Sports bet trading is similar to financial trading only instead of buying and selling currency you are buying and selling bets.
Instead of simple bookies you are using betting exchanges. Where regular bookie allow you only to back certain event to happen(eg. horse X finishes first and wins!), exchanges gives option to LAY something to happen. That means that you can win when horse X loses and any other horse finishes first. In exchanges you bet against other people not against a bookie. If you put BACK bet it will show up as LAY bet and other bettor can LAY your BACK bet. You can offer your own odds or take odds already offered by other bettors. In most cases there is always already LAY and BACK bets offered.
Image above shows football match between Befica and Liverpool. You can see that here is 1340 GBP offered to BACK Benfica at 2.46. That means that other bettors are waiting to get their LAY bets matched at 2.46. If you put 40GBP to back Benfica at 2.46 then money showed at 2.46 will change from 1340GBP to 1300GBP. If you LAY Benfica at 2.46 then money showed at 2.46 will change from 1340GBP to 1380GBP and your bet WILL NOT be matched. You will need to wait till someone BACKs Benfica.
Laying
To understand trading you need to understand laying. So what is laying and how it’s different from backing? When you BACK something to calculate your possible winnings you need to multiply your stake with the odds. Eg. odds for team A to win is 1.8 you back it with 100$ and your possible profit is 80$(100 * 1.8 – 100 = 80).
Laying is the same only reverse. You always win the same amount as your bet. But if you lose, amount of lost money is depended on odds. So if odds are 1.8 and you put 100$ you can lose 80$ and win 100$. Another example: if you lay low odds as 1.05 you only risk to lose 5$ but you can win 100$. When you bet on bookies, laying side is done by bookie and you can only back. Thats why you need to use betting exchanges they allow laying and therefore trading.
“What if”
If your are using Betfair be sure to enable “What if” option. It shows what will happen to your Profit and Lose if unplaced bets were matched.
Trading
Your goal is to BACK at higher price and LAY at lower so you end up earing on all possible results or at least not losing. Predicting movement of odds is key to successful bet trading. Maybe at first it may sound easy, but is isn’t you need to predict price movement which is affected by many different factors. You can trade before match and also in-play. Price movement before the match can be affected by many different factors such as popularity of team, player injuries, motivation, etc. In-play price movement can be affected by previous factors mentioned but generally it’s affected by what is happening in game.
Eg. in Soccer match team A scores and odds drops from 2.4 to 1.6 for team A to win, so if you backed team A at 2.4 for 100$ then if team A wins you win 140$, if B team wins or draw you lose 100$. Logical right?
Now you lay team A at 1.6 for 100$ after the first goal, if team A wins you lose 60$ from your LAY bet, if draw or team B wins it’s +100$. Now we count both bets together(Back and Lay), and you win 80$ if team A wins(140+ (-60) = 80) if it’s either draw or team B wins you lose nothing(-100 + 100 = 0)!
Team A wins: 140$+ (-60$) = 80$
Team B wins: -100$ +100$ = 0$
Draw: -100$ +100$ = 0$
(blue – your possible win/lose after 1. bet || red – your possible win/lose from your 2. bet || green – you possible win/lose after 2. bet and after the game if you are not betting anymore.)
If after first goal it looks like team B will score back and you think you couldn’t predict the match outcome you can Lay with larger bet so that you win on all outcomes. And I strongly recommend you doing so because in sport anything can happen. Another example with the same odds only LAY bet is larger! As previously you backed team A at 2.4 with 100$ and now odds are 1.6 after the first goal. Now you lay with 150$ your liability is 90$, if team A wins you lose -90$, if not you win +150$ from LAY bet.
Team A wins: 140$ + (-90$) = +50$
Team B wins: -100$ + 150$ = +50$
Draw: -100$ + 150$ = +50$
Both examples applies to other sports as well. By fallowing examples above you can trade on any sport. Most popular sports for trading are Horse racing, Soccer and Tennis. In Horse racing in-play price movement will depend on horse position in track. Horse racing markets are fastest ones. Soccer markets are ones of the slowest as soccer game goes for 90+ minutes and mostly price moves only when goals are scored. In tennis price movement depends on games, points, breaks. In tennis markets price of bets can go up and down many times, also tennis markets are more active than soccer markets, as price movement is affected by every point.
In picture above you can see typical soccer graph to see what happens after the first goal. GKS Belchatow scored and their odds went down to 1.28 from 2.0.
This graph shows you ATP tennis match odds. Graph movement is affected by points and breaks.
If you are beginner in sports bet trading I suggest you to start with small stakes. There is no point of losing huge money. Once you gain more confidence you can increase your stakes. Also you’ll need to choose betting exchange. Betfair is most popular one and offers biggest liquidity so you should take it! Remember that you will not learn trading in several weeks, it will probably take you some months before you can get steady profit.
Betfair Explained
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March 10th, 2011 at 11:42 am
Is it possible to obtain graghs that could indicate in advance of a match the scenario if goals are scored at various times of a match?
Thanks.
March 10th, 2011 at 3:54 pm
Yes there is a trading software which predicts movement of odds in various scenarios and shows you graphs, it’s called Soccer Mystic it comes suited with Bet Angel trading software. You can read more about it on their website.