New blog post by Martin Futter! The Ashes - Cricket Trading on Betfair at it's Finest!
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Wow well where do we start with this one? What an incredible match of test cricket we just witnessed. With England chasing a mammoth total having been devoid of any quality batting in the first 2.5 test matches of this Ashes series they produced a masterclass to win one of the most dramatic test matches of all time!
Well I say 'they' but of course it was one man who really stole every headline and that was Ben Stokes. A man who a year ago was portrayed as a villain in the media duye to some off field antics is now of course the darling of the nation after that epic performance. Talksport were even clamouring for a knighthood, which is a bit far at this stage of his career but he certainly will be a frontrunner for sports personality of the year this year.
Funny how results in sport can change people's perceptions isn't it. Well, and facts about that court case that actually made people get on side with Stokes and glad he dealt that homophobic low life a fully deserved smack in the mouth! Just a shame it wasn't that Aussie homophobic lowlife, wasn't it?!
Anyway, you have probably heard enough about this match and result that leaves the Ashes series tied at 1-1 with everything left to play for. So let's get onto the important bit for us Betfair Exchange traders, the state of cricket trading.
We saw yet again how good the 'laying the side chasing a big fourth innings' stategy works. This strategy basically says we should always oppose team chasing 350+ (maybe even 300+) in a fourth innings especially if they start the chase well and the odds shorten below 3.0 (which of course happened here). Members of this site can read the strategy in full here: https://betfairtradingcommunity.com/en/trading-strategies/last-chance
What was so great about this Betfair trading strategy? Well it was easy to trade it for a big profit when England's price was close to evens early in the chase. As so often happens, England started the chase well and the market clamoured to back them even well before the half-way point of the chase. I actually got in at 5.0 (advised in the forum) which was higher than I could have, however, as this was a small lay I topped up once it hit 3.0 for a full stake lay of my usual liability stake. Of course as England lost wickets and their price got out to 15-16.0 I took a good profit (again I advised this at the time of the forum), this is the beauty of trading isn't it! I just made a good profit laying a team that eventually won!
England acheived the near impossible getting 70 runs with their last wicket in a fourth innings Ashes test match where the Aussie bowlers were well on top. Even in this rare instance where the team batting fourth chasing their record total did manage to do it, we still made money on our lay. So even when it goes wrong we sometimes win! Thank God for the Betfair Exchange and cricket trading!
This is where I want to bring in my main point of this article, why trading is so much better than gambling and why far more people make a living from it than just straight outright betting. Forget the worse variance for gambling as opposed to trading for a minute. Forget even the extra agony a gambler would have had watching a value lay like this one go on to lose as he hadn't traded out. Here is my number one reason trading is better than gambling.
'I can pick a losing bet, back it to win and still make money on it.'
Now just think about that statement for a minute. In trading it is often possible to back a selection, see it lose and still make money. Why? Because finding the winner is not as important in trading as it is in gambling, what is more important is predicting price moves and finding sport events where the odds are likely to move up and down throughout, like a test match in cricket!
See this principle is what the non-traders in our worlds struggle to grasp, they think of sports bettors as the old fashioned gambler who nips into Betfred on a Saturday and puts £500 on a horse and hopes that it wins. Betfair trading couldn't really be further than this, I always explain it as the stock market for sporting events to people outside the world of Betfair, as this is a much more accurate perception than the one most people have.
We don't live it hope. Us cricket traders use basic principles, historical data and market knowledge to make money trading moves in the market. Once I have hedged for a profit or a loss the result no longer matters, I don't have to sweat that last Ben Stokes boundary watching my money go down the drain because I had gotten out of the market a long time before that!
That's why trading is much better than gambling!
If you are a member or have been reading our posts for a while you will know how passionate we are about cricket trading here at BTC! If you are stuck where to start I have written a handy guide for you to get started: https://betfairtradingcommunity.com/en/blog/cricket-trading-ultimate-trading-start-guide
We are planning to get some cricket trading software sorted in the near future, once the horse one is done, so if you have any ideas on what you want let us know via the usual places! See you next week for another post.
