Stephen Green played Rugby League at a high level as a junior before working for corporate bookies and seeing how they price up games and how the best punters beat them.

He knows league inside and out, watching every game while taking notes and collecting player, team, referee and weather statistics to stay a step ahead of the market.

In season 2015 he made almost 11% Profit on Turnover from just over 160 bets.

On the podcast he explains the work he does to find value in the NRL betting market:

Punting Insights:

Why NRL offers great betting opportunities

A typical week for him analysing games, keeping notes and collecting stats

The process he goes through to find value bets each round

The best teams of 2016 as well as two he believes are highly over-rated

Today's Guest

Stephen Green

Dave Duffield: You must be pretty excited because it's not long now until the NRL season starts. So I wanted you to introduce yourself to the guys, just explain a bit about your background and your NRL prowess you might say. How did you get involved in NRL betting?

Stephen Green: I played rugby league growing up. I played other sports but rugby league was the one that I excelled at I suppose the most and enjoyed the most. I had a knee injury at nineteen so I quit and started looking for jobs when I was at university. One of them was a sports betting agency which leaped out at me because I like numbers and I like sports. I worked for Canbet which was an international sports bookmaker then I moved to an Australian based one. One of their biggest sports was rugby league and it really all took off from there. That was Sports Acumen going over probably thirteen years ago now, twelve years ago. Being pretty keen on it and serious about it for a while, I suppose that's where it all really started for me was working as a bookmaker at Sports Acumen.

Dave Duffield: That was more than a decade ago now. What did you learn on the other side of the fence? From the bookmaking side of things.

Stephen Green: The most important thing that I've taken away from it, one is I suppose the motivation that bookmakers can be beaten. I saw consistently punters make a living out of it and that was one lesson.

There's a common perception now the house always wins. Maybe on a roulette wheel if you're playing ... If you've got an edge, if you can develop an edge over the market, you can make a profit. I mean that was a motivation.

I suppose the way they set the markets, what I learned all the way back then was it was actually very unsophisticated. There wasn't really any science or maths or anything behind it. It was literally a bunch of blokes sitting around having a beer, talking about what they think the odds should be.

That seemed to lack a bit of rigour. Coming from the American experience, when I was at the other bookmaker, where things were done using pretty complex models. I thought well wait a minute, there's an angle here where you can really professionalise this industry.

That was one thing and also just that bookies aren't really, when they set a market, they're not even really trying to predict the outcome of the game sometimes. They're actually trying to predict the flow of money. A dream book for a bookmaker is take hundred thousand dollars on each side at $1.90 either way and just lock in a profit.

If they have that, they're not concerned if you're the one who realises that game should be a six point line. You take the value there. They don't care if you're sneaking past and winning as long as they're balancing their book. You might get cut off if you win too much or get chopped down in terms of your max bets which has happily, I suppose, happened to me in terms of success but also it's a bit of a pain in the arse to get around that and find value.

I suppose they were the things that I really took away from there. It's a beatable market and that the bookmakers when they put the lines out,