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You don't need to beat the bookies, you need to beat the odds. The bookies win either way. All they need to do is make sure bets on each side net out, minus their take.

If you have a reliable way to beat the odds (ie. Inefficient betting markets that get the odds of success wrong) you can theoretically make money - but its a similar scenario to daytrading, where you need to do extremely well because you have to overcome the negative drag from the booky take too.