Tag Archives: Soccer Mystic

Understanding the movement of in-play odds in the Over/Under goals Markets

Understanding the initial direction of the Over or Under goals markets on a betting exchange when the game goes in-play and the different speeds that the market moves is key to judging your risk when trading. Grasping this and understanding what happens when a goal is scored is half the battle to making profit in these markets.
As a game goes in-play the probability of a goal being scored begins to diminish when you are trading the Over goals market which means that the odds will increase as the minutes tick away. Depending on which Over market you are attempting to trade, when a goal does go in, the odds will take a very steep drop to a level where the probability of the market being fulfilled will reflect in the odds depending on what time the goal was scored. For instance If you had laid the Over 2.5 goals and the first goal went in after 5 minutes then there are 85 more minutes of the game left for the remaining 2 goals to be scored and the probability of this happening will reflect as very high and the odds will plummet to a point which would put you into a loss position in the market. If, however, the first goal wasnt scored until the 85th minute then the probability of 2 more goals being scored in the final 5 minutes is very low and the movement in the odds would be slight, if at all.
To demonstrate this visually I am going to use a smart bit of software called BetAngel and a feature in the program called “Soccer Mystic”. This will “predict” the odds during a predetermined game if or when goals are scored. There is a game tonight in the English Championship between Barnsley and Swansea City and for no other reason that it is first alphabetically will serve my purpose admirably.
At the time of posting this the predicted lay odds on the Over 2.5 goals market is 1.91. While this is just a predicted odds level at kick-off the market can be different depending on factors such as team sheet announcements, but for the purposes of this it will suit. If we say that we have a lay bet of £5.00 at odds of 1.91 this would give us a liability (total ammount we can lose) of £4.55 at kick-off. We can use “Soccer Mystic” to see our profit/loss should a goal be scored in the fifth minute. The screen shot below shows the predicted odds if no goal is scored in minute 5 and the predicted odds if there was a fifth minute goal

Barnsley v Swansea predicted odds after 5 minutes

As you can see we can determine our risk if there was a goal in the 5th minute and this would be a loss of £2.08 if we traded out. In the next screen shot Soccer Mystic also gives a visual representation of how the market “recovers” as the match progresses and can give us an indication as to when we could trade out for no loss if while watching the match we ascertain that the first goal was a fluke i.e. own goal or a lucky fumble in the box and decide to let the bet run to our predetermined exit point.

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The predicted odds are shown by the red line in the graph and as you can see after the first goal going in at the 5th minute the odds plunged to 1.34 but then as the game progresses and no other goal is scored the market recovers slowly to rise after about 35 minutes in-play time to a break even point where we can exit the trade for a no loss/profit. In the graph the horizontal blue line is the “profit” line and when we are laying the market when the red line is above the blue a profitable trade is possible.
As with all things betting or trading research is the key and you may have noticed that I mentioned a predetermined exit point. After doing some really basic research on this game tonight I came to a decision, provisionally, that the first goal probably, using previous games as a guide that perhaps, barring fluke goals, the first goal might be some time after the 17th minute. Using this as our control point we can set out exit point at 15 minutes win or lose

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In the screen shot above I have pointed the cursor at 15 minutes and in the ringed box shows us that the predicted odds after 15 minutes when the first goal was scored after 5 mins would be about 1.49. This would leave us in a losing position but if we were right and the next goal went in at minute 17 then our loss would be greater. If of course no goal was scored and we trade out at 15 minutes Soccer Mystic can show us our predicted profit as shown below.

Barnsley v Swansea 15 minute goal

I am sure you are thinking “what if I want to back over 2.5 goals ” then the opposite applies and if you had backed this market at the odds shown and a quick goal was scored then the odds would move dramatically in your favour to enable you to trade out at a profit. as shown below.

Barnsley v Swansea back bet 5 minute goal

We would exit this trade at this point for a £1.93 profit and this would be great but again when we go into this trade we need to pick an exit point and having done the same research we think that the first goal will be at about 17 minutes how far past this point do we go if no goals are scored. If we pick our exit point at say 25 minutes and no goals are scored Soccer Mystic can show us what sort of loss we would expect to take as demonstrated below

Barnsley v Swansea 25 minute goal on a back bet

As you can see an overall loss of £1.95 would be our exit loss.
To summarise if we are laying an “Over” market the odds rise steadily in our favour and continue to provide the potential profit but as soon as a goal is scored our profit potential vanishes to be replaced with the very great risk of a losing trade, on the flip side, if we back the “over” market then our position is of a losing trade until a goal goes in and the earlier the better.

Just for fun there are 7 championship matches tonight and the average time for a first goal this season in the championship league is 32 minutes the following 7 screen shots show what you could expect to win if you laid the Over 2.5 goals market and each game remained goalless until this point.

These 7 screenshots predict the odds and probable trade out profit if there were no goals in their respective games

Laying the Draw and Trading Out after the First Goal (If there is one 😱)

In this post I will be looking in depth into a popular football bet/trade “lay the draw” This bet/trade is only available to exchange users as you are betting that the match does not end in a draw. Laying or betting against an outcome of a football match, horse race or any other sporting and political event puts many punters off as the liability can be quite substantial because in effect you are acting as bookmaker to a “bet placer” for instance a losing lay bet of 6.0 at £10.00 would cost you £50.00 to the winner of the bet. Laying the draw can be somewhat safer as there is usually a winner in a football match and usually at least one team scores. If we look at a “Crowd Allowed” season of results ie a non-chinese bat flu season, 18/19 for instance there were less than 6% of games that ended 0-0 in the premier league, that is just 22 games out of 380. This of course doesn’t include score draws but all I am interested in is the games where at least one goal was scored.
If we look at the score draws for the same season (18/19) there were 32 1-1 draws 15 2-2’s, and 2 3-3’s making a total of 71 score and no-score draws.
The odds on a match draw behave with unerring predictability. From when the match kicks off the odds of a draw steadily decrease down to 1.01 at ful time unless a goal is scored whereby the odds jump with varying degrees depending on which team score. If the favourite scores first and early in the game then the draw odds will jump significantly allowing a profitable trade to be reaped. If however the “underdog” scored first and were the away side then the draw odds would not move much if at all.
To illustrate this, and with the kind permission of the support staff at Betangel, the following screen shots utilise the “soccer mystic” feature of their software.
I am using the match between PSG and Lille tonight where PSG are odds on favourites to win at 1.41 at the time of writing.

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Soccer Mystic quite accurately predicts the odds of football matches when goals are scored and in the screenshot above you can see that if Lille were to score first in the first 15 minutes then the draw odds would actually go DOWN instead of up as in the case of PSG scoring first. This tells us that if this were the case then the market would believe that a draw was even more likely to happen than if there were no goals scored. Trading out after the first goal then would, in this case, be extremely detrimental to the health of our betfair account balance. These odds however would slowly decrease still until perhaps 2/3 of the game and only then would they start to increase slowly during the match so long as PSG didn’t score. How likely is that???
This is illustrated by the graph shown below (another great feature of soccer mystic)

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It would actually take about 50 minutes of game time before the odds began to move favourably and 82 minutes before we could look at taking a profit. This is of course if PSG dont score a goal in the meantime.
This is a worst case scenario and the purpose of this post is to determine whether or not laying the draw is a viable strategy. “Blanket” laying all the 3’oclock Saturday premiership fixtures in any one week to a £10.00 stake would need an account balance in excess of £200.00 and that is just for the 5 games usually kicking off at this time.
How then can we reliably hope to make a profit from this strategy. The answer is research.
If we take tonight’s fixture between QPR and Nottingham Forest the odds of the draw are 3.6 to make a straight lay bet which will create a £26.00 liability for our £10.00 stake. (this means we would win £10.00 for a result other than a draw or if the game ended level we would lose £26.00)
If we remember that we are going to trade out our bet after the first goal we can look at the average times that these two teams scored their first goals. The following screenshot is from Soccerstats.com and shows the timings of goals both for and against when the teams were playing at home and away respectfully.

We can see that both teams score most of their goals in the second half but QPR do like to concede in the first half having 71% of goals scored against them this season happen in the first 45 minutes. Both teams have scored in all of their respective home and away games so we can tentatively look at what profit we can gain from laying this draw and trading out or “greening” once a first goal has been scored by either team. Betangel will be our guide for this again and the match is covered by soccer mystic. Using the predicted odds feature, if the first goal was scored by QPR then the odds would rise to about 5.1 to 5.2 up to the 60th minute which would give us a greened up profit of about £3.00 for our £10.00 stake. If Nottingham were to score first then our profit would levitate at about £1.60 in the same time frame. After 60 minutes, apart from the rusty starfish starting to clench due to the diminishing number of minutes left, our profit equalises if either team scores reaching a dizzying £8.97 profit in minute 90 – At this point you would cancel the trade instruction and take your tenner hoping against hope that the opposition didn’t score.
In this instance I will be testing a downloadable file from the betangel forum in practice mode which will automatically place a lay bet at kick off and trade out for an equal profit/loss, if and when the first goal is scored. I will post the resulting conclusion here after the match.
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