When you are betting on which team is going to win the NRL Premiership, your decision should not necessarily be made by backing the team you think is most likely to win the comp.
Right now some of you are saying ‘WHAT?!’
Rather, you should back the team or teams that represent the most value.
In this article I’ll explain the benefit of value and how to make more astute decisions with your money when betting on the outcome of the 2014 NRL Premiership.
WHAT IS ‘VALUE’?
Value is about rating a team with a numeric evaluation and comparing that to the actual odds on offer from bookmakers. The odds on offer for a particular team need to be higher that the price you evaluate them at.
HOW DO I GIVE A TEAM A NUMERIC RATING?
There are many different ways to go about ratings. In the horse racing world particularly there are many different ratings systems around, most that are invented by punters like you and me for their own private use.
Using the following simple steps, I will show you one of the more simple methods that can help you to learn and understand ratings and help you obtain a numeric value which represents what you believe to be the true odds of a team.
This simple method will get you started down the right track towards making profitable assessments and wagers.
1. EVALUATE EACH TEAM.
Let’s pretend Jim is doing ratings for the upcoming 2014 NRL season. He has a good idea in his head what he thinks of each team and how they are going to perform in the upcoming season.
So now we need Jim to give each team a number from 0 to 10 with ‘10’ representing the highest possible chance of winning the premiership, and ‘0’ representing no chance at all.
Here’s what Jim came up with:
Rabbitohs – 9
Storm – 9
Broncos – 8
Knights – 8
Sea Eagles – 7
Roosters – 7
Sharks – 7
Raiders – 7
Cowboys – 6
Bulldogs – 5
Warriors – 5
Panthers – 5
Tigers – 4
Dragons – 4
Eels – 4
Titans – 3
2. TURNING YOUR RATINGS INTO A PERCENTAGE
Now, to obtain each team’s numeric value we need Jim to add up the total of all his assessed ratings; 9+9+8+8+7+7+7+7+6+5+5+5+4+4+4+3 = 98
Now that Jim has the key number of ‘98’ as the total, he must take each team’s individual rating and divide it by ‘98’ to get a percentage for each team’s chances of winning the premiership.
Rabbitohs – 9/98 = 9.18%
Storm – 9/98 = 9.18%
Broncos – 8/98 = 8.16%
Knights – 8/98 = 8.16%
Sea Eagles – 7/98 = 7.14%
Roosters – 7/98 = 7.14%
Sharks – 7/98 = 7.14%
Raiders – 7/98 = 7.14%
Cowboys – 6/98 = 6.12%
Bulldogs – 5/98 = 5.10%
Warriors – 5/98 = 5.10%
Panthers – 5/98 = 5.10%
Tigers – 4/98 = 4.08%
Dragons – 4/98 = 4.08%
Eels – 4/98 = 4.08%
Titans – 3/98 = 3.06%
Now Jim has successfully rated each team’s chances of winning the premiership! All percentages have been rounded to the nearest decimal place and you’ll know you’ve done the sums correctly if the total of all the percentages adds up to 100%.
WHAT IF I GIVE A TEAM A ‘0’ RATING?
If you believe a team or teams have no chance of winning the premiership, simply leave them off the list! If Jim was of the belief that the Tigers, Dragons, Eels and Titans didn’t stand a chance, his list would now look like this.
Rabbitohs – 9/83 = 10.84%
Storm – 9/83 = 10.84%
Broncos – 8/83 = 9.64%
Knights – 8/83 = 9.64%
Sea Eagles – 7/83 = 8.43%
Roosters – 7/83 = 8.43%
Sharks – 7/83 = 8.43%
Raiders – 7/83 = 8.43%
Cowboys – 6/83 = 7.23%
Bulldogs – 5/83 = 6.02%
Warriors – 5/83 = 6.02%
Panthers – 5/83 = 6.02%
3. TURNING EACH TEAM’S PERCENTAGE INTO A NUMERIC VALUE TO FRAME YOUR OWN MARKET.
This part is simple. Take the reciprocal of team’s percentage, and all of a sudden, you have framed your very own NRL betting market!
We used the current Sportingbet NRL Premiership odds to compare to Jim’s market, with the value bets/overlays highlighted in green.
| Rabbitohs – 1/9.18% = $11 | Current Sportingbet Odds – $7.50 |
| Storm – 1/9.18% = $11 | Current Sportingbet Odds – $9.00 |
| Broncos – 1/8.16% = $12 | Current Sportingbet Odds – $13 |
| Knights – 1/8.16% = $12 | Current Sportingbet Odds – $16 |
| Sea Eagles – 1/7.14% = $14 | Current Sportingbet Odds – $8.50 |
| Roosters – 1/7.14% = $14 | Current Sportingbet Odds – $4.75 |
| Sharks – 1/7.14% = $14 | Current Sportingbet Odds – $15 |
| Raiders – 1/7.14% = $14 | Current Sportingbet Odds – $41 |
| Cowboys – 1/6.12% = $16 | Current Sportingbet Odds – $13 |
| Bulldogs – 1/5.1% = $20 | Current Sportingbet Odds – $11 |
| Warriors – 1/5.1% = $20 | Current Sportingbet Odds – $13 |
| Panthers – 1/5.1% = $20 | Current Sportingbet Odds – $21 |
| Tigers – 1/4.08% = $25 | Current Sportingbet Odds – $51 |
| Dragons – 1/4.08% = $25 | Current Sportingbet Odds – $26 |
| Eels – 1/4.08% = $25 | Current Sportingbet Odds – $67 |
| Titans – 1/3.06% = $33 | Current Sportingbet Odds – $34 |
Now using the Dutch Betting Calculator Jim can back all 9 of his overlays at odds of $2.63
(For more on Dutch Betting see article What is Dutch Betting?)
DO I HAVE TO BACK ALL 9 OVERLAYS?
No. Remember that this is just one of many methods used to obtain ratings and the idea of showing punters this is that it’s simply a stepping stone to developing more advanced ratings if you wish. I know that some people would look at Jim’s market and choose to leave out the Broncos, Sharks, Panthers, Dragons and Titans simply because their rated price is within a certain percentage of the actual price. In this case 10%.
