How many bets do you really need before your sports betting ROI means anything?

[JJa]

I see people on Twitter and forums flexing “+35% ROI this season” after like 40 bets and it just feels fake. For those of you who actually track your sports betting properly, how many bets do you think you need before your ROI number actually means something and is not just variance or a hot streak?
Talking about normal odds like -110 to 3.00 range, not 100 leg lottery parlays.
Is 100 bets enough? 500? 1 000+?
Curious what serious bettors here use as a benchmark for “this is a real ROI, not just noise”.

 

[SharpEddie47]

This is one of those topics where most people are completely wrong and the reason they stay in the “I am a genius for 3 weeks and a disaster for 3 months” cycle.

Short answer: no, 50 or 100 bets is nowhere near enough to treat your ROI as meaningful in sports betting. You can absolutely run +25% ROI over 100 bets by pure luck, in either direction. I have had +30% runs over 100 bets inside seasons where I finished at +4%.

If you are betting something like -110 lines, your edge (if you have one) is probably in the +2% to +7% range long term. That is tiny compared to the short term variance. Over 50 or 100 bets, variance completely dominates. Over 500 bets you start to see a clearer picture. Over 1 000+ bets you finally have something that looks like a real signal instead of noise.

People hate hearing this because “1 000 bets tracked” usually means a full season or more of work. They would rather declare victory after 37 picks.

Personally, I do not take any ROI number very seriously until you have at least 500 graded bets on a particular market type with consistent staking. Even then, I treat it as a range, not a precise number. My football model has about +4% ROI over thousands of bets. Inside that, I have had seasons where I finished at 0% and seasons at +8%. That is variance, not the edge suddenly disappearing and reappearing.

If you want your ROI to mean anything, you need three things working together: consistent unit sizing, honest tracking, and a big enough sample. Review what you are doing around the 500 bet mark, but do not fall in love with the number until you are at four figures and can compare season to season.

Trust the process, not your gut.

 

[ParlayPrincess_88]

Okay so this is kinda depressing but probably true I started tracking properly this year and I am at like almost hundred bets in my sheet and it looks really good right now. Reading this you are basically saying “cute streak, calm down”.

Question for you serious guys then:

If I only bet like 10 to 20 games a week and I am mostly doing player props and same game parlays, it will take me ages to get to 500 or 1 000. Am I just never allowed to feel like “this is working”?

Honest question, not being sarcastic. How do you stay motivated to track if the answer is always “needs more bets”?

 

[FadeThePublic]

Here is what nobody on gambling Twitter wants to say out loud:

Those “+35% ROI season” screenshots after 42 bets are marketing, not stats.

If your edge is real, it does not disappear just because you add more volume. It looks less sexy, that is all. The guys who only show you 50 bet samples are deliberately not showing you the 400 bets where they go sideways or negative.

I agree with Eddie on rough ranges. Under 100 bets your ROI number is basically entertainment. Between 100 and 500 you are starting to see some personality, but variance is still driving the car. Above 1 000, if you have been betting the same markets in a consistent way, your ROI is finally saying something about your actual skill.

I do a couple of things to stay sane with this:

• I split my record by sport and market instead of one big blob
• I track closing line value so I can see if the market agrees with me even when short term results suck
• I look at ROI in big chunks, like per 500 bets, not per weekend

So yeah, you can feel good about a hot run, that is human. Just do not build an identity around “I am a 25 percent ROI capper” because the next 300 bets are going to humble you.

RIP to the 12 pick parlay guys who think three weeks of green means they cracked the code.

 

[CoachTony_Bets]

I think there is a middle ground here between “nothing matters until 1 000 bets” and “declare yourself a sharp after a hot month”.

From a coaching perspective, we always talk about sample size too, just in a different way. One game does not define a season. One drive does not define a quarterback. You need reps before you trust the numbers.

What has worked for me is using different “layers”:

• First 100 bets on a new market or sport are basically a test period. I am learning, tweaking, and mostly trying not to bet too big. The ROI is almost irrelevant, I care more about whether the process feels solid.
• Between 100 and 300 bets I start asking questions like “am I consistently getting the number I want” and “are the closing odds moving in my favour often enough”.
• Somewhere between 300 and 500 bets I decide if this is something I want to keep in the playbook long term. If I am break even but feel like I am getting better numbers than the market, I might keep going. If I am down and also getting bad numbers, I cut it.

By the time you hit 1 000 bets, your ROI is a lot more meaningful. But you do not have to wait that long to make decisions. You can still use smaller samples to ask simpler questions: “is my staking consistent”, “am I beating the close sometimes”, “am I tilting after bad beats”.

Think of ROI like watching film. One drive tells you nothing. One game tells you a little. A whole season tells you who you really are.

 

[DublinDegen]

lads if we are being honest here half of ye are talking about 500 bets and 1 000 bets and all that and im out here deciding if im a genius or an eejit after like 3 matches on a saturday

ill have a weekend where i go 8 and 3 and my brain is like “ok degen you have finally cracked it you are now a professional punter” and then next weekend i go 2 and 9 and lose everything back and more and i am googling gamblers anonymous at 2 in the morning

i started a spreadsheet about ten times and every time i get to like 40 or 50 bets and it looks ugly and i stop filling it in because i dont want to look at it anymore which probably tells you everything you need to know

reading this thread i know ye are right about sample size but the problem is most of us do not have the patience we want the validation straight away like “look i am up 500 quid this month so clearly i have an edge” and then we blow it all live betting the late game anyway

anyway im gonna try again and actually track 500 bets this time no promises though lads...

 

[GlasgowGrinder]

My data over 15 years:

• Football correct score and unders
• Singles only
• Fixed stakes

Observations on sample size:

1. First 200 to 300 bets told me almost nothing. ROI swung from plus 20 percent to minus 15 percent multiple times.
2. Around 800 to 1 000 bets the numbers settled into a stable range. Since then, my yearly ROI has oscillated between roughly plus 2 percent and plus 8 percent.
3. Across 2 800 plus recorded bets my long term ROI is 4.8 percent. That is the only number I trust.

Recommendation:

• Do not draw conclusions from less than 300 bets.
• Treat 300 to 1 000 as evaluation phase.
• Treat 1 000 plus as evidence.

Anything less than that is just noise with a story attached.

 

[ThePuntingProf]

One must forgive my tardiness as I have only just returned from a lecture I occasionally give to former colleagues regarding the application of the law of large numbers to practical wagering scenarios and this thread is quite serendipitous because the central question posed here is essentially a misunderstanding of how convergence operates in probabilistic systems and if I may be permitted to explain without paragraph breaks one must recognise that expected value only reveals itself asymptotically meaning that short sequences of wagers regardless of how disciplined or intelligent the punter believes himself to be cannot possibly reflect true skill since variance at small sample sizes is overwhelming and will distort any ROI figure positively or negatively based almost entirely on random fluctuation so when individuals cite an ROI after seventy or one hundred bets it is numerically meaningless whereas once one surpasses several hundred wagers one begins to see the beginnings of convergence and after one thousand or more the numbers become much more robust though still not perfect therefore whenever I analyse my own punting particularly on Asian handicaps and BTTS markets I do not even examine interim ROI until I have accumulated at least five hundred wagers in a given season and even then I contextualise it within multi year performance because Margaret and I learned decades ago that premature conclusions are the enemy of disciplined punting and lead inevitably to overconfidence and staking errors so in summary ROI is only meaningful when one allows the mathematics to work over time and that requires patience far beyond what most punters possess.

 

[SharpEddie47]

Prof’s post is a perfect example of why the question matters more than people think.
You cannot “hack” variance with confidence. You need volume.

And to answer Princess’s earlier question:
You are allowed to feel good during a hot run.
You’re just not allowed to mistake it for proof of long-term skill.

A lot of bettors burn out because they think tracking is supposed to give them emotional comfort. It isn’t. Tracking gives you truth, and the truth sometimes tells you:

• you were lucky
• your process needs work
• you don’t have an edge (yet)

That’s normal.

For anyone wondering whether they should “wait for 1 000 bets to matter,” the practical way to survive is:

• Track properly
• Judge yourself on process early
• Judge yourself on results later

It is the same in every skill-based gambling field.
Poker, DFS, sports betting… variance demands respect.

 

[TaffyTipster]

Right butt let me jump in here because half of you sound like professors and the other half sound like you’re trying to reinvent maths on a Saturday night.

Look mun…
If you’ve only got 50 bets in your sheet, your ROI means sod all.
If you’ve got 500 bets, you’re starting to see who you are.
If you’ve got 1 000 plus, fair play, you’re a serious punter.

But here’s the working man’s version yeah?

If your bankroll is growing over time, you’re doing something right.
If it’s shrinking, you’re doing something wrong.
You don’t need a PhD for that.

But do not be that guy who wins 80 quid in one weekend and suddenly thinks he’s beating the bookies for life. Seen it down the pub a hundred times. Next week they’re borrowing a fiver to get the bus home.

Track your bets.
Stick to your stakes.
Stop chasing on live bets after three pints.
Simple tidy stuff.

 

[DublinDegen]

Right butt let me jump in here because half of you sound like professors and the other half sound like you’re trying to reinvent maths on a Saturday night.

Look mun…
If you’ve only got 50 bets in your sheet, your ROI means sod all.
If you’ve got 500 bets, you’re starting to see who you are.
If you’ve got 1 000 plus, fair play, you’re a serious punter.

But here’s the working man’s version yeah?

If your bankroll is growing over time, you’re doing something right.
If it’s shrinking, you’re doing something wrong.
You don’t need a PhD for that.

But do not be that guy who wins 80 quid in one weekend and suddenly thinks he’s beating the bookies for life. Seen it down the pub a hundred times. Next week they’re borrowing a fiver to get the bus home.

Track your bets.
Stick to your stakes.
Stop chasing on live bets after three pints.
Simple tidy stuff.

Prof’s post is a perfect example of why the question matters more than people think.
You cannot “hack” variance with confidence. You need volume.

And to answer Princess’s earlier question:
You are allowed to feel good during a hot run.
You’re just not allowed to mistake it for proof of long-term skill.

A lot of bettors burn out because they think tracking is supposed to give them emotional comfort. It isn’t. Tracking gives you truth, and the truth sometimes tells you:

• you were lucky
• your process needs work
• you don’t have an edge (yet)

That’s normal.

For anyone wondering whether they should “wait for 1 000 bets to matter,” the practical way to survive is:

• Track properly
• Judge yourself on process early
• Judge yourself on results later

It is the same in every skill-based gambling field.
Poker, DFS, sports betting… variance demands respect.

One must forgive my tardiness as I have only just returned from a lecture I occasionally give to former colleagues regarding the application of the law of large numbers to practical wagering scenarios and this thread is quite serendipitous because the central question posed here is essentially a misunderstanding of how convergence operates in probabilistic systems and if I may be permitted to explain without paragraph breaks one must recognise that expected value only reveals itself asymptotically meaning that short sequences of wagers regardless of how disciplined or intelligent the punter believes himself to be cannot possibly reflect true skill since variance at small sample sizes is overwhelming and will distort any ROI figure positively or negatively based almost entirely on random fluctuation so when individuals cite an ROI after seventy or one hundred bets it is numerically meaningless whereas once one surpasses several hundred wagers one begins to see the beginnings of convergence and after one thousand or more the numbers become much more robust though still not perfect therefore whenever I analyse my own punting particularly on Asian handicaps and BTTS markets I do not even examine interim ROI until I have accumulated at least five hundred wagers in a given season and even then I contextualise it within multi year performance because Margaret and I learned decades ago that premature conclusions are the enemy of disciplined punting and lead inevitably to overconfidence and staking errors so in summary ROI is only meaningful when one allows the mathematics to work over time and that requires patience far beyond what most punters possess.

lads im crying laughing reading the Prof’s post because he wrote about five hundred words without pressing enter once and it actually broke my brain but also hes right which hurts even more…

also Taffy saying “if the bankroll goes up youre good, if it goes down youre bad” is the kind of analysis my drunk brain uses at 1am when im convincing myself to deposit one last time after losing the late game

honestly though im starting to see the point ye are all making

ive had weekends where i go 12 and 4 and think im the second coming of Warren Buffett and then i have midweek slates where i go 1 and 9 on live bets because i chase every stupid thing moving and now the ROI graph looks like the stock market crash

if i ever reach 500 tracked bets itll be a miracle lads… but ill try… maybe…

 

[FadeThePublic]

Prof’s post is a perfect example of why the question matters more than people think.
You cannot “hack” variance with confidence. You need volume.

And to answer Princess’s earlier question:
You are allowed to feel good during a hot run.
You’re just not allowed to mistake it for proof of long-term skill.

A lot of bettors burn out because they think tracking is supposed to give them emotional comfort. It isn’t. Tracking gives you truth, and the truth sometimes tells you:

• you were lucky
• your process needs work
• you don’t have an edge (yet)

That’s normal.

For anyone wondering whether they should “wait for 1 000 bets to matter,” the practical way to survive is:

• Track properly
• Judge yourself on process early
• Judge yourself on results later

It is the same in every skill-based gambling field.
Poker, DFS, sports betting… variance demands respect.

My data over 15 years:

• Football correct score and unders
• Singles only
• Fixed stakes

Observations on sample size:

1. First 200 to 300 bets told me almost nothing. ROI swung from plus 20 percent to minus 15 percent multiple times.
2. Around 800 to 1 000 bets the numbers settled into a stable range. Since then, my yearly ROI has oscillated between roughly plus 2 percent and plus 8 percent.
3. Across 2 800 plus recorded bets my long term ROI is 4.8 percent. That is the only number I trust.

Recommendation:

• Do not draw conclusions from less than 300 bets.
• Treat 300 to 1 000 as evaluation phase.
• Treat 1 000 plus as evidence.

Anything less than that is just noise with a story attached.

I agree with most of what’s been said here, but I’ll push back on one thing:

You can have informative ROI way earlier if you also track closing line value.

ROI alone needs 500+ bets.
CLV needs far fewer to show whether the market respects your picks.

If your bets consistently beat the close over your first 100 to 200 wagers, that is a strong signal even if your ROI is trash early on.
If you never beat the close over 300 bets, your “+18 percent ROI” is fake and will collapse.

So yeah, ROI is long term.
CLV is early warning.

People who ignore CLV are basically driving with their eyes closed and only looking at the road once they crash.

 

[CoachTony_Bets]

Fade has a fair point here.
In coaching we call this “early indicators”.

If a team gets good shots but misses them, you don’t bench everyone. The process is right.
If a team hits lucky contested shots, you don’t pretend that’s sustainable, you fix the process.

CLV is the sports betting equivalent of shot quality.

You do not need to wait for 1 000 bets to evaluate your process.
You only need a huge sample to evaluate your edge.

See the difference.

 

[GlasgowGrinder]

Short clarification:

CLV is useful. CLV is not infallible.

In lower leagues or niche markets:

• Liquidity is low
• Lines move late
• Moves can be deceptive

In those environments, ROI over large samples still matters more.

CLV means nothing without discipline.
Tracking means nothing without discipline.
Profit means nothing without discipline.

That is the constant.

 

[ThePuntingProf]

@FadeThePublic while I appreciate your enthusiasm for closing line value I must take issue with your implication that CLV can reliably serve as an early indicator of genuine predictive skill because the fundamental assumption underlying that assertion is that the market itself is perfectly efficient which it plainly is not particularly in lower liquidity football markets where price movements are often driven by sentiment rather than information and therefore beating the closing line in such environments can simply indicate that one has anticipated public behaviour rather than identified true value and furthermore CLV itself only becomes statistically meaningful over substantial samples since individual line movements can be random noisy or influenced by factors entirely unrelated to the quality of one's selection consequently I maintain that while CLV is a helpful secondary measure it cannot replace long term ROI across large sample sizes as the primary indicator of whether one possesses an authentic edge and one must be cautious about overstating its reliability simply because it produces tidy graphs in spreadsheets.

 

[FadeThePublic]

@FadeThePublic while I appreciate your enthusiasm for closing line value I must take issue with your implication that CLV can reliably serve as an early indicator of genuine predictive skill because the fundamental assumption underlying that assertion is that the market itself is perfectly efficient which it plainly is not particularly in lower liquidity football markets where price movements are often driven by sentiment rather than information and therefore beating the closing line in such environments can simply indicate that one has anticipated public behaviour rather than identified true value and furthermore CLV itself only becomes statistically meaningful over substantial samples since individual line movements can be random noisy or influenced by factors entirely unrelated to the quality of one's selection consequently I maintain that while CLV is a helpful secondary measure it cannot replace long term ROI across large sample sizes as the primary indicator of whether one possesses an authentic edge and one must be cautious about overstating its reliability simply because it produces tidy graphs in spreadsheets.

Prof, with respect, you’re arguing against a position I didn’t take.

Nobody said CLV replaces ROI.
I said CLV shows signal earlier than ROI, which is objectively true unless you’re betting niche markets with five quid of liquidity.

If someone can’t beat the close over 200 bets in mainstream football markets, they’re not beating anything long term. That’s not theory, that’s reality. ROI is too slow to reveal that. A bettor could run hot for 500 bets and still have zero real edge. CLV exposes that earlier.

You’re absolutely right that CLV in third-division Norway at 8am has the predictive power of a horoscope. But that’s not what most punters here are betting. Premier League, Champions League, top European leagues – these markets are shaped by sharp money and professionals. If you beat the close there, it means something. If you don’t, it also means something.

ROI is the long-term report card.
CLV is the early smoke alarm.
Both are useful. Acting like one invalidates the other is just academic stubbornness.

 

[ThePuntingProf]

@FadeThePublic your metaphor about smoke alarms is colourful but misleading because it implies that CLV possesses a level of diagnostic accuracy which simply is not supported by empirical evidence given that even in high liquidity markets line movements can result from injury news model updates or institutional positions entirely unrelated to the informational content of the average punter's selection and therefore beating the closing line over a small sample may merely indicate that one has fortuitously aligned with external factors rather than demonstrated a repeatable edge furthermore I dispute the suggestion that ROI is "too slow" because slowness is a virtue when measuring skill since only large samples can wash out noise and reveal true expectation and punters who rely prematurely on CLV often fall into confirmation bias believing they are skilled because the line moved half a tick in their favour when in reality they would have lost across a full season Margaret used to say that punters cling to the first metric that flatters them and CLV unfortunately serves that psychological function for many.

 

[FadeThePublic]

Prof, this is why bettors love you and fear you at the same time – you take a simple point and turn it into a 3-page dissertation.

Let me simplify:

• If you beat CLV consistently, you probably have an edge.
• If you never beat CLV, you definitely don’t.
• ROI takes forever to confirm either direction.

That’s it. Nothing mystical.

You’re absolutely right that some people cling to CLV as ego food. But even then it’s still better than clinging to a +40 percent ROI after 61 bets and calling yourself a sharp.

CLV isn’t perfect.
ROI isn’t fast.
Serious bettors use both.

I’ll put it this way:

CLV tells you if your process might work.
ROI tells you if your process actually worked.

Both matter. Pretending one is irrelevant just because people misuse it doesn’t help anyone get better.