Using a Case-Based Reasoning Approach for Trading in Sports Betting Markets

The sports betting market has emerged as one of the most lucrative markets in recent years. Trading in sports betting markets entails predicting odd movements in order to bet on an outcome, whilst also betting on the opposite outcome, at different odds in order to make a profit, regardless of the final result. These markets are mainly composed by humans, which take decisions according to their past experience in these markets. However, human rational reasoning is limited when taking quick decisions, being influenced by emotional factors and offering limited calibration capabilities for estimating probabilities. In this paper, we show how artificial techniques could be applied to this field and demonstrate that they can outperform even the bevahior of high-experienced humans. To achieve this goal, we propose a case-based reasoning model for trading in sports betting markets, which is integrated in an agent to provide it with the capabilities to take trading decisions based on future odd predictions. In order to test the performance of the system, we compare trading decisions taken by the agent with trading decisions taken by human traders when they compete in real sports betting markets.This work has been partially supported by CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010 under grant CSD2007-00022, and project TIN2011-27652-C03-01. Juan M. Alberola has received a grant from Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion de Espana (AP2007-00289).Alberola Oltra, JM.; García Fornes, AM. (2013). Using a Case-Based Reasoning Approach for Trading in Sports Betting Markets. Applied Intelligence. 38(3):465-477. doi:10.1007/s10489-012-0381-9S46547738