Trading the football

Football Trading is a very popular subject and many people struggle with long term profits. This tutorial is aims to teach you how to become a profitable football trader in double quick time. 

There are many ways to trade football and as time goes on we will explain some very interesting trading methods. You will soon be able to pick and choose which one you want to use.  

One of the most popular strategies is laying the draw and then backing the same team at higher odds to equalise a profit. It uses the principle where the odds for a draw suddenly get bigger after a goal has been scored. It amazes us how many people claim to know this strategy but still fail to make money. This strategy is statistic based and we will show you how to do it the profitable way. 

First of all, you need to find a match where the probability of a draw between the teams is small and there is a good chance of at least one goal being scored. This can be done with a variety of statistics but we would suggest that you pick a game with the odds for the draw no higher than 3.5.

For the purpose of this tutorial, we will choose the Wolves vs Man U match on Sat 6th March 2010. After the match has been identified, it gets pretty easy because all we have to do is lay the draw.  

From the above screenshot we can see that we have layed the draw for £20 and are risking £78.00 of our own money. This bet was made before the match had gone in-play (for this particular bet, it was made in the afternoon at around 1pm). One thing to note is that our £78.00 is NEVER at risk. Let me repeat that. We will NEVER lose our entire £78.00. With proper exit strategies, the most we stand to lose is around £25 - most people do not have a proper exit strategy backed by statistics and this is why they fail.  

Stage 2 of the trade is performed when a team scores a goal. When a team scores, the draw price usually goes up and this is where we make our money. 47 minutes into this match and Man U score so I back the draw for £10 to achieve green figures under each of the three outcomes.

Look at the screen shot below to see how the odds changed

So, you can now see that if either team wins I will win £9.50. If the game ends up in a draw I win £11.40. 

 To work out the optimum amount to BACK bet use cash matters free calculator found in the Best Odds Matcher section. It does not matter what 'selection' you chose as you will be using the calculator to add the values of your LAY bet and odds.

EXIT STRATEGY

As per the initial advice you ALWAYS need an exit strategy if things go wrong. As described above you need to pick a game where there is likely to be a goal. However, if you find yourself in a situation where the game is proceeding yet there has not been a goal you need to identify the point at which you bail out. This will be up to you. You will be taking a  loss as the longer the game goes on without a goal then the more the odds will have dropped. You need to expect this and this is what trading is all about i.e. minimising your losses. So don't worry and be professional. There will be many more wining times than loosing ones !.

So what do you do ? Pick a point before the game where you say to yourself 'No goal by half time and thats it, I'm taking the loss'. If that is the case then select the odds of the draw at that point. They will now be lower than your lay bet.

An important feature at Betfair is the 'what if' selection. Make sure its switched on by ticking the appropriate box in the 'More Options' part of Betfair (see below). You will then see that your profit (green) / loss (red)  are displayed under the betting selections before the bets are made. This will enable to to chose the most appropriate BACK bet amount. The most appropriate being the price where you lose least on a win or draw.