Elo Ratings in Betting Strategy – How to Use Them

If you are looking for a way to beat the bookies, you can consider using rating models. Rating Models are a numerical assessment of a player or team’s strength relative to the league where they play. There are many handicapping models used by players and bookies alike in order to determine the likely outcome of a game or match. In this article, we will discuss Elo Ratings and how to use them to predict football results in order to improve your betting strategy.

What are Elo Ratings?

Elo ratings are a numerical way to rank the skill level of various competitors based on their performance as well as the relative skill level of their opponents. The idea is that beating a tougher opponent should give you more points than beating an easier opponent. The better the opponent, the more points you will score. The rating system can be applied to any s🍸port, though it may need some modifications.

Hungarian American chess player and physics professor originally developed Elo ratings as a chess rating system in 1960. By 1970, the World Chess Federation, FIDE formally adopted the Elo Rating System to rank Chess🥀 players.

Chess Elo Ratings

The World Chess Federation FIDE maintains an official list of rankings at , which it uses to determine the top seeds in a tournamenไt. Currently, the leader is Magnus Carlsen, with an Elo Rating of 2881 points. He is also the record holder of the highest Elo rating ever, at 2889.2. Legendary chess player Bobby Fischer got up to 2789.7 in 1972, while Kasparov had the second-highest rating ever at 2856.7 in 2000.

Sites like also offer updated chess ratings. As the title of the site suggests, a rating over 2700 puts you in the top tier of this competitive strategy sport (which you can also bet on through sites like William Hill).

Football Elo Ratings

While Elo ratings were originally developed for chess, they can easily be modified for football or any other sport. In fact, there are two main websites that ꦉoffer Elo ratings for clubs and national football teams respectively.

World Football Elo Ratings

has an Elo Rating system for international football that ranks countries based on the system proposed by Dr Arpad Elo. Their Elo rating system takes into account the kind of ma𒊎tch, the home team advantage, and the goal difference in the final match re💯sult.

In 2018, based on Elo ratings, as many pundits had criticized their former calculation methods as not dynamic enough. To this date, 🥂they still use the system to determine seeding in international tournaments such as the World Cup🅠.

Clubelo: Club Football Elo Ranking

While determining top seeds is less relevant in club football, since fixtures are often laid out from the beginning of the season, they can still be a handy tool in predicting match results. offers updated Elo ranking𝄹s for all European football leagues, including Premier League and League 2. Their team Elo rating takes both national and international football m๊atches into account.

Elo Rating Equation

The Elo Rating Equation for Football takes into account home field advantage and goal difference, as well as win/loss/draw to create a rankings system. A commonly used equation is:

Rn = Ro + K × (W – We)

Calculating Win Expectancy

As you can see, in order to calculate the Elo Rating, you first need to calculate the Win expectancy. To do this, use the following formula:

We = 1 / (10(-dr/400) + 1)

dr is the difference in ratings plus 100 points for a home team.

The following chart shows some examples of what a win expectancy looks like for difference in ratings from 0▨🌱 to 800 points.

Adjusting for goal difference

K is a number you need to adjust 🍌goal difference in th🧸e game.

Example

Let us look at a hypothetical example. Belgium is the current Elo leader (April 2020), with 2084 po🔯ints.England is currently at 🉐12th place, with 1956 points.

If the two were to meet forꦗ a friendly, in Belgium, we can calculate their respective win expectancies before the match, as well as how the match result would affect their respective Elo ratings.

First, let’s calculate their win expectancy, using the formula We = 1 / (10(-dr/400) + 1):

The🍷 ratings🍃 difference is 2084 – 1956 +100= 228.

Let us assume that Belgium beats England again with 2 – 0, just like in the . How would this affect each team’s Elo Ranking?

Belgium

Using the formula Rn = Ro + K × (W – We), we reach the following result:

Rn = 2084 + (20 x 1.5) (1 – 0.798) = 2084 + 6.06 = 2090

England

Using the formula Rn = Ro + K × (W – We), we reach the following result:

Rn = 1956 + (20 x 1.5) (0 –0.21) = 1956–6.3 = 1950

Converting Elo Ratings into Odds

While Elo ratings rely on Win expectancy for predicting how well a team will perform, Win Expectancy does not always equal the probability of winning. Football is a sport with three possible outcomes: win, loss and draw. Inꦆ order to get more or less accu💟rate odds based on Elo ratings, you will need to be a bit creative.

Here is a possible system for converting Elo ratings into Odds:

1. Calculate the difference in points between 🃏the two teams.

2. Give the home team a 7% advantage.

3. The highest-ranked team has a base chance of 35% to win. For every 10 Elo points they are highe🏅r, add 1%.

4. Odds of the strongest team winning are 1 𝓰divided by ch🧸ance of winning.

5. To calculate the odds of a draw, assume 30% as a base chance. Ignore the first 100 Elo points difference, but for every 20 points above 100, take away💝 1%.

6. Odds of the draw winning are 1 di🃏vided by that chan🌜ce.

7. For the odds of the weaker team, simp🌳ly subtract the chance of strong🥃 team win and the chance of a draw from one.

8. Odds o🧸f the weaker team winning are 1 divided by that chance.

Using Elo for Football Betting

We have said this in many other articles, but we will say it here again: the most important thing any punter needs to do is search for high-value bets. When you want to place a bet on the outcome of any football match, you sho🃏uld first consider whether the bet has any value.

Elo ratings can be a valuable tool for predicting what a match result will be, based on each team’s 🤡past performances. To use Elo for football betting, follow thes🌃e steps:

1. Look at the difference in Elo rating.

2. Calculate the win expectancy with the formula We= 1 / (10(-dr/400) + 1)

(dr is the difference in ratings plus 10𒅌0 po🦹ints)

1. Create your own probabilities and odds with the method above.

2. Compare your probabilities and odds to the bookie’s odds and implied probability.

3. If you see the value, you can consider betting.

Keep in mind that points 1, 2 and 3 are all indicators of a team’s relative strength.

Making your own Elo Ratings

While many sports have official rankings of their own, not all use Elo ratings to rank their players or teams. In the case of football or chess, there are readily available Elo ratings. On the other hand, many smaller sports have no official or unofficial ratings at all.

If you want to bet on a smaller sport, you could consider creating your own Elo ratings. To do this, you will first need a starting point.

In individual sports, such as boxing, it is best to start your rating system at least a few years back to have as accurate data as possible. In team sports, this can be relevant too; however, the makeup of teams usually changes a lot between seasons, making it harder 𝐆to rely on data from pไrevious seasons.

Criticizing Elo Ratings

Elo Ratings were primarily designed as a rating system in order to create seeds for a tournament. Of course, they are not entirely accurate in predicting who will win a specific match or tourname𝓰nt.

Belgium held the highest Elo ranking from 5 November 2015 to 7 April 2016. They also regained the spot on 20 September 2018 and still hold it (as of April 2020). Hꦫowever, the squad did not do as well as expected in the 2016 European Championships under Marc Wilmots, losing to Wales in the quarterfinals. In 2018, they did better under former Everton Manager Roberto Martinez, beating England for third place.

Even though Belgium was surpassed by both France and Croatia for♉ the World Cup final, France still holds only third place, behind Brazil (at the current time of writing, April 2020). So it is easy to see how the system has flaws and that there is room for improvement.

Of course, the Elo formula allows you to create different modifications and weightings. You can easily play around with the K factor to adjust for all kinds of variables.

Other Well-Known Rating Models

 Besides Elo, there a🐽re several o💟ther popular rating models. We will discuss the most prominent ones.

Glicko Rating

The were invented by Mark Glickman as an improvement on the Elo system. They were designed with games of skill in mind, such as chess and Go. They are currently in use on various online game servers and are popular for video game rankings. These include Pokémon Showdown, Free Internet Ches🐻s Server, Online Go Server, Count💯er-Strike: Global Offensive, Team Fortress 2, Dota Underlords, Guild Wars 2, and many more.

It introduced the concept of RD, Ratings Deviation, which indicated how accurateꦐ the score is. For example, a player with 1500 points and an RD of 50 has a real strength between 140🦹0 and 1600. It also takes recency and time not played into account.

TrueSkill

TrueSkill was developed by Microsoft to match players in Xbox Live games. It takes team games into account and also accounts for how accurate the score is. It uses Bayesian statistics to make predictions.

Custom Ratings

There can be thousands of rating models; some have more official status for seeding tournaments, while others are custom creations by individual handicappers. Mathematical models from video games are some of the most accurate, 𓂃since they have been tested on millions of players and billions of games.

ThePuntersPage Final Say

Elo Ratings can be a handy tool for finding value. Of course, they do not offer guarantees. If you want to take betting on football or chess seriously, you can find a wealth of Elo ratings that are ready to use. For smaller sports or leagues, you can consider creating your own El🐷o ratings, which may be a handy way to beat the bookies⛎.