Welcome to the third article in our series: “Betting Experts Answer The Industries Biggest Questions.”

Over a small number of bets, luck can play a huge role in your betting success. Which is why it’s important to not just base your success on whether a bet won or lost, but to look further at other metrics. So, for question three, we asked the experts:

Q3: How do you determine whether your betting results were caused by skill or luck?

Check out Part 1 of our answers here, where we get the opinions of former odds compiler - Matthew Trenhaile, professional sports bettor - Spanky, host of the Business of Betting Podcast, betting blog - Day 25 and sports trader - Alex Ong.

Check out Part 3 of our answers here, where we get the opinions of betting analyst - Joseph Buchdahl, sports analyst - Dan Weston, football manager profiler - Mike Holden, Smart Sports Trader - Ryan Bruno and betting blog - The Church of Betting.

MARK O’HAIRE - FOOTBALL BETTING ANALYST

Depending on what sport or event you’re betting on, luck can play a huge part in the outcome of your selection. That’s why your ability to assess outcome probabilities better than the bookmaker is key – in essence, you’re searching for ‘value’ and that will be the decisive factor in determining skill.

However, this process needs to be repeated more than just once and should be corroborated against the closing line. Pinnacle’s closing prices provide one of the best measures of ‘true’ result probability - the amount you consistently beat it by will provide a very good indication as to whether you’re sufficiently skilled to discount luck from the equation.

Follow @MarkOHaire on Twitter here.

PETE LING - FOUNDER OF SMART BETTING CLUB

A simple way to determine this is by ensuring you have a large enough data sample to explore. It's easy to make a lucky profit over 3 months or 300 bets, less so over 3 years and 3000 bets. Don't be fooled by 'experts' touting performance over a limited time or sample size.

Ultimately, the best approach is by running a p-value test on the results in question. We do this at SBC by putting a tipster's results through a Monte Carlo simulator, whereby the p-value output score gives us a clear judgement on the chance of a profitable performance level being obtained by luck or skill. It is obtained from an algorithm that uses three variables: overall strike rate, ROI and the average odds of all selections.

Follow @SBCinfo on Twitter & check out the Smart Betting Club website here.

TOBY ALDOUS - OWNER OF PUNTER2PRO

There's five questions you can ask yourself in order to separate luck from skill.

1. Do I have a large enough sample size? Anyone can get lucky from a few bets. But generating a profit over a large set of bets, over a long time period, can only be achieved with skill. The more results you have, the more clarity and accuracy you have in verifying profitability. Collect as many data points as possible.

2. How does my strategy perform on level stakes? It's surprisingly easy to make a betting strategy look profitable by raising/lowering the stakes under certain conditions. But if disproportionately sized bets are the only reason you're in the green (or red), then you need to nullify their impact to be sure of your performance. Assume all stakes in your sample are equally sized. If your results are positive and steady, then that suggests skill rather than luck.

3. Does my strategy have a 'reason' behind it? It's important to have some idea why your strategy does, or doesn't, work. If you've identified a pattern that appears to produce great results, then try to work out how and why that's happened.Find out precisely where the edge (if any) comes from.This will enable you to separate good fortune from skill going forward.

4. Is variance impacting my results? In sport, the seemingly impossible outcome occasionally happens. So if, for example, your data set includes a rare 500/1 winner then that's going to somewhat distort your figures. For a 'typical' picture of performance, eliminate extremes from your analysis. I recommend capping the odds (e.g. <= 20.00), so that good fortune plays less of a part. Without against-the-odds wins, only skill could possibly prevail in the long-run.

5. Am I beating the closing line (start price)? It's well known among professional bettors that consistently beating the closing line (or "Start Price") yields positive results. Monitor the start prices at sharp bookmakers and betting exchanges. If you're able to back at significantly better odds, then that's a solid confirmation that your results weren't just luck.

Follow @Punter2Pro on Twitter & check out the Punter2Pro website here.

TRUE POKER JOE - AUTHOR OF ‘SHARPER: A GUIDE TO MODERN SPORTS BETTING’

The three answers are bet results, change in price from bet to close, and projected performance (by the handicapping method you used) vs actual performance (by that same metric).

In the long run, only bet results matter. But that's a very long run, and has the limitation that the sample base (the market, the league, the sport itself) may be changing, and thus the long run can become unattainable. Nonetheless, it’s what we’re here for.

CLV (closing line value, or value as measured by the difference between your bet price and the sharp market's consensus at close) is a smoother feedback and thus functions with a smaller sample size. And if you are using the consensus sharp market to find value in the first place, then this is the only measure you’ll use. Yet it’s still only a statistical way station as you wait for your bet results sample to get larger.

If you are handicapping, however, then the metric you use to do that is the metric you should be looking at. For me, for example, in NFL betting, one of the metrics I use is hand-crafted yards-per-play (handcrafted because published YPPL stats are barbaric). If the teams I back based on YPPL outperform their opponents by the amount I projected, I’ll judge my handicapping to have been successful regardless of how the ball bounced or the bet settled.

Follow @TruePokerJoe on Twitter & check out his book ‘Sharper: A Guide to Modern Sports Betting’.

JONAS GJELSTAD - PROFESSIONAL SPORTS BETTOR & TRADEMATE SPORTS CO-FOUNDER

One can only judge if their bets are based on skill if they are beating Pinnacle’s closing line and have placed a high volume of bets. You can also cross-check your closing edge with a variance calculator.

Follow @JonasGjel on Twitter & check out our latest videos with Jonas on our YouTube channel here.

Check out Part 1 of our answers here, where we get the opinions of former odds compiler - Matthew Trenhaile, professional sports bettor - Spanky, host of the Business of Betting Podcast, betting blog - Day 25 and sports trader - Alex Ong.

Check out Part 3 of our answers here, where we get the opinions of betting analyst - Joseph Buchdahl, sports analyst - Dan Weston, football manager profiler - Mike Holden, Smart Sports Trader - Ryan Bruno and betting blog - The Church of Betting.

Love getting the opinions from experts in the betting industry? Then subscribe to the Trademate Sports Podcast, where interview the most important people in the sports betting industry.

Here are the other questions we got our industry experts to answer:

• Q1: Top 3 tips for betting beginners? Part 1 & Part 2.
• Q2: How do you define “finding value” in betting markets? Part 1 & Part 2.
• Q4: Kelly criterion or flat staking: Which stake sizing strategy do you consider to be the best and why? Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3.
• Q5: What is the best method to use to make money from sports betting? Part 1 & Part 2.
• Q6: How difficult is it to beat the sports betting markets? How efficient are the odds? Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3.
• Q7: Best way to manage risk in sports betting? Part 1 & Part 2.
• Q8: Is there a best sport to bet on? If so, what is it? Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3.
• Q9: Assuming you have an edge, at what point can you start accurately evaluating your results and say that variance has played out? Part 1 & Part 2.
• Q10: What is the one thing you would like to see change in the gambling industry? Part 1 & Part 2.
• Q11: Do you think emotions play a part in people's sports betting results? If so, how should they overcome this? Part 1 & Part 2.
• Q12: What are the top 3 mistakes people make when betting? Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3.