Tag Archives: Betfair Exchange

Trading Tennis No 1 The break of service. Analysis of Match highlighted

Yesterday saw the first post of a new series of posts highlighting the risk to reward options of various tennis trades. In this post I outlined 4 possible trades that were available to us on the very first game of the fist set. To visit this post click on this link.

The image below is a screenshot of the flashscore site showing the result of the first game and how it was won.

As you can see Bronzetti won this game breaking Grabhers service after 2 break points. The image below is the set matrix shown in yesterdays post and I have ringed the end of set odds.

There is another feature of Bet Angel that can help us analyse our trades and this is an ability to log each players odds at whatever intervals you wish throughout the match. This enables you to see the way the odds moved as each point is won or lost. I have provided a screenshot of the 1st 6 1/2 minutes of the 1st game below.

The time elemnts of this spreadsheet are actual time ie 12:24:11 pm and if you follow the odds for Bronzetti which in this case are logged every 30 seconds you can see that her odds in the first game after 6 minutes play (12:30:14) they bottomed out at 1.39. In the next screen shot I have added the scores and you can see that when Bronzetti won a point her odds dropped and when Grabher served her 2 points that she won the odds rose slightly

Yesterday I outlined 4 different trades that we could have done on this first game in the match and Trade 2 had the best risk to reward option for us. The odds for Bronzetti to win the match at the time of writing yesterdays post was 1.74 however this was at 7 am – 5 hours before the start of the match. When the match finally started at 12:24 pm her odds had dropped to 1.69. Tennis Trader predicted that if Bronzetti won the game then her odds would be around 1.44 they actually reached 1.39.

If you missed yesterdays post click this link to have a look

In this case our best trade option won out and we profited by it Please subscribe to my blog if this has peaked an interest in trading tennis as I will be sharing lots more opportunities for making educated decisions on trading tennis matches and its more exciting than laying the draw in a football match.

If you are interested in trying Bet Angel you can download a free trial by clicking here to take you to the Bet Angel website I reccommend it and it wont cost you a penny.

Trading Tennis Matches

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Trading tennis might be quite daunting at first but when you actually look at some key points in tennis matches this can be a great introduction into the bewildering world of sports trading. There are so many opportunities to make (and lose) money in this activity, that many “match bettors” that have made the progression from having their betting accounts “gubbed” to gravitating to the only real option left open to them in their betfair account.
With there being so many markets available every day and so much “advice” being forced on naive beginners, many lose money and therefore lose interest.
In this series of blog posts I will aim to point out some of the more obscure trading opportunities I have discovered which are of less risk and more reward. Sports trading is a risk, and while you are never putting your full stake at risk there is always the greater probability that the trade will go against you and you will have to trade out of the market for a loss. This can be for a variety of reasons, lack of knowledge and lack of research being just 2. Many beginners to trading will perhaps watch a couple of YouTube videos where the presenter makes trading look so easy and lucrative that they just jump into a similar market that was shown and try and do exactly the same with catastrophic consequences.
As a potential trader you must have, at the very least a working knowledge of how various markets behave. Tennis, to my mind, could be the sport where this can be learned quite easily and with a relatively low risk to your stake.

Trading Tennis No 1 Break of Serve

Should we follow the Racing Post selections that are in CAPITALISED in the race preview?

The Racing Post, a respected and some would say a vital part of British and Irish racing. The content of the paper and on line version of the only real guide to days racing is second to none but should we do our own research or just back the runners that are in BOLD in the race preview that can be found on many betting sites. I think that the Racing Post has a reputation to uphold so why would bookmakers willingly put the racing post preview at the head of the race page. Sceptical attitudes may say that if the bookies are willingly publishing these views by “Verdict” from the racing post then statistically they (the bookies) will win over all. Todays meetings come from Bellowstown, Kempton, Doncaster, Uttoxeter, Stratford, and Chelmsford City.

Looking for Level Stakes profit to £1.00 stake for all races
Lets see how they get on.

First meeting in order of timing today is Bellewstown
13:20 Fast Tara (Abandoned)
13:55 Master Garvey (Abandoned)
14:30 Ten to Ten (Abandoned)
15:05 Escapingthejungle (Abandoned)
15:40 Tawaazon (Nap) (Abandoned)
16:15 Theonewedreamof (Abandoned)
16:50 Star Kissed (Abandoned)

Kempton Meeting starts at 13:30
13:30 Burgar LOST
14:05 Phantom Flight LOST
14:40 Brains LOST
15:15 Aztec Empire (Nap) LOST
15:50 Fix You
16:25 Cuban Breeze
17:00 Simply Sondheim

Doncaster next and the first race goes off at 13:50
13:50 Valadero LOST
14:25 Dirtyoldtown LOST
15:00 Asjad LOST
15:35 Awaal (Nap)
16:10 Poker Face
16:45 Ribal
17:20 Aldbourne
17:50 Aone Ally

Uttoxeter
14:10 Tonto Foley LOST
14:45 Sporting Ace LOST
15:20 Corey’s Courage LOST
15:55 Blackjack Magic
16:30 Gold Emery
17:05 Had to be Hugo (Nap)
17:35 Mistral Milly

The final meeting of the afternoon is from Stratford
14:17 Beau Balko LOST
14:52 The Grey Falco (Nap) LOST
15:27 Weebil LOST
16:02 Lamanver Bel Ami
16:37 Go Steady
17:12 Banteer

The sole evening meeting is from Chelmsford City and first race goes off at 17:30.
17:30 Vitralite
18:00 Boasty
18:30 Prenup (Nap)
19:00 Iconic Moment
19:30 Beyond Equal
20:00 Pending Appeal
20:30 Heath Rise


I have annotated the Nap selections for each meetings but will list them again here
Bellowstown 15:40 Tawaazon (Nap)
Kempton 15:15 Aztec Empire (Nap)
Doncaster 15:35 Awaal (Nap)
Uttoxeter 17:05 Had to be Hugo (Nap)
Stratford 14:52 The Grey Falco (Nap)
Chelmsford 18:30 Prenup (Nap)

Daily Each Way Bet

Can I do better than the professional tipsters who advertise plenty and perhaps don’t always come up with the goods? Boasting huge profits of thousands of pounds these tipsters are no more than Value bettors who rely on the concept that if you back enough horses at odds better than the exchanges are offering then you will win in the long run – of course you will is stands to reason that if you back 5 horses each at odds of 6/1 or better then you will only need one winner to be “profitable” This is all well and good when you are staking £100 per point but who actually can afford to do this- certainly not me. This for them is a business they charge upwards of £30.00 per month for their “service” which they presumably use to place their £100 bets and if they are at all savvy will promptly lay them off at the exchange. Betting for the average punter should be a pleasurable pastime, something you can enjoy and afford. To this end I will post and bet £1.00 each way on a horse once a day – Max Loss £14.00 or 3 pints of beer or a bottle of gin on Tesco club card price 👌

Friday 24th March 2023

15:00 3:00 Musselburgh

Lock Down Luke

Runner up twice from his last two outings and beaten favourite last time out when he started at 7/2 he has won just twice over hurdles from a total of 14 starts. He may well do the deed today and even start favourite again but there is danger from Faithful flyer amongst others in this race. Prudent 1 pt E/W

Paying on 4 places with all the major bookmakers except stingy #BetVictor

Crystal Palace v Arsenal. Backing Over 0.5 Goals in First Half

Tonights premiership clash is between London Clubs Crystal Palace and Arsenal.

Crystal Palace v Arsenal

As you can see from the screenshot of my Premiership workbook above this game scores highly at 59/110 with Arsenal making up 42 of those points. Arsenals first half over 0.5 goals percentage is 92% with their average opening Goal scored before the 20 mins. They have also managed to score the opening goal in 9 of their 13 away games with all of them coming in the first half. Slightly concerning is Crystal Palace and their 67% of games where they managed to keep a clean sheet in the first half. Even with the caveat of Crystal Palaces’ clean sheet record I would still be confident that there will be at least one goal in the first half and at odds of 2.8 might be temped to back Arsenal to win the half.

If you are interested in this workbook and others I have produced for other leagues please visit this post linked below where they can all be downloaded for free
Please take care to update the workbooks before each game. full instructions are on this post also.
https://bet-or-not.com/2022/03/28/backing-over-0-5-goals-in-the-first-half/

Back to Lay a Jockey with 2 wins at a Meeting.

Horse Racing is fickle, we all know this, and if a horse loses everyone blames the driver. But what if the driver is in form. Sam Twiston Davies recently had just 3 rides at Market Rasen and won all 3 with his final ride of the day coming home with an S.P. of 4/1 (5.0). The BSP for this race was 6.4 and had we B2L at 10 ticks the profit would have been over 18% of our stake. Another leading Jockey, Brian Hughes, had a win in the first 2 races at Sedgefield on the 24th March his next ride went off at 15.5 on the exchange and traded as low as 2.0 in running. A B2L trade of 10 ticks would have produced a 44% profit on our stake.
Jockeys with 2 or more wins at a single meeting are quite rare and logging each race winning jockey can be a laborious task especially when you are trading other events going on at the same time
The Automation Guru, Dallas, at Bet Angel has come up with a nifty little bit of automation that will “After each race when Betfair closes and settles the market it will store the name of the Jockey on the winning horse, if the same jockey rides two winners a it will trigger a pop up alert displaying the name of the Jockey”
As an aide to this I have started to produce an excel workbook which will show, at the click of a tab, the form of the jockey from his/her last 50 rides.
While it is limited at the moment to the following jockeys, you can download it for free below

Sam Twiston Davies
Rachael Blackmore
Brian Hughes
Craig Nichol
Bryony Frost
Nico de Boinville
and Charlie Deutsch

jockey-formDownload

This file needs to be refreshed in the usual way

I will be adding more jockeys as time goes on

The next piece of research comes from the In-Running Trading Tool
From this I can see at a glance the jockeys next ride of the day and determine as to a back to lay trade is on the cards.
I will post any 2 time winners and further results form todays racing Later.

Using a Flow Chart to make unemotional decisions when making a bet

Emotional gambling, hunch betting and chasing losses are just 3 reasons why punters lose and bookies win. How then can we take some of this uncertainty out of the equation and put some solid research together in an ordered and unbiased way that will enable us to make a more informed and unemotional decision of where to risk our money?
Creating a flow chart that defines definite criteria for us to follow is certainly one way and with excel this task can be done with relative ease.

Flow chart for Laying the Draw

The screenshot above is an example of a flowchart I have been working on to help me identify football games where I can trade laying the draw in either the half time or full time markets using set criteria to avoid making uninformed decisions.
While this is still in its development stage I hope you can see the advantages of using a tool such as this may help you in the quest for making a bit of money from the bookies instead of handing good money after bad to them.

excel-changable-flow-chart-for-ltdDownload

You can download this file by clicking the link above

Backing Over 0.5 goals in the First Half

Betting on whether or not there will be a goal in a football match must, to many seem like a pretty sure thing. It is not until you start looking at the statistics that this may not be the cash cow it may look like. With average odds of over 0.5 goals barely reaching 1.15 for a full time result, to be in profit you must win at least 12 times out of 13. When you consider that the average percentage of games that end 0-0 is somewhere around the 8% mark then this doesn’t seem as inviting after all. I recently read on the OLGB forum of a “system” to make £50000 from £10.00 in 3 months making just 1 bet per day, while the maths is sound and the theory is feasible, in reality one game will wipe you out!! Just imagine you are on your last day and you risk your £46,000 and the game ends goalless🤑😭.
Backing over 0.5 goals in the first half provides better odds (averaging at about 1.5) but with this comes the added risk of the shorter time the teams have to score a goal.
If we look at the Spanish La Liga 2 and the games played on the 25th and 26th March 2022 there were 5 games, 2 of which ended 0-0 at half time. If we say that you put £10.00 on each game at odds of 1.5 then your loss would be £20.00 and winnings would be £15.00 leaving you £5.00 down.
As with everything to do with football betting the Bookies do their research and to level the field a bit it would be foolish to not do the same, otherwise you will be just handing over good money after bad. To this end I have created a series of excel workbooks that will hopefully take a bit of the guesswork out of selecting suitable games that have a higher probability of that first goal going in before the half time whistle.
It uses first half statistics from the football leagues and allocates a points system depending on various criteria ranging from time of first goals to number of goals scored in the half.
To demonstrate I have taken the 5 games played in the La Liga 2 on the 27th March :
Mirandes v Ponferradina OGS 10 mins
Burgos v Tenerife OGS 62 Mins
Alcorcon v Valladolid OGS 3 mins
Malaga v Huesca OGS 47 mins
Almeria v Girona OGS 13 Mins
(OGS = Opening Goal Scored)
As you can see 2 of the 5 games ended 0-0 at half time

Mirandes v Ponferradina

If you look at the screenshot from the workbook pictured above you will see a score of 63/110. this was the highest score of all the games today and at half time the score was 2-0
The next highest score for statistics was the game between Almeria and Girona which was 53 points and the OGS was 13 minutes into the game.

Almeria v Girona

With 52 points, the next game was Alcorcon v Valladolid and it took just 3 minutes for our bet to be settled

Alcorcon v Valladolid

2 games had sub 50 scores Burgos v Tenerife (47 points) and Malaga v Huesca (33 points) and both of these games ended 0-0 at half time.

Burgos v Tenerife
Malaga v Huesca

Even with these 5 games there is perhaps a pattern emerging. Games that have scores above 50 points might be worth considering but those games where a sub 50 points score should be discounted out of hand

Todays game between Las Palmas and Leganes carries a point score of 68 making this a definite consideration

Las Palmas v Leganes

I have produced a few of these workbooks so far and have provided download links below

premiership-ltd-statsDownload
championship-stats-ltd-statsDownload
league-1-stats-ltd-statsDownload
league-2-stats-ltd-statsDownload
mls-usa-ltd-stats-1Download
australia-a-league-ltd-statsDownload
spain-la-liga-stats-ltd-statsDownload
spain-la-liga-2-stats-ltd-statsDownload
bundesliga-stats-ltd-statsDownload

To update these files you have to refresh the queries associated with the individual files. To do this simply open the data tab on the ribbon at the top and click the refresh button in the queries and connections box as shown below

There are 4 bits of information that needs to be added manually
These are

1 Half time back odds for the home team on the betfair exchange (insert into cell D15)
2 Half Time back odds for the away team on the betfair exchange (insert into cell H15)
3 The Half Time over 0.5 goals back odds on the betfair exchange (insert into cell D16)
4 Select the favourite team from the game in Cell J1 (this has only 2 options and is a drop list)

I have created and added more workbooks Below

bundesliga-stats-ltd-stats-1Download
bundesliga-2-stats-ltd-statsDownload
bundesliga-3-stats-ltd-statsDownload
columbia-1-league-ltd-statsDownload

Creating your own Horses to Follow list

Having just belatedly received my Jumpers to follow list for the 2021/22 season (I got it at half price) I thought that following horses halfway through the season might not be an altogether bad thing as you can see how they have done so far in the season. I then got to thinking why not make my own list but not of good prospects this season which are usually aimed at big races but day to day runners which I can back to lay in-running.
The sheer volume of horses racing each day could make this a task of monumental proportions so I started to whittle down the most prevalent horses each day, concentrating on predominately front running horses. As I subscribe to The In-Running Trading Tool I can see at a glance horses that prefer to lead races and provide a good opportunity to make small but regular profits win or lose. This, however is not foolproof, and just because it ran well and the traders backed it down to odds on in-running the last two runs doesn’t mean it will do the same this time. There are many factors that will and do change how a horse will run a race such as going, distance, a jockey change or even a stable change. This latter factor may not be as prevalent as the late great Dick Francis portrays in his most excellent novels but it does happen.
Once I have a couple of good prospects for the day I can then switch over to the Timeform website and check any pace hints that they provide for the race and if the horse is mentioned I then go to the sporting Life website where I can usually watch the horses previous races to get a feel for how it ran. Having satisfied myself that I can risk a bet I will then look at the exchange – usually betfair – and look at the price changes via the provided chart to determine whether the odds are steadily drifting out or static or starting to come in and try and judge the best time to place a small bet. Once the bet is on then I continue to monitor the odds to note any changes.
Once the bet is on I will then place a lay bet at the closest “cross-over” point (Exchange cross-over points are points in the exchange range of odds where the range of odds change and betfair describe them as follows)

“There are points in the Betfair odds system that we call “crossover points”. These are around odds such as 4.0 where the tick below is 3.95 (0.05 away) and the tick above is 4.1 (0.10 away). It often makes sense to lay at odds of 4.0 as your risk is lower than your reward over the short-term.

Because of this, you often see the market pause at price changes. Support and resistance can become imbalanced too, as lots of people are keen place their lay bets. You might also see the market spike downwards if it breaks through a crossover point, as all of the layers scurry to close out of their positions.”

I place this below the backed odds and ensure that I change the Lay from “cancel” at in-play to “keep” This will ensure that my bet lay bet will still be available once the race is off.
If the back to lay trade is successful after the race has finished or in some cases before the race is actually at post time then the horse can be added to the “Follow” spreadsheet. To make things easy and to get an alert when the horse is next running I also add it to my Timeform Tracker list which I have set up to send me a “push” notification the evening before the race as well as an email.

The information that is available for your chosen horses is vast so choosing what Information to record can be overwhelming however Excel is a truly outstanding piece of software which can be utilised for as much or as little as you think is relevant.
I have provided a workbook for anyone to download and use. It is populated with 1 horse (Best Trition) and a template sheet for you.
The front page is an index page which is handy for you to summarise and quickly access the runners record as well as

back-to-lay-horses-to-follow-templateDownload

Having done all this I can now wait patiently for emails to arrive and determine the probability of a successful back to lay bet without trawling through reams of information which might sway me into a bad decision.
When you have established your “Stable” and have grown some confidence in your selections you can start to determine how far your lay bet you are willing to make away from your back bet. To help you in this I have also provided a “tick-drop” calculator. This simple spreadsheet will enable you to instantly work out the odds needed for a 10, 20 or 30 tick drop from the actual back odds taken.

betfair-tick-counter1Download

For more information on back to laying horses please read my post below

Making an Exchange Lay Bet and calculating your liability to use in your “Back to Lay” Trade

Yesterdays Front Runners

Yesterdays Front runners with their BSP and in play low and the number of ticks dropped

Wetherby11:50Top and Drop5.51.01184
Leopardstown12:05Doctor Brown Bear17.388.223
Chepstow13:05Paint The Dream8.164.822
Wetherby14:15Cornerstone lad19.35733
Chepstow14:50Hold That Taught115.131
Leopardstown14:55Coko Beach176.631
Kempton15:10Morning Vicar1414.5-1
Chepstow 15:25Getaround6.86.61
Kempton 15:40 The Widdow Maker12.373.554
Wolverhampton 16:40Aasser1.711.0170
Wolverhampton17:40Winklevi4.71.01176
Wolverhampton18:40EponinaN.R.N.R.N/A
Yesterdays Front Runners

With the exception of Morning Vicar in the 15:10 at Kempton they all traded in-play lower than their BSP.
All but 2 (Morning Vicar and Getaround) traded at least 20 ticks below BSP.