MR BRAMHED

My story


Who am I? Middle aged male who took a master in engineering physics with focus on mathematical statistics as well as a bachelor in business administration with focus on investment.


Got my first job in the insurance industry as an Actuary (for you who don’t know: it’s a mathematician working in insurance). So far I’ve spent 20 years in the same industry, and mainly held different types of analysis roles. I still have a very interesting job and it’s now hard to see myself changing that path.


My first strategy was based on the long-shot bias (which is the phenomena of the favourite being undervalued by the market). Started out with manually going through all the soccer markets in the morning before going to work, and placing my bets on the favourites. Quite fast understood that the amount of time I had to spend in the mornings were to much, so I looked into the possibility of automatizing the process.

Around 2010 I created my first automatic tool, it was a spreadsheet in Excel that used macros and screen scraping technique to retrieve markets and place bets on Betfair. It was not 100% automatic but it significant reduced the amount of time I had spend. Looking back, this was a key driver to continue betting because now I suddenly had more time to actually go through data and evaluate my strategy. Maybe not that surprising, but my strategy was not profitable, I had no edge in the market.


Since 2010 I have been working on my spare time to improve everything related to technical betting:


  • Data –I have built a massive DW in PostgreSQL which contains almost all soccer matches on Betfair since 2013, both pregame and inplay data.
  • Models– I now create my strategies/models in R and Python based on all my data, using the most suitable math models. I create my own team and league KPIs which are used as input in my models. I determine my own true odds for all soccer matches both pregame and inplay.
  • Reporting– Fully automatic reports generated which makes it easy for me to continuously evaluate performance.
  • Bot– I now have a 100% automatic setup which i developed in .NET. My bot communicates directly with Betfair API. It is following all the soccer matches offered on Betfair and always compare my true odds with the odds being available at Betfair, and if I can get a better odds I always buy.


During the years I have made hundreds of mistakes, but I have learned from them all! So the million dollar question: How good am I today?


I have found an edge, and it is about 4-5 %yield of turned money (at 2% commission on Betfair). My models generate approximately 20.000 bets a year, around 11.000 of them are shared on my subscription service.


In 2024 I decided to open up a subscription service which includes bets from the models that are suitable for other to follow. Meaning they should be able to get matched both due to liquidity and due to speed. The trigger for starting the service is that Betfair changed commission level from 2% to 5% for Swedish users in late 2023. That change shifted my edge from 4-5% to 2-3% yield of turned money. Models are still good and have a descent edge, but the lower edge means an higher volatility and I prefer to shift some of my volatile betting towards stable subscription fees.


Follow my lead and it will definitely help you improve your betting!