casino – the people who set the odds do it in a way that virtually guarantees them a profit. Well, if this mathematical edge (called the House Advantage) assures the bookmakers a profit, then the average bettor can be assured a loss!

In other words, the system is rigged! (Donald Trump is right) Well, at least that is the case for the AVERAGE bettor. Serious and smart bettors have a chance to become successful, profitable punters if they choose their battles wisely.

Hence this discussion on betting systems and strategies.

But, wait – who are YOU to write about this topic (i.e. discuss soccer betting)?

For newer readers, hello!

My name is J.K. Diego, and unlike 99.999% of people in the football betting industry who talk about this topic behind anonymity, I openly show my face in pictures, videos, and on social media.

If you want, you can even watch a video interview I did with one of my clients (pretty inspirational story, I might add).

Speaking of clients (of which I have amassed a pretty big group since 2016), they have given me numerous accolades from “biggest genius on the web” to “absolute saint in our betting community” to “the realest tipster [they] have ever met”.

My blog also has the honor of being the most plagiarized soccer betting website in the history of the internet.

Alright, enough of the humble-bragging… let’s start talking about betting strategies.

Accumulator (also known as Multiple/Acca/Parlay)

Many of you, new and experienced bettors alike, enjoy betting on accumulators.

I can understand why accumulators seem like a pretty attractive option to bet on. It’s for the same reason why people bet on Low Probability, High Payout events like the national lottery. On the surface, you are risking a very small amount for a chance to win big.

Unfortunately as you know, most people don’t win the lottery.

But here’s the mathematical reason why you do NOT want to play the accumulator. As we discussed above, there is an imputed mathematical edge in every single bet you make. This small House Advantage guarantees the bookmakers a profit when averaged out over a large mass of bettors in the market who take different sides of a particular bet.

The big problem with accumulators is that your disadvantage is COMPOUNDED when you combine multiple bets. That’s the very reason you will notice your bookies advertising and encouraging folks to play accumulators. Because that’s where they expect you to lose the most money!

Favorites vs Underdogs

One of the most popular betting strategies is doing a single bet on either the Favorite or the Underdog.

Which type of bettor are you? Do you prefer betting on the favorites or the underdogs?

Here’s some news for you. There have been many research over the years that demonstrate this phenomenon called the “Favorite-Longshot Bias”.

In short, researchers and mathematicians have found that bettors lose MUCH MORE money betting on underdogs (such as selections with odds above 5.00) compared to betting on favorites (such as selections with odds under 1.66).

Many explanations for this Favourite-Longshot Bias have been offered – from human psychology to risk aversion (towards favorites) to our tendency to overestimate low probabilities.

You know what… I’m just going to call it the Mayweather-McGregor Cognitive Bias (hahaha).

There are many research papers illustrating this phenomenon (you can search online), but I will just focus on this one from the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance. Mind you, this is from a research sample size of 41,003 soccer matches.

To summarize: The researchers found that there is a tendency for gamblers to over-estimate the likelihood of underdogs winning and under-estimate favorites. As such, better-than-average returns can generally be obtained by betting on favorites.

Study and specialize in the obscure, lesser-known leagues

It is estimated that only between 2 to 5% of all soccer bettors in the world consistently make money. Why is it that most people lose and so few succeed?

I’ve always believed in this: To be capable of doing what other people can’t, you need to do what other people won’t.

Basically, if you follow what everyone else is doing, then you will just be like everyone else (who loses money to the bookmakers). What do you expect?

One of the best strategies you can employ is to focus on obscure and lesser-known leagues. Study and bet on those games that very few people would even think of betting on!

Let’s face it – most people want excitement so they like betting on the big games that add enjoyment to their weekend sports viewing. But if you’re a serious bettor, you are here to make money. Boring is good. Excitement is overrated.

Besides, making money is more exciting than watching Real Madrid take on Barcelona. As a professional soccer bettor who has been doing this for a living for many years, believe me on that.

Another point you may not have thought of is this: When you’re betting on the popular leagues such as the English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, or UEFA Champions League – you are literally competing with all the full-time soccer bettors AND the bookmakers who have TONS of data, statistics, and analysis at their fingertips. Expertise and resources that you probably don’t have access to. So do you really think you can beat them?

In short, it’s almost impossible to beat the market at the popular leagues simply because the markets tend to be very efficient when you have guys like the notorious Starlizard syndicate who have the most advanced computer modelling systems and can splash 1 million GBP (1.28 million USD) on a single game.

On the other hand, bookmakers tend to have less data about smaller, more obscure leagues and don’t spend as much time ensuring the odds are priced correctly. You can easily find value bets if you’re well-versed in some lesser-known football leagues.

True story: I once won a huge bet that involved a local Gibraltar team because of something one of my clients told me. Yes, I literally have clients from all over the world, even in a tiny nation like Gibraltar that only has a population of 34,000 people.

Using Poisson Distribution

If you haven’t heard of Poisson Distribution, it is basically a mathematical concept that uses historical data to calculate the most likely scoreline in any given soccer match.

You will have to calculate each side’s Attack and Defense Strength to arrive at your Poisson values.

To learn how to translate mean averages into a distribution of probabilities, this article from Pinnacle does a great job of explaining the process.

The huge disadvantage of using Poisson Distribution to predict your Correct Score bets is that it ignores all the other situational and contextual factors. You know, all that human stuff. After all, it’s just a rigid formula/model that a computer can perform by itself.

Betting on DRAWS (my personal favorite)

Remember I said: To be capable of doing what other people can’t, you need to do what other people won’t.

And guess what is something the average gambler doesn’t bother with whenever he thinks of 1X2 full time betting options?

BINGO!

In my almost ten years of betting experience, the most profitable soccer betting strategy BY FAR has definitely been betting on draws.

Even though around 30% of all soccer games end up in draws, bookmaker odds tend to consistently undervalue the chances of a tie. This is because the general betting population doesn’t like betting on boring outcomes. And we all know that a stalemate (especially 0-0 scorelines which actually occur more frequently than you think) is not something on Average Joe’s mind when he thinks about what to bet.

By the way – if you know which obscure leagues to look out for, the proportion of draws can be as high as 35 to 40%!

So there you have it, if you combine 2 of the markets’ biggest weak points, you can see a winning formula:

1) Focusing on outcomes that the average bettor has a dislike for (i.e. draws and low-scoring games).

2) Studying obscure leagues, especially those where teams have a preference for defensive styles of play and thus a history of producing draw results.

In fact, the bias against draws is so big that Average Joe rather over-estimate the chances of the underdog winning (remember the Favorite-Longshot Bias we discussed above) than entertain the thought of the possibility of a draw! Crazy, I know.

Okay, Diego, we know you like betting on draws but where’s the statistical evidence that this is the best method for being a profitable soccer bettor?

I hear you. Let’s look at some data (besides my anecdotal evidence of successfully making huge profits over the past 3 years, since you may say I am just one person, right?)

A 2009 report found that “odds offered on draws often represent better value for money”. The reason cited was that “bookmakers generally ignore the style of a team’s play, taking into account only the strength of their play.”

Furthermore, a separate study suggests that right now might just be the best time to bet on draws because draws are actually becoming more common today. A Columbia University professor compiled a bunch of football results dating back to the year 1888 (I’m sure nobody reading this had been born at the time, if you were please let me know). His set of data had almost 200,000 games and guess what were the key observations of the trends over the past 130 years?

A) The most common scoreline in soccer is actually 1-1 (happening 11.6% of the time).

B) The 0-0 scoreline happens way more than you think (happening 7.2% of the time).

C) Most importantly – from 1888 to 2018, there is a clear trend of MORE draws occurring over the years (from 12% in 1888 to 30% in 2018).

Bear in mind that this Columbia University study was focusing on the English leagues. You can easily find smaller leagues in South America, Asia, and Africa where the ratios of draws are much higher! Even within Europe, if you look at certain lower divisions of the Spanish, French, and Italian leagues – the draw ratios are as high as 35-40% as well.

In fact, I have a personal long-term success rate of 40-43% at predicting draws (possibly the highest of any draw expert you can find).

So are there any disadvantages of using draws as a betting strategy?

I can only think of 1 con out of the many pros. That is – since I started promoting draws as an effective, profitable betting strategy in 2016, I’ve noticed that the average odds for draws has decreased slightly.

In the past when I first employed this betting method, it was quite rare to see draw odds below 3.00. Unfortunately, these days it’s pretty common to find games with draw odds that are less than 3 (usually around 2.80 to 2.95, depending on which bookmakers you’re using). This could signal that a growing portion of the betting markets are catching on with this “loophole”.

Fortunately for me and my clients, we are able to maintain our tremendous profits by combining our draw strategy with an intelligent staking system – known as our Increasing Stake Betting System, which will be described below.

Betting on DRAWS with an Increasing Stake Betting System (the BEST strategy of all-time for the BIGGEST profits)

The greatest thing about this betting system is this: the sky is the limit when it comes to the amount of profits we can win.

By strategically increasing our stake after a loss, and returning to our lowest stake once we win the draw, we ensure that it is almost impossible NOT to profit in the long run. For various reasons and via thorough experimentation, we use a multiplier of 1.5X when increasing our stake. It has worked tremendously well for us.

In fact, we have been so successful that plenty of copycats (pretending to be me) are popping up on the internet every week. I’ve given up on issuing take-down notices.

From the experience of my team (which has members literally all over the world today), you can roughly make $2,000 in monthly net profits with a base stake of $20 on the lower end, or $10,000 in monthly net profits with a base stake of $100 on the higher end.

To learn this particular betting system – that I’ve perfected over the past 2-3 years – in greater detail, check out this blog article over here.

This concludes our long discussion on the best soccer betting strategies. Remember, what we’re looking for is the most profitable system, NOT the most popular system. So you’d want to bet on whatever gives you the most profits instead of whatever the masses think is a good idea to do. Of course, that’s assuming you’re a serious bettor.

If you’ve enjoyed my content, be sure to join our Telegram Channel at this link – we update every month with our latest draw betting results. As a bonus, we occasionally send out free draw picks on Telegram (which you should bet with the Increasing Stake Betting System we just discussed).

Live Free Or Die,
J.K. Diego (JKDGO.COM)