By the end of this lesson, you’ll be able to:
You’re now ready to place your first bet. But before you jump in, let’s frame your mindset. Sports betting is a long-term game. One single bet does not define your skill as a punter. Even professional bettors lose bets, sometimes for days or weeks in a row that’s normal.
🎯 Your goal is not to win every single bet. Your goal is to consistently place positive expected value (EV) bets, bets with a better chance of winning and a better payout when they do.
Over hundreds or thousands of bets, this is how you build profit. Because it’s difficult to visualize this on your first try, we’ll start with a simulation, then move on to placing real bets.
Earlier, you created a simple balanced book:
With a market limit of $10 per bet, Let’s assume you have a $500 bankroll.
We’ll simulate 2,000 bets on “Heads” using the 0.25 Kelly Criterion with the 🔗 OddsFantasy EV Simulator.
Input details:
✅ Click Simulate.
The simulator outputs:
Graph: Bankroll progression over time. A plot of bankroll vs number of bets Key stats:
With a negative expected value, the Kelly Criterion reduces your bet size to $0.
Your bankroll stays flat at $500, profit $0, ROI 0%.
💡 Lesson:
Don't place negative EV bets.
If you simulate without Kelly, you’ll see losses accumulate over time.
Now, recall this book 👇
In the Positive EV lesson, you learned that betting on Tails at 2.1 odds gives a positive EV.
if you run the same simulation with these new odds, it's likely you will see profit grow over time.
These simulations show two things
The EV Simulator is a powerful strategy tool. It helps you:
You may notice random noise in simulations. Advanced punters use metrics like the Z-score to smooth this noise. For now, just focus on:
✅ Placing positive EV bets
✅ Using proper stake sizing
💭 Realize it took all these steps to bet on a simple coin flip. You had to learn about events, markets, outcomes, probability, odds, vig, line movement, and expected value.
In real-world sports betting, tools like 🔗 OddsFantasy handle these calculations automatically.
All you need to do is choose the right bets.
Follow these steps 👇
👌 And that's basically all you need to do, open the OddsFantasy positive ev tool and place all the positive ev bets you like. They are positive ev so you do not have to go through all these calculations, the value has already been calculated for you.
To maximize opportunities:
Let’s summarize what you’ve learned:
Now that you’ve learned to place your first Positive EV bet, it’s time to explore a special type of bet called an Arbitrage Bet
Arbitrage (or “Sure Bet”) is the only type of bet that can theoretically guarantee a profit every time.
In the next lesson, you’ll learn: