The BTC Football Trading Thread

Martin

@richard-latimer ridiculous profit on these again tonight. I’ll lay with bit of the profit from this game only

Richard Latimer

You can lay Zurich again now @Martin-Futter haha

Richard Latimer

@richard-latimer said in The BTC Football Trading Thread:

Now Young Boys are down........thought they'd levelled already there haha!

Didn't take long

James Woodroffe

@martin-futter thank you so much absolutely brilliant

? Offline

@martin-futter brilliant! just what I was after, ta

? Offline

@martin-futter wow that is an amazin piece of work so far, thank you so much!

Richard Latimer

Now Young Boys are down........thought they'd levelled already there haha!

Martin

Been working on a document for you all, let me know what you think it's not finished yet:

Football Trading - Essential Considerations

One of the most important things when trading on Betfair is being able to take your shortlist of football trades for the days and check that they meet all of the criteria needed to be truly considered as ‘trade worthy’.

What we mean by this is that there are always outside factors that must be considered and taken into account when trading, the reason is that every game is an individual game and is in some way unique as a result. This has to be taken into account when trading on Betfair and fortunately there are a few essential steps that can be taken before entering any football trade.

The more we work with other traders at BTC the more it becomes apparent that what separates the pro-traders from the new traders is their ability or even simply their willingness to do this due diligence before they place any trade.

Whether you follow the guidance below is up to you, it is of course on you to make that decision but we strongly advise that you do for the benefit of your football trading.

Factors that must be considered:

For us here at BTC these are the four essential factors that every trader should consider before entering a trade once they have their initial football trading shortlist, we will list them here and then talk more in depth about them.
There are of course other factors you can consider and I will mention those later. These, however, are just the ones we look into before placing every trade.

The stage of the season that the match is being played.
Team News
The In-Play Statistics
The odds.

Let’s go through them thoroughly:

The stage of the season that the match is being played

There are two parts to this - they are ‘start of the season’ and ‘end of the season’.

Start of the Season

We advise waiting until 8-10 matches have been played in a league season before we start to use our shortlist for that season. The reason for this is that we need to build up some data to use for our pre-match statistical analysis. If we do not have enough data we are effectively ‘trading blind’. We do not like using last season’s data either, there is often too much turnover between seasons regarding players and coaches to make that old data valid. Also bare in mind if teams were promoted or relegated their data will come from a different division, this is just simple for us, wait until the 8-10 game threshold.

End of the Season

The end of a season is not considered by enough traders and it is something we must look into before trading a league that could be close to the season’s end. As a general rule of thumb we will not trade a game where neither team has anything to play for, these games are like friendlies and often end up contradicting any pre-match data that we may have accumulated.

How can you check this out? Look at the league table, if there are only 2-3 games left and the team has no chance of winning the title or promotion, qualifying for Europe or relegation then they are to be completely avoided.

On the other hand if both sides still need to win a match then you can keep it on your goals shortlist even at the end of the season. If you are trading the match odds market you can even do this with just one team needing the point (just make sure it is the team you are looking to back!).

Team News

Team news is one of the major factors that will affect the odds of a market. The reason for this is simple, players are everything in football, without them there would be no match. The easiest way to find out the team news is to do a quick google search of the clubs you are trading, often you can find a written match preview which will mention players suspended or out with injury.

Twitter is a great way to find out the line ups around one hour to 30 mins before a match is due to start. If there is some potential for players to be 50/50 decisions then it is worth checking if they play or not.

We will add to this that a recent manager change can also have a big effect on a team’s performance, we would be very weary of trading a match where any team that had changed manager in their last 4-5 games.

The In-Play Statistics

In-play statistics are vital indicators that our trading selections are ready to be entered. Here we will give a rough guide of what to look out for during a match to see if you should trade it or avoid it.

Trading the match odds market

If we are looking to back a team (or lay the opposition) we want said team to be dominant on pretty much all fronts. That means we want them to be attacking more, having more possession and having more shots on goal (especially more shots on target). Another good statistic to have on your side in the corner count, if a team is dominating the corners then they are probably dominating the game.

Trading the goals markets

This is where we have little interest in team dominance but rather in the totals regarding the statistics. We are going to chart the minimum values that we like to have before entering a trade below, what needs to be said though is that these can be adapted. Try to find what in-play stats suit your entry points.

We work our scoring method out based on shots on and off target. If there is a shot on target it scores one point, if there is a shot off target it scores half a point. So for example two shots on target and one shot off would be a total score of 2.5 points. Six shots off target and zero shots on target would score three points and so on.

Here are some popular entry points and the total ‘score’ we would like to see before entering at this point in a game.

Trading ‘Overs’ Markets - Looking for a goal or goals.

Entry points:

22 minutes - A score of 3 or above (ideally 2 shots on target)
45 mins/HT - A score of 6 or above (ideally 4 shots on target)
67 mins - A score of 9 or above (ideally 6 shots on target)

Trading ‘Unders’ Markets - Looking for goals not to be scored.

Entry points:

22 minutes - A score of 2 or below (ideally 2 shots on target)
45 mins/HT - A score of 4 or below (ideally 4 shots on target)
67 mins - A score of 6 or below (ideally 6 shots on target)

These are rough guidelines and as stated above you would be wise to work out the best ‘number’ for your own trading but these are a good starting point.

Although not an in-play statistic as such a special mention must be made for red cards. A red card has a huge effect on a game and pretty much eliminates our previous data as the previous data was recorded when eleven players were playing on each team. We exit games that have a red card there and then, except for one instance when we are trading the match odds markets and the team we have opposed have gone down to ten men. This is an advantage for our trade so we can probably take a profit or expect our team now will have more chances to score a goal.

The Odds

At this point if your shortlisted selection has met all of the above criteria you are all but set to enter a trade. The last thing you must consider is whether the current odds represent value. Having an edge on the market comes down to one simple factor -

Are the odds you are backing bigger than they should be or are the odds you are laying at shorter than they should be?

If the answer to this question is YES then you should enter the trade, knowing that you have done some solid background research and your due diligence. Your understanding of whether you have found value or not will be determined partly by your own knowledge and experience but there are some ways we can help you to answer this question.

The easiest way to determine value is to test your strategy and record the results.

For set and forget style trades (where you will lose stake on a loss) - once you have an idea of your average odds and your strike-rate you will have some idea of what your minimum price should be - your minimum price will be the same odds that represent the same percentage of your strike-rate.

So if we know that our strike-rate is 55%, we may want our minimum back odds to be 2.0 or above (evens - 50%) that gives us a 5% margin on the minimum odds, most of our trades should be above that minimum price and we would therefore make a good profit long term if these figures remained the same.

If you are a layer and you have a strike-rate of winning 67% of your lays (around 1.50 when converted to odds) you would want your minimum odds to be around 1.55 or above to give you a decent margin for profit knowing, again, a lot of your lays will be above that price.

Richard Latimer

@martin-futter said in The BTC Football Trading Thread:

@richard-latimer hopefully not a bacj bet!

Haha......never

Martin

@richard-latimer hopefully not a bacj bet!

Richard Latimer

Oh no, my 1.02 bet has lost haha

Richard Latimer

Would you believe it, I stop backing, waiting for a lay and all 4 bets go 1-0 up today haha!!

james everard

Evening all , waiting 5-10mins and going to lay Ankaragcu in the Turkish super league

Richard Latimer

Viborg down 0-2 at home. 1.02 to lay.

Eamonn Hogan

martin im still getting emails from BTC asking me to join by the way

Stuart Capstick

@will-b

Having lived in Russia, I'd guess:

a) Some guys gave some "advice" to Rostov
b) Rostov have gone bust and not payed their players
c) The Rostov first team are not playing due to COVID and a bunch of 15 year olds/75 year olds are playing
d) The Rostov team had a night out yesterday as nobody told them they were playing today

Martin

@richard-latimer said in The BTC Football Trading Thread:

@richard-latimer said in The BTC Football Trading Thread:

@martin-futter said in The BTC Football Trading Thread:

Missed Kolding but what a result! Did everyone manage to profit?

You got Giresunspor?

Too late if not haha!

Unbelievable! Easy money

Martin

@richard-latimer said in The BTC Football Trading Thread:

@martin-futter said in The BTC Football Trading Thread:

Missed Kolding but what a result! Did everyone manage to profit?

I missed first goal laid at 0-2 twice and greened up after the first goal.

This system has been so good. What a profit available there!

Richard Latimer

@richard-latimer said in The BTC Football Trading Thread:

@martin-futter said in The BTC Football Trading Thread:

Missed Kolding but what a result! Did everyone manage to profit?

You got Giresunspor?

Too late if not haha!

Richard Latimer

@martin-futter said in The BTC Football Trading Thread:

Missed Kolding but what a result! Did everyone manage to profit?

You got Giresunspor?