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For six years each, Olivier Jacques and Walid Tabarout have approached sports betting in a manner similar to how a discretionary equities trader operates. They read data. They build probability estimates. They compare their estimates to the price a market is offering. When the market offers a price better than their estimate suggests, they take a position according to defined risk rules. When the analytical case for the position fades, they close it.
Their focus is North American sports betting, and the analytical discipline they apply to it is the same one a discretionary equities trader might recognize. Roughly a year ago, Jacques and Tabarout began building a sports analytics community and educational project for recreational bettors who want to approach the activity the way they do. The community now has more than 300 participants and teaches a rules-based decision framework the founders call the Structured Edge System.
Two founders, two paths, one method
Tabarout is the more visible of the two on the operational side. He spent his early years as a professional bettor working full time at telecommunications company Bell while raising three children. Sports betting was, for most of his professional life, his second job run alongside a corporate career and family responsibilities. Jacques, meanwhile, has been a full-time professional bettor throughout the six years the pair have been working together, without the split attention of a second career or a family to raise.
Together, Olivier and Walid say they have six years each of experience analyzing North American sports markets across Canadian and American professional and college sports. Over that stretch they’ve reported booking more than $2 million in sports betting profits between them, with Jacques accounting for more than $1.4 million individually and Tabarout more than $800,000. The framework their community teaches attempts to adapt the analytical discipline that has kept them working across seasons, adjusted for the level of a recreational participant rather than a full-time professional.
“The people showing up in this market are being treated as consumers, and treated well by an industry that wants their spending,” Jacques said. “What they are not being treated as is students of the discipline they are participating in.”
The analogy to investment analysis
The analogy that Jacques and Tabarout use to explain what they teach is the discretionary equities trader. Both activities rest on probability estimation. Both size positions to a rule that scales with bankroll or portfolio. Both apply strict exit criteria when the analytical case for a position falls away. The main structural difference between the two, in their framing, is the market’s information cycle. Sports markets close in hours or days rather than quarters, and the analytical cycle compresses accordingly.
Jacques and Tabarout describe their educational curriculum as adjacent to sports betting, aiming to help bettors by replacing impulse with method. In their framing, applying method and structure to their decisions is running an activity different from a person following impulse, even though inherent financial risks remain.
The framework in three pieces
The Structured Edge System has three components. The first is edge identification, which involves spotting the gaps between a market’s implied probabilities and the bettor’s own estimates, which the founders consider the harder problem for a recreational bettor. The second is sizing, governed by the rule that no single wager exceeds 2.5% of the participant’s current bankroll and that the position size adjusts down as the bankroll declines. The third is exit, with rules that require the bettor to leave the market the moment the analytical case disappears.
“Most recreational bettors are acting too often, with sizing they haven’t thought through,” Tabarout said. “Teaching someone to sit still is a real skill.”
The American sports betting market has become substantial enough that the alternative Jacques and Tabarout are offering has a real addressable audience. Sports betting is now a mainstream leisure activity for millions of adults across the United States and Canada. Regulators have moved to restrict some forms of advertising, most notably state-level moves against athlete endorsements in sportsbook advertising and ongoing federal-level scrutiny of consumer-protection standards. What regulators cannot easily do is teach consumers to think about the product differently. That is the space Jacques and Tabarout are working in.
Discipline taught as process, not as promise
Jacques and Tabarout say they do not promise financial outcomes to participants. They maintain that such promises would be inconsistent with the analytical mindset the framework is designed to instill, and that any credible teaching in this area treats outcomes as consequences of process. The process is what they teach.
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“The measure of the community is whether a participant makes different decisions from before,” Jacques said. “That is the test we set for ourselves.”
Instruction is currently offered in French, with an English expansion planned across the coming months. Jacques and Tabarout have built the community as a pioneering project of its type in North America. Their aim is a durable recreational audience across Canada and the United States that treats sports betting as a discipline of analysis.
If you choose to gamble, please do so responsibly. Set limits on your spending, never chase losses and ensure that gambling does not interfere with your personal or professional life. If you feel that gambling is becoming a problem, seek help from organizations that provide support for gambling addiction. Remember, the odds are always in favor of the house.
The news and editorial staffs of the baiduhai had no role in this post’s preparation.