It is not a single episode or a single win that determines the story of the Norwegian Jonas Gjelstad, his success does not come from a miraculous night, from an impossible parlay, or from a brilliant intuition on a world final. It is born much earlier. In an apartment on the other side of the world, far from Norway, where a boy just over eighteen decides to quit the traditional path to pursue something different.
Jonas Gjelstad and poker
Like many of his generation, Gjelstad enters the game when online Texas Hold’em is still an open frontier. It is not the romantic green table of casinos, but the cold, digital one, where you fight against numbers and patterns even before people. He moves to Thailand along with other Norwegian grinders and begins to build his bankroll starting from the lowest levels: Sit&Go, heads-up, PLO. We are in the golden age of world poker.
Poker becomes a sort of school for him in which mathematics guides his choices.
Not only because it allows him to earn, but it forces him to think in probabilistic terms. It teaches him that the result of a single session counts for nothing and that **the true battlefield is the long term**. That is where Gjelstad’s first real capital is born: not the economic one, but the mental and knowledge-based one, the approach to the game.
He reaches such levels that he teaches for CardRunners (at the time it was one of the most famous Full Tilt affiliated schools in the world) at only twenty years old. He achieves important live results. He does what many dream of: living off poker.
Yet, at a certain point, he understands that it is not the most beatable game for him.
The first bankroll: poker as a gym
Gjelstad was born in Norway but his true baptism takes place far from home.
At 18 he leaves his studies and moves to Thailand to play poker with a group of Norwegian professionals.
The world of poker does not only represent the source of his first perceived income: it is his university, where he assimilates mathematical knowledge and a scientific approach to the game.
He starts from low stakes Sit&Go, then specializes in heads-up and finally in PLO, until he becomes competitive enough to:
teach for CardRunners at only 20 years old
achieve important live placements, including a third place at the Caribbean Poker Tour for 450.000$
Poker gives him two fundamental things:
✔ understanding of risk
✔ probabilistic mindset
But above all, it teaches him a lesson that many gamblers never learn: the bankroll is built with an edge over opponents, not with adrenaline.
Jonas Gjelstad story: the turning point in betting
The transition from cards to betting is not immediate, nor romantic. It is analytical. Gjelstad observes something that many miss: while poker becomes increasingly competitive, **retail sports betting** (that of agencies) remains full of inefficiencies. At high stakes poker tables, opponents study, adapt, evolve. **In betting markets, however, the price often does not reflect the real probability.**
Not because bookmakers are incompetent, but because their business is not always to be perfect: it is to manage the flow, to manage the risk, to ensure a fee by covering their backs. And there, a space opens up.
An edge.
Gjelstad progressively stops seeing sport as entertainment and starts treating it as a market. **He compares the odds of European bookmakers with those of Asian markets, notoriously more efficient because they also accept bets from high roller professionals.** Where he finds discrepancies, he identifies the edge.
He sees a pricing error. And where there is a pricing error, there is value. These are value bets.
His value betting method: the odds of Asian books and Pinnacle
The heart of Gjelstad’s success is not luck. It is value. **Value when an odd is clearly wrong and does not reflect the real probability of that event occurring. In that case, the bookmaker pays you more than the odds suggest.**
His first approach is almost “artisanal”, a simple method used by some professionals and tipsters even in Italy:
compares odds between Asian bookmakers (sharp)
and European bookmakers (soft)
When soft books offer higher odds than the efficient Asian market… the value bet is born.
It is a criterion, an indicator that shows you a pure mathematical advantage. For years, the closing odds of Pinnacle markets have been considered the perfect meeting point between supply and demand, therefore capable of expressing **the perfect odd that faithfully reflects the real probabilities.**
If a Bet365 odd, for example, is higher than Pinnacle’s, it is an important clue that – probably – there is a lot of value in that odd.
Gjelstad systematically exploited these discrepancies to generate profit.
It is the same principle that today forms the basis of:
professional betting
sports trading
advanced odds comparison platforms
Gjelstad’s run to the Million dollars in 2016
There is no single event that defines his rise, there is a repeated sequence of correct decisions on single bets.
Starting from a **relatively small bankroll, around 10.000 dollars**, **Gjelstad builds an operation based on volume, discipline, and systematic value betting.** He does not look for the life-changing hit: he looks for hundreds of small mathematical advantages, always respecting risk responsibly.
In 2016 he says he generated about a million dollars in a single year through this approach. Not because he predicted impossible results. But because he only bet when the price was wrong.
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It is the difference between the gambler and the trader: the first wants to guess the outcome based on feelings, the second wants to buy value and wants to identify it through objective methods indicated by the market.
Bookmaker limitations and variance
As happens to all winning and successful bettors, the phase of limits inevitably arrives. Retail bookmakers are not designed to host those who systematically beat the market, the same can be said for **online betting platforms** which take even less time to identify the account, limit it, etc. It is not fair but it is part of the market and winning gamblers also take these disadvantages of their profession into account.
Online bookmaker accounts are limited (betting limits) or banned. Many stop here.
Being a professional bettor is a difficult and very stressful job, not only because bookmakers wage war against you.
Gjelstad does not give up but adapts his “business” model: **he moves towards Asian markets and betting exchanges** with deeper liquidity.
He also understands another fundamental lesson: **volatility can destroy even a winning system.** For this reason, bankroll and financial management is vital for his work.
He comes to suffer **significant swings**, even five-figure losses. It is in this phase that he moves from maximizing growth to protecting capital. He becomes less aggressive in bankroll management and more solid. The approach is that of a true professional.
The real leap: stopping being just a player, the entrepreneur
The economic turning point in betting is not just winning but having the ability to scale. Gjelstad understands that the real limit of betting is not just ensuring an edge over the house, but the ability to replicate the model. And he decides to transform his method into a tool.
Thus was born the project that would lead to **Edgebet** and then to **Trademate Sports**: software designed to identify value bets systematically and to sell signals to the right audience.
He does not promise miracles to his clients but builds an infrastructure.
The transition in his existence is crucial: from an individual who exploits inefficiencies to an entrepreneur who maps them.
In the meantime, he diversifies: real estate investments, companies, crypto
