Sports betting analyst & sceptic. Author of Squares & Sharps, Suckers & Sharks: Science, Psychology & Philosophy of Gambling. 18+. Please Gamble Responsibly.

Buxton, UK
Joined December 2012
Today is Monte Carlo Day! My new book Monte Carlo or Bust: Simple Simulations for Aspiring Sports Bettors goes on general release. Amazon have a 'Look Inside' with the first chapter. Available at many other outlets. amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASI…
23
21
5
200
Joseph Buchdahl retweeted
Your logged EV may be far more optimistic than reality. Across 61,979 value-bet alerts from May 2025 to October 2026, the share of EV reflected in Pinnacle's fair closing price rose with limits: Under $250: 9.2% EV → 2.8% CLV $2k–$5k: 3.2% EV → 2.5% CLV Treat logged EV as an upper bound. Read the full analysis by @12Xpert football-data.co.uk/blog/pin…
4
1
23
3,011
Better for complying with AML rules. It feels like we're going full circle and heading back the to the old days of minimum trebles. With respect to bet365, I feel something big is coming. All recent cost cutting measures support the stories about US IPO or sale.
Hearing uproar about bet365 limits across all sports. Some sports are apparently down to just 25% of their previous liability limits. I guess the new business model football customers staking £100 a week on accas with an average return of just 60p for every £1 staked. That’s £40 a week in expected net losses per customer. Get a few million of those and you’ve got yourself a very profitable business model. Seems big stakers are no longer wanted, winners or losers. Too much regulation, safer gambling checks and scrutiny. Wouldn't surprise me if the black market gets even bigger as a result.
2
2
20
8,491
Weekend extra leagues data added. football-data.co.uk/all_new_…
9
1,203
Weekend main leagues data added. football-data.co.uk/download…
8
1,210
And the difference between sharps and squares is far smaller than intuition would have you believe. Hundreds more like this in my book Monte Carlo Or Bust: Simple Simulations for Aspiring Sports Bettors.
Even the hottest winning streaks must be viewed in the context of variance. The same goes for the coldest losing streaks.
2
8
81
6,279
Joseph Buchdahl retweeted
LLM agents picked the World Cup winners. The market still came out ahead. Across all 104 matches, four agents chose the same favourite 92% of the time. None beat the de-vigged market on Brier score: 0.4705 at best, against 0.4688 for the market. Flat $100 bets on the market favourite returned $1,041, more than any agent. The takeaway: confident AI predictions aren't the same as an edge. Read the paper: arxiv.org/abs/2607.17765 Would you trust an LLM over the odds?
5
2
1
12
2,559
Need a comprehensive odds feed? I'm now supporting OddsRelay: an API odds feed with over 140 bookmakers. Designed for matched betting players, tipsters, content sites, affiliates, comparison sites and other betting related enterprises. football-data.co.uk/oddsrela…
7
3
58
9,317
Pareto Principle on steroids. Similar percentage losing money as for regular bookmakers including Pinnacle. Be clear: this doesn’t meant 31% are winners. Nearly all profitable accounts are so because of luck only. Paradox of skill in a relative skills market in full effect.
Who wins on @Polymarket? A study of 2.4 million accounts and $67bn in volume found that 69% lost money. The top 1% of winners captured 76.5% of all gains. The top 0.1% placed 47% of their volume as makers, compared with 17% for the bottom 95%. Same lesson as Betfair: the market rewards those who supply liquidity. Read the paper and tell me what stands out: cepr.org/publications/dp2161…
2
4
32
4,469
Midweek extra leagues results data added. football-data.co.uk/all_new_…
3
1
7
2,154
Midweek main leagues data added. football-data.co.uk/download…
1
10
1,633
A new odds dropping tracker. Worth a look.
Fresh updates on OddScore 👀 🔔 Odds dropping? Our new alert notifies you based on your own thresholds. 📊 Refined 1X2 and match winner probabilities to better account for bookmaker margins on favourites and underdogs. Thanks @12Xpert ! 📰 Our news beta keeps improving: finding stories that could explain rising or falling odds. We’re testing it across all matches in the main football competitions! ⭐ Better-organised favourites. 💳 PayPal now available. 👉 oddscore.app #Betting #OddsMovement #Football
3
2
19
4,348
My suspicions confirmed with a far superior sample size. Closing line rocks relative to openers meaning sharp Pinny customers bring real and statistically significant information to the market.
Nice work by @scoremon_com and thanks @12Xpert for sharing. Here is my 50c: Real Pinnacle opening and closing lines from api.bettingiscool.com, every match since 2021 (1.67M events, 43 sports). Closing beats opening on Brier in every sport, t = −108 pooled. @scoremon_com null is a baseball artefact: MLB openers barely move (our MLB in their window: −0.001 ±0.001, same as theirs). Soccer alone: t = −82.
10
2
70
9,201