Sports Betting -- EV Confidence

[RocketManJames]

This may be a really dumb question, but here it goes...

In poker, after so many hands, you are X% confident that your true win rate is within Y% of the estimated win rate. Eventually, when the number of hands gets large, you basically are more confident of your win rate/EV.

How does this translate in the case of a sportsbettor who bets 1 unit at a time... From poker, even 10,000 hands isn't enough to be all that confident. How does a winning sports bettor ever get to the long run? Or does a typical winning sports bettor really make tens of thousands of bets over the course of a few years?

-RMJ

[gaming_mouse]

Since most sports bets (one team vs another) are approximately an even proposition, you empirical winrate will converge to your expected winrate much more quickly than it will in poker. Even after a few handred bets, you should have a pretty good idea if you have a significant edge.


gm