Building Your First Betting Model

Creating a Simple Betting Model

A betting model estimates probabilities more accurately than the market, finding edges.

Step 1: Define Your Target

What are you predicting? Win/loss, point spread, total points?

Step 2: Gather Data

Historical game results, team stats, player data, situational factors.

Step 3: Feature Engineering

Create predictive features: recent form, home/away splits, rest days.

Step 4: Train and Validate

Use historical data to train, hold out recent data to test.

Step 5: Compare to Market

Only bet when your model disagrees significantly with market odds.