New blog post by Martin Futter! Betfair Exchange Football Trading - Slow and steady wins the race!

BTC

I can't believe how many international breaks there are between the start of the football season and Christmas! The season still feels young and we are onto our second one, anyone who has followed me on BTC over the past five years will know that I don't trade internationals and loathe these breaks. I suppose it doesn't help that I am an England fan and we barely ever play a meaningful game anymore in the qualifying groups. Sadly, off the pitch events have dominated the week's news again with racism and Nazi salutes of all things on display in Bulgaria, suffice to say I hope any of the culprits are dealt with severely and we can start to talk about the game we love in a positive light again.

The big topic of this week is how slow steady profits are the real way to success as a Betfair Exchange football trader -

This may sound a little obvious but I think all traders need to take a step back and think about which style of trading they prefer.

Boom or bust trading - big profits some days but big losses on others
Slow and steady trading - small wins that gradually build up limiting the impact of variance

For me it is not a difficult choice to make, slow and steady football trading all the way! This is not to say that the other style cannot be profitable but my little heart cannot take wild swings and mentally I much prefer a more relaxed style of football trading.

OK, so if you want to join me as this type of trader what are the first steps to take? First of all as I have mentioned above you want to limit the impact of variance, variance is essentially the 'luck factor' of sports trading. Sometimes you will have good variance, sometimes it will be bad. Of course you can use your skill factor to determine the profits in the long term (which is why so many of us on BTC make a steady profit from football trading) but in a one off trade you could always be the victim of a bad piece of luck. For example, I remember a match in Croatia where I layed the draw at half-time (one of my favourite football trading strategies) and three yes THREE penalties were missed in the second half. I made a great decision to trade that game but was unfortunate on that occasion! Luckily this is rare but still it can be painful when it happens. The important thing is not to rely heavily on one game when trading but look at the long term bigger picture. Hence why I prefer the slow and steady strategies.

Reducing the impact of Variance -

One really easy way to limit the impact of variance in football trading is to have a consistent strike rate. For example my half time lay the draw filter (which is available for all members to view in the statistics software page) is currently striking with an 82% win rate if you trade out after a goal is scored. I have found that anything above 75% is likely to net you a good steady profit. Since the start of the season this has ranged between 78-82% and has been remarkably consistent in it's win rate. That is the key, I was consistency because I know that if I am winning 82% of my trades I am very unlikely to get a long losing run. In nearly 200 games tested so far the longest losing run is two matches, just TWO matches! Thus, I am more able to stay level headed about things, there will be no boom or bust style risky trading with this strategy.

So let’s get onto the trading side of things.

My lay the draw at half-time strategy has been performing very well as I discussed above, it is a great strategy to follow if you want to minimise your risk. The strategy picks out games where goals are expected in the second half and then lays the draw at HT if the match is drawing. If there is a goal we take a profit and if not we take a loss either at full time or earlier than that if the game dies down. These are currently on a 8 match win streak! The trades win 82.02% of the time and even if you let it run you would have a 65.73% win rate.

If you are a member you know that we email these out each day and the selections can be viewed here:

As our members know we are always looking to improve our service here at BTC and continue to make you money!

So I thought I would update you on a couple of things:

We are currently in the process of rewriting a lot of our statistics software to improve how easy it is to use. We also have a course I have finished recording with a lot of training videos on football trading. The future looks exciting!

As you know, we are always developing new strategies and systems for football trading, so that we can continue to be the best education service for those traders looking to make a living full-time football trading on the Betfair Exchange.

That’s all for this week so look out for another post next week!