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Categories Betting 101 News

How a Casual Sports Bettor Became a Sharp in ONLY 10 DAYS — Make $500 FAST

Updated March 20, 2025 | 8:04 am CDT by Sam Smith
Best NBA Betting Sites: Portfolio EV Has Best NBA Prop Bets Today

Let me tell you a story about Dan, a friend of OddsShopper expert Dave “Loughy” Loughran who was a sports betting beginner, and how he turned $1,000 into over $1,500 in just 10 days using Portfolio EV betting strategy.

Dan is the definition of a casual sports bettor. Before this experiment, his only wagers in 2025 were on the Super Bowl. He’s a regular guy who enjoys sports but had never thought about betting strategically. That all changed when Loughy handed him $1,000 with one simple rule: Every bet must come directly from Portfolio EV’s tools.

Ten days later, Dan was up over $500 without needing to analyze stats, track line movement or sweat out bad beats. He was simply following the data-driven, market-based approach Portfolio EV provides, proving that even a complete beginner can find success with the right strategy.

How a Sports Betting Beginner Became a Sharp in 10 DAYS

Ditch the guesswork. Start making smarter, sharper +EV bets with a FREE TRIAL of Portfolio EV. Visit the Portfolio Betting page now!

The Market-Based +EV Betting Strategy

Loughy sat down with Dan over a few cold ones and broke down the concept behind Portfolio EV. The core of the strategy is simple:

  • Sign up with as many sportsbooks as possible – More books mean more opportunities to capitalize on mispriced lines.
  • Place as many bets as possible – Volume smooths out variance and maximizes expected profits.
  • Turn on push notifications – This ensures he never misses a +EV bet.
  • Use a bet tracker – Tracking results helps manage bankroll and measure long-term performance.

Instead of spending hours researching a handful of bets, Dan was placing 100-plus bets per day, all with positive expected value (+EV). The key was identifying inefficiencies in the betting market and exploiting them before the lines corrected.

Dan’s +EV results

Knowing the True Odds Before Betting

One of the biggest advantages of Portfolio EV is that it calculates the true odds of a bet, allowing users to instantly determine whether a wager is profitable. For example, one of Dan’s early bets was available at -110 on BetMGM, but Portfolio EV’s data showed the true odds should have been -126. This meant the bet had a higher probability of winning than the sportsbook was accounting for, making it a +EV bet.

By following these types of bets consistently, Dan wasn’t relying on gut feel or biased analysis — he was simply betting smarter than the books.

Betting Smarter, Not Harder

To streamline the process and maximize efficiency, Loughy introduced Dan to the Mass Bet Tool — a game-changer for anyone looking to scale their EV betting. With one tap, Dan could place 20 bets at once across multiple sportsbooks, ensuring he was getting enough volume to overcome variance.

While he did miss some volume early on (including a sick day where he only placed five bets), he quickly ramped up his daily bets to diversify his portfolio further. Volume is what beats variance, and Dan embraced that lesson fast.

The Power of Compounding Returns

Dan wasn’t just winning bets — he was reinvesting his bankroll nightly, allowing for compounding returns. With an overall 6% ROI, the growth wasn’t just on his starting $1,000; it was on every dollar wagered. That’s why long-term profitability in EV betting is so much higher than people think.

Even after a brutal downswing on Day 4, Dan stuck to the plan, trusted the math and kept betting. And just 10 days in, he was already up over $500, turning a casual betting approach into a disciplined, profitable strategy.

The Results So Far — and What’s Next

Dan still has three weeks to go, but the early results are undeniable. A casual bettor with no prior experience in +EV betting has already turned $1,000 into $1,500-plus by simply following Portfolio EV’s tools.

The takeaway? You don’t need to be a sharp to make money betting sports—you just need to bet like one. Portfolio EV makes that possible, even for complete beginners.

Want to start your own journey? Try Portfolio EV FREE today and see the results for yourself!

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Sam Smith

Author

Sam Smith

Sam Smith is a writer and editor with Stokastic and OddsShopper. He has been immersed in the world of professional sports data since 2015 while also writing extensively on the NFL for a multitude of blogs and websites. With OddsShopper, Sam looks to blend his sports and editorial expertise with OddsShopper's data to bring you the best betting information possible.

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