Find Value, Not Winners
The initial blunder is that MMA bettors in losing their stakes only select the fighting party they expect to win.
By only betting on the expected winners, you will lose more than you win. Like we said before, mixed martial arts is very unpredictable and for this reason some major underdogs can cause upsets that lead to big wins for bettors.
Each bet should aim at selecting the high-value pick rather than just picking the winner. Now that you know what implied probability is, you should be able to identify value by searching for scenarios where your perspective of the fight differs from that of a bookmaker.
Let’s take the potential UFC Featherweight Championship bout between Max Holloway and Edson Barboza for instance.
- Max Holloway to win: 1.67
- Edson Barboza to win: 2.50
For this fight, the odds suggest that Max Holloway has a 60% probability of winning while Edson Barboza has a 40% probability of winning.
Would you place your bet on Max Holloway if you believe that he will win? Not at all.
What is your true thinking on the fight? A scale of 1-100, how certain are you that Max Holloway will win? Do you think Holloway has a 70% or 55% chance of winning? Just consider it that way and choose who to bet on.
If you set up a great deal of confidence for Max Holloway’s victory (this is 70% chance), then betting on Holloway to win would be the proper thing because computed probability exceeds the implied probability that is reflected by odds.
Conversely, you might consider that Holloway is not a complete dead cert to win and that the bout is a close one (55% chance of winning), so you should back Edson Barboza, because you think he has a better chance of victory than the market thinks (45%) or 40% depending on how you look at it.
Backing against the fighter you think will win is sometimes a correct betting decision, and this example demonstrates that.