What is the true winning percentage of a proffesional
soccerpunter
Many people believe professional-level sports bettors win at
least 60% of their bets. It's understandable that people think
that, but it's just not true. The fact is, the difference
between the percentage of bets won by successful sports bettors
and the percentage of bets won by losers is relatively very
small.
Anyone can expect to win 50 percent. After all, the only thing
required is to flip a coin and pick a side. The bookmakers'
profit comes from the difference between what a bettor must risk
and what a bettor expects to win. Every time a player wins, the
bookmaker withholds slightly more than 9 percent of the winnings
($1 for every $11 risked). Consequently, a bettor winning only
half his bets will ultimately go broke.
Professional sports bettors, by comparison, rarely sustain a
long term winning percentage higher than 57 or 58 percent, and
it's often as low as 54 or 55 percent. People find that hard to
believe, and they understandably get even more skeptical when
told that, for a genuine professional-level sports bettor, a
long term winning expectation of 60% or more is actually too
high.
The measure of success of a sports handicapper is not his
percentage of winning bets, but the relative amount of profit he
made over any given period of time.