25,421 members, and the only betting community on Reddit where somebody will ask to see your backtest before they take your opinion seriously.
r/algobetting covers statistical modelling, programming and automated betting strategies. It has 25,421 members, it is active, and in our view it has the best signal to noise ratio of any betting community on Reddit.
It is also the hardest to walk into. There is no daily picks thread and nobody is going to tell you who to bet tonight.
What gets posted
Model builds. People sharing approaches to predicting outcomes, usually with the code or at least the method described. Elo variants, regression, gradient boosting, Bayesian approaches, Poisson models for soccer.
Data problems. Where to get historical odds, how to handle line movement, dealing with missing data and the general misery of scraping. Much more of the community’s time goes on this than on modelling itself, which is true of every data project ever attempted.
Backtesting mistakes. The recurring theme, and the most useful thing in the community. Somebody posts a model showing a healthy return and gets asked whether they used closing odds or opening odds, whether the sample includes the training period, and whether the bet sizes were achievable. Usually one of those answers kills it.
Closing line value. The community’s preferred measure of whether a model is any good, on the argument that beating the closing number consistently is a better signal than short-term profit, which is mostly noise.
Automation. Placing bets programmatically, and the practical reality that books do not want you to.
Why the quality is higher
Two structural reasons.
The first is that quantitative claims are checkable. If you say a system returns four percent, somebody can ask how many bets, over what period, priced at what. In a picks thread nobody can audit anything, so confident nonsense survives. Here it does not.
The second is the barrier to entry. Following most posts requires reading some Python and understanding basic statistics. That filters out the people who are only there to be told what to bet, which is most of the noise in every other betting community.
The cost is that the community is not welcoming to beginners in the way r/sportsbetting is. Asking a basic question will get you answered, but tersely.
The one thing worth taking from it if you never build a model
Closing line value. The idea that the price available just before an event starts is the most accurate estimate the market produces, and that if you consistently take a better number than that, you are doing something right regardless of whether this month went well.
The practical consequence is unglamorous and it is the same conclusion the arbitrage and positive expected value communities reach from different directions: you cannot beat the closing line at a single book, because sometimes that book has the best number and often it does not. Getting the better price requires somewhere to compare.
Books that post lines early are particularly relevant here, because an early number is one the market has not corrected yet. Our Bookmaker review documents opening lines appearing twelve to twenty-four hours ahead of most competitors during our testing, and our sportsbook rankings cover the rest.
Related communities
- r/EVbetting, 11,291 members, for the applied side without the code.
- r/arbitragebetting, 39,011 members, though note it bans discussion of external tools including bots, which limits how much automation talk happens there.
- r/sportsbettingsystems has 1,966 members and is largely inactive. Not a substitute.
Questions people ask
What is r/algobetting?
A Reddit community of 25,421 members covering statistical modelling, programming and automated betting strategies. It has no picks threads and expects quantitative claims to be backed by method, which gives it a much higher signal to noise ratio than general betting communities.
Do I need to code to use r/algobetting?
To follow most posts, yes, at least enough to read Python. Basic questions get answered, but the community is built around people building their own models rather than around explaining the fundamentals.
What is closing line value?
The difference between the price you took and the price available just before the event starts. The closing number is treated as the market’s most accurate estimate, so consistently beating it is regarded as better evidence of skill than short-term profit, which is mostly variance.
Can you bet automatically through a bot?
It is technically possible and most sportsbooks prohibit it in their terms. r/algobetting discusses the practicalities, while r/arbitragebetting bans promotion of external tools including bots outright. Automated placement is one of the fastest routes to having an account closed.
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