The Footy Trader

Manchester United totally wiped out Chelsea and Scolari is not too pleased with that, unsurprisingly. I didn’t expect there to be such a comprehensive thrash type scoreline at 3 – 0 but I have been expecting Man U to be heading upwards in the league because of having two games in hand on the other teams in the top four.

As for my trading at the weekend, I did do some trading on the under 2.5 goals with the Villa game and then I missed the start of the later games. I think I will have to start setting a reminder on my iPhone of when the games are due to start so that I can get in there in a timely fashion. I didn’t even do anything with the lay the loser strategy, as I was looking at the Stoke Liverpool game and there was no score to do anything with. In the Villa game after the first goal I could have done the lay the loser but the lay odds were way too high. I may consider looking at the possibility of doing a dutch of the win and the draw instead it may be more controllable.

OK so now I will go and look at the fixtures list for this week and start making some calendar appointments that will wake me up in time for when the game is due.

I would be pleased to hear from you if you have any ideas for betting strategy on football games. Tell us what is working for you or even what is not working. Is anyone still working on the Football Cash Generator and how are you doing with it?

Everything was looking great with the game that looked like I would get all the cash into Betfair but There just had to be a goal in the last minute. Valladolid couldn’t hold on to the 1 – 0 lead that that they had for most of the game.

So the next part of the plan is the bets I have on the Match odds of the Manchester vs Chelsea game on Wednesday. I took quite a while looking for a game with the right odds and eventually got 3.20 on SkyBet and 3.20 on Betfair. Normally there is a bit of a gap between the odds and you lose a little in the translation as it were. There is only a small loss with this trade.

I think if the bet goes the Side of SkyBet I will try for a withdrawal direct to my bank account. I don’t really want to do that – I could have done it with the 150 Euro I had there but I have a funny feeling that there will be bank charges to deal with.

I suppose I should be philosophical about this because it is money that I got easy and is just cutting into the profits I have made in the last couple of months. It is just that once I have the money in my grubby little paws I want to hold on to it. It really is all part of the game though. I will have to keep this in mind when I start on the next round of trading.

Premiership over for the season just the FA Cup to look forward to, although I will be working when the game is to be played.

There is the final of the UEFA Cup to look forward to I suppose. I will be €45 better off whatever happens although it will be easier for me if Rangers lose as I have that side of the deal laid on Betfair.

I suppose we can enjoy the European Football during the summer but without England in the mix it will not be so interesting for us English. I expect I will give my support to Spain instead. I have not seen so many of the Spanish La Liga games this year as I have been watching more English TV

Tags: UEFACup, Premiership, Betfair, betting, La Liga, FA CUp

I have this game here Ajax are winning 3-1 at 75 minutes and I have laid the draw at Betfair and Backed the draw at Lasseters, the new online Aussie bookmaker.

I also have a trade on the Boulogne vs Grenoble game and Grenoble are one up, would be great if they could go another one up to but a bigger cushion between the draw.

Earlier I had a back bet at Lasseters odds of 7.00 on the game ending 0-2 in favour of Chelsea, So I have a pile of cash in Lasseters to sort out.

Tags: Bookies, matched betting, Ajax

Chelsea battled hard against Liverpool in the semi final and took there luck  to get to the final. I would have liked to have seen the game on the TV but no joy here. I didn’t even get to trade on the game as I was late getting to look at the game in BinarySoft BDI. The match was already 25 minutes old and the odds would not have given value.

Good job I didn’t try it on Betfair, seeing as there was a goal at 33 minutes and that would have caught me out in my favoured under 2.5 goals market.

Don’t forget that BetAngel is a professional type betting software that does everything apart from make the tea. Excellent if you want to be the bookmaker of link up with an excel spreadsheet. I wish there was a Mac version….

Great for English football to see two English clubs in the Champions League final

Tags: ManchesterUnited, Chelsea, Liverpool, binarysoft, under 2.5 goals market. Betfair, gambling, trading

I am only home for a short while for lunch and after eating the game at Stamford Bridge was already under way. I would have had a larger back bet on the unders at the start but the odds were not great to start with and then when I looked again the match had 25 minutes played. I just went in with a small back bet and I traded out quickly. The price was moving well enough but the best times to trade are at the beginning of a game or just after a goal as thats when there is most movement in the right direction. Although if the odds are above 1.90 at the beginning all the better.

I didn’t even get a half a percent profit due to the low stake but I am not too bothered, it’s a nice sunny day here in Spain and I was sitting on the terrace relaxing, seemed a shame to run inside to the computer. Even when I could be making some money.

The Birmingham City game vs Liverpool looked better for the starting price on the under 2.5 goals market, but I will be back at work when that game starts.

I still have my bet running on Rangers, I have not traded out yet. I could have had a small profit at the end of the match on Thursday but not enogh to tempt me away from the forty five I have guaranteed on the game if I wait.

I had layed the unders before the game and with an early goal I thought there was a chance that there could be another 2 goals. The game ended 2-0 though and I was happy to have been able to reduce the liability  on that  side of a matched bet  that was in place with WinUnited.

All the Betfair bets lost today and I now have just about all of my money in WinUnited. Hope to make a withdrawal soon or at least get some more money over to Betfair, by losing on the W.U. side.

Lets get right down to it and tell you about my trading this evening. I chose a couple of games, one was Chelsea vs Olympiakos which turned out to be a poor choice and the other was Porto vs Schalke which would have been better but I was kind of tied up with getting things sorted out with the Chelsea game.

I opened my position at the start of the game and I use BinarySoft BDI betting software and I bought in with a back bet at the start of the game. I was disappointed to see that at 5 minutes and goal had gone in and spoilt my best laid plans. I like to trade the first ten minutes of a game and be greened up and out. The main part of the plan is to make 1% of my betting bank when I trade. To spread the risk I had the 2 games going and as soon as I could I would be all out of it and ready to sit down and watch some TV. The longer you are sitting waiting in a game to have the odds drop to where you want them to drop to the more risky it is.

I should have explained first of all that the market I like to trade is the under / over goals markets. I start off with the under 2.5 goals market and move on to the 3.5 and 4.5 goals if I need to. The reason I like the under 2.5 is because it is so predictable. So long as there is no goal scored the the odds ALWAYS go down with the passing of minutes in a game. You only have to see a graph of a few games or a lot of games to see how it works. Or better still you can buy Soccer Mystic from BetAngel and see the future. That piece of software is able to predict with fair accuracy how the odds will drop during a game. It can also be updated with goals that have happened and give you an idea of how long you may have to wait until the odds will move in your favour again.

OK Back to the Chelsea game, Ballack scored at five minutes and I had not managed to green up. I started with 0.2 per tick in BinarySoft and I had sold part of that position so I had at least got partly greened up. I decided to buy in with another 0.2 and so my position was 0.3 in total. The plan was to sell off after about 5 minutes or so. I had part of the position sold (another 0.1) when the second goal went in at 25 minutes and I didn’t have too much of a liability left. Then just as half time approached I decided to finish up on that market and leave a loss of €3.41. Turned out to be a good move as Chelsea scored the third goal within a couple of minutes after the start of the second half.

While I was dealing with the under 2.5 goal market though I was looking at the under 3.5 and the under 4.5 goals markets too. I bought into the under 3.5 goals just after the first goal because just after a goal is a great time to buy in as the odds tumble for the first 5 minutes after a goal. If you don’t believe me , just look at the steep angle of the price graphs just after a goal. I managed to sell off part of that position before the 3rd goal and I just waited until I saw enough of a profit on the market to trade out.

I also moved to the under 4.5 goal market and traded part of it out at 70 minute of the game it was three nil to Chelsea and I wanted to see some profit from the game so I just let it run and put in an order to trade out at the price I wanted. I could have let it run and taken more form it but anything can happen in football and I was pleased to have traded from a potential loss due to an early goal to have a small but sure profit.

Here is a screen shot from the BinarySoft Betfair trading software to show how it looked at the end of the game on the under 4.5 goals market. You can see that if the match ends with more than 4 goals I get 2.70 and if under I get 2.68. That’s what we call being greened up. Nothing to do with a desire to vomit……

OK that’s a first post on here and look out for more to come. The other software I recommend is BetIE which is great because it has a learning mode and you can try strategies out before you risk any cash in a betting bank

I worked with the Chelsea vs Reading game using BetAngel and I had a trade started at the start of the game and I stopped it when I had the 1% of my bank in the bag. I gave it one more go before the first goal to add a few more cents to the profits. After the first goal I went back in the again to bring the profits up to around 2% of the bank and left it at that. Good enough, I get into trouble when I get greedy.

The other thing I was looking at was the correct score market. For each of the games on tonight I set up a trade dutch on BetIE. I used BetIE because it was a test that I set up. Very handy to have a learning mode in BetIE. With each of the games there was profit. I used 100 Euro for each of the games and the liability and the profit varied according to the odds available in the game. Only with the Manchester United game did I put in an extra bet because there was 2 goals and I wanted to cover the scores not covered such as four nil. I didn’t need it in the end but I wanted to see what effect it would have.

The profits worked out like this:-

Chelsea – 82.08 Derby 39.14 West Ham 42.07 Everton 2.00 and Manchester 28.73 – the total came to €192.12
The average of the winnings comes to 38.24, which is good when you consider the chance of going outside of the dutch is 1 in 4. So long as the average is higher than 25 then there will be profit there. I could have made 58.70 but as I said I put in an extra bet just in case. Also with the Everton game I set the profit lower for the score of 0-0 seeing as only 8% of games finish with that score. I would have got €51 if a goal had been scored there.

So as you can see it looks like it could be profitable to work that system, but I think I would like to test it over a longer period to see how it looks after a month or so.

Here is the picture of the Chelsea setup in BetIE

I looked at the Chelsea game to see what I could do with it. The plan was to put in the back bet in at the start of the game for 90 Euro and then lay off a third at 5 minutes and another 3rd at 10 minutes then green up at 15 minutes. The odds were slow to come down I thought but I still had it with 6 Euro profit on the unders when all the laying off was done. I put in an extra lay bet on the unders to leave it at about €3.80 on either side under and over. I did this with BetIE and in learning mode.

I also looked at the European games on but the liquidity was low on those games and I was not impressed the way the odds were moving. I did one of the games with 100 on and greened up at 15 or 20 minutes leaving a profit of 7 Euro. It was Bayern (Germany) vs Aris (greek) in which the final score was 6 – nil. The first goal didn’t go in until 25 minutes so it worked out prety good.

I wanted to make a video today of the  but I left it too late, the 20 day trial was up unfortunately. I will set it up when I put in some more money into Betfair at the beginning of January. In the meantime I have been looking at the stats for the first goal in Premiership games. Using the Soccerstats.com site I put data into a spreadsheet for the first 17 rounds of the season. This is what I have come up with….

At 5 minutes 93% of games are still nil – nil
At 10 minutes 82% are still nil – nil
At 15 minutes 68% are still nil – nil
At 20 minutes 61% are still nil – nil
At 25 minutes 56% are still nil – nil

So you can see that trading in the first five minutes should be great for making money. Only 7% of the games have a goal and that doesn’t mean that the back bet placed at the start of the game is lost. Unless there is a very quick equaliser it is possible still to trade out after a couple of minutes and reduce the possible loss. Or you can place a bigger back bet after that goal and trade out as quick as you can after that to bring it even or perhaps make a profit. It needs a larger back bet maybe 3 or 4 times the original so that you are making more per tick of movement after the market reformed. Or you could leave the initial trade running and be able to trade out when the odds get back to where you started.
It all depends on the game and some knowledge of the teams would be useful too.

My next move is to watch how the odds move in the next couple of rounds of the Premiership and see what sort of movement I can expect and the money I should win when things go right compared to the money that could be lost when the goals come thick and fast. I want to know if there is an optimum level of odds for the first back bet – how fast do the odds change and how many ticks the market moves on average at the start of a game and also after a goal has been scored. I will want to see what number of ticks it is usual for the market to move to when the goal has gone in. So that if I trade out straight away what level of loss will I lock in.

I am determined to use the stats to see if I have enough of an edge to make money from this strategy. Is it best to let all games go 15 minutes and green up or is it best to lay off in 5 minute intervals. Instinct makes me think that laying off gradually is going to be a best option as the first goal gets more likely as the minutes tick by. I think that the stats will give me the best strategy for making money with this market in Betfair. I expect that the gradual lay off and a re-entry into the market after a goal is scored to make some extra trading a few ticks and maybe to add a little more at the end of a game when there is still a nil nil scoreline. There is also the under 3.5 goal market to turn to on some games which could sweeten the pot a little also.

The other statistic worth noting is that so far the percentage of goals at the final whistle that are under 2.5 goals is 53% and in combination with making sure that I have a back bet at a value price then the under 2.5 goal market will be lucrative enough.