pgebet: Applying opportunity costs in sports betting

What is opportunity cost?
Imagine a high school student evaluating the benefits of going to college. What study costs does this potential future college student need to consider? Initial tuition is an obvious expense, but it’s not the only factor this student must consider.

In addition to the expenses of studying, he/she should also consider the salary and work experience that he/she might have earned if he/she had gone to work instead of studying during this period. This is the opportunity cost of higher education for students, and it should be weighed against the possible benefits of a college degree.

In investing, this is an important concept. If someone puts his money into a savings account that pays 1% interest, he is theoretically a “profitable” investor because he has more money at the end of each year than he did at the beginning.

However, if inflation is 3%, then investors actually lose purchasing power. Since the increase in commodity prices is greater than the return on investment (ROI) of savers, they might as well buy the goods they want to buy at the beginning of the year rather than saving money.

Applying opportunity cost in sports betting
How does this concept impact sports bettors? In order to explore this, pgebet imagined four bettors in the article, all of whom are profitable bettors. To simplify the process, we make several assumptions (that will not occur in practice):

Bettors initially have a limited capital (€100)
They can only make one betting decision (the risk is not spread)
They must bet the full amount on each bet (we recommend this for actual betting

Betting method
They can only make 100 bets per year
Average ROI per bet: Bettor A: 0.1%, Bettor B: 1%, Bettor C: 2%, Bettor D: 4%.