Is crypto making any difference in sports betting?

When was the first time you started betting? I started when I was 15 years old. I remember visiting a local betting shop near my place almost every day. Though it was illegal, who cared about these back in 1993! Even being underage, you could smoke, drink, and gamble.

I am talking about a time without an internet connection, online betting and indeed bitcoin. You could only bet on the market of the 3-way results. The only choices to make for sports were ice hockey, football and tennis. I don’t recall seeing cycling, volleyball or other sports in the selection. We used to consider these exotic in case we found these sports. Another prominent issue of those days was accumulator tickets.

Now, let’s address the elephant in the room. Was I winning? With a heavy heart, I must admit that the answer is No. The reason was beyond me at that immature age but with time I realized what went wrong. I came to realize that I was winning only about 60% of the time and never went beyond 2.00. out of 20 accumulator bets, I may have won only one and lost the rest!

I used to exhaust my monthly betting budget within 2 weeks. But what exactly was the problem? My football predictions were nothing more but pure guessing and that is considered gambling with only one possible outcome, which is loss. Therefore before we dive into crypto and betting, let me give you some insight.

Betting odds - let’s explain

Imagine a bookmaker gives you probability instead of the odds. You won’t find it much practical, would you? If the fair odds is 2.00, the probability is 50%.

Here’s the formula:

1 / decimal odds x 100% = probability

For 2.00, 1 / 2 = 0.5 x 100%= 50%.

For an accumulator bet, you have to take the stake and multiply it by other odds on the betting slip. If you have 3 matches with odds of 4.5, 1.4, and 2.3, and your stake is £10, here are the chances of winning:

4.5 x 1.4 x 2.3 x 10 = £144.9

The general formula for this is:

Odds(1) x Odds(2) x Odds(3) x … Odds(number) x Stake = Potential win

Explaining the psychology of Betting

To understand the psychology of betting, you have to first cut your emotions. The book discusses all betting strategies here, so let me focus on betting psychology.

Suppose you have placed 20 bets and lost 18 of them. The strategy will tell you to bet another £100 on the next fixtures.

And this is when you should stop. Don’t bother about strategy, go with your psychology and just stop. The psychology of betting recommends you to avoid the following situations. If you come across any of these, simply quit the game.

A specific team has to win

Mathematically speaking, team B has a high chance to win. But you are placing your bet on team A because they should win. Well, the approach behind your logic that team A should win is understandable but the result will not make you happy.

Let me share a personal experience. While betting in the early days, I found that Leeds United should win the next match so as to avoid any relegation. It also made sense to me that the opponents have no motivation to win.

To my dismay, I found that the results were just the opposite. The teams with zero motivation won over the ones who wanted to last in the league.

Don’t count on the probability to care about what you need

It would be fair for a team to win

You found football predictions suggesting that team C has a high chance to win but you want to bet on team B. That’s because you believe it's fair for team B to win.

You can see the statistics that team B scored only 2 points. Despite that, you think that team C should let them win as it’s the hometown of team B. After all these calculations, you place your bet on team B.

If you are with me so far, I want you to stop. The moment you start thinking about what’s fair, it’s time for you to stop.

Probability is not bothered about what will be fair

Betting of a supporting football fan

Fans are biased, let’s admit that. They often place their bets on their favourite team as a statement of extending their support.

Let me tell you, betting or probability doesn’t work that way. Even if you are a Manchester United fan and find that Barcelona has a fair chance to win, it’s high time for you to place your bets on Barcelona.

Probability is not bothered about your love for a specific team.

So, what does the probability really care about?

As you could find in the earlier examples, probability has no concern for love, fairness or requirement. You have to rely on probability. Here’s an easy experiment to conduct if you are not ready to believe my words:

Toss a coin. Toss it 10 times and bet on heads landing more than 70% of the time. Now, repeat the same exercise 50 times and check if you have won or lost.

Similarly, if you find a bookmaker is providing odds 2.3 and your mathematical prediction points out 1.9, you can find 21.1% value in it and you must go for it. If your predictions are right, there’s no other option than gaining 21.1%.

What about crypto?

Going through the torture of betting basics, we are now about to land at the impact of crypto in sports betting. I remember those days, when back then around the year 2010 a friend of mine (who happened to be a hardcore developer) told me about bitcoin and suggested to buy 100 of them for around 100 EUR. I thought he was crazy.

I considered bitcoin being a currency for crooks and criminals, since the only use for bitcoin back then was gambling, betting, buying a gun on a dark web or paying anonymously for having somebody killed.

I could never imagine the madness around bitcoin and crypto that will be happening 10 years later. But what about sports betting? Together with rowdie.co.uk we looked at the real impact of crypto on the betting market and here are the results.

Crypto gambling and betting has seen a big rise around 2015, when local governments were limiting the gambling and betting activities. For the addicts there was only one way out. Out of the country. But why? The Internet is actually the world wide web… Sure, but how can you bet when your local authorities limited or blocked the payments to the bookmakers. There you go! Limited payments were basically the only real reason why crypto became inevitable.

Skipping forward to the year 2020

Most of the European authorities have finally made up their mind and lifted their gambling and betting restriction by issuing local licences. Players no longer have to search for dodgy websites to bet or play and enjoying a safe environment is a big advantage. Crypto was predicted to be the next step in betting but the opposite has happened. We indeed see a big madness around crypto, but it is not gambling or betting relevant.

We however see some new trend of over-regulation happening right now, which might lead to a new wave of crypto betting, but we do not really expect that. What do you think?