Trading smarter not harder is surely sound advice for Betfair traders.  Successful football trading on Betfair involves as much time carefully selecting which matches to trade as it does actually trading the game.  We have been running an experiment on trading the draw in Premiership football matches.  It has worked well.  The ideas behind this bet trading strategy can be found in this post.   This post will help readers who don’t understand swing trading on Betfair.

A careful and thorough selection strategy is used to select the best games to trade the draw on Premiership football.

What football games look good for Bet Trading?

Two upcoming games look good.  Starting with the highest confidence game first.

Manchester City V Sunderland, Saturday March 31, 2012 Kick off: 15:00

Manchester City are the likely winners, but, as traders we don’t really care who wins.  Trading the draw all we care about is that there will be goals scored. If the favourite scores first the trade will be profitable and if the underdog scores first there will be a small loss.

Let’s look at the head to head stats to see why this game is worth trading.

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• Man City have a massive home team advantage.
• Man City have won their last 5 games.
• For every goal Man City concede they score nearly 6.  They let in just half a goal per game.
• Sunderland on the other hand concede more than one goal per game and score just one goal for every goal they let in.
• It is a ‘must win’ game for Man City if they want to win the Premiership title.
• The stadium is sold out and there will be a lot of Man City fans cheering them on.
• There is a 85% chance that the game will not be a draw based on games from the current season.

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Although it’s still not a dead cert.  Man City where held to a draw in their last game against stoke.  Not such a bad thing if Man City scored first which would allow a trader to exit for a quick profit.  Which would be what I recommend.  Man City didn’t score first and Stoke did.  In this case a good exit strategy needs to be used to reduce the losses.  Traders who are very good at reading a game ‘in play’ may want to base decisions about whether to exit quickly or wait for better odds on how well the teams are playing (only a good idea if you know your football).

Trading recommendation

Lay the draw during the first 10 minutes.  What for City to score and exit for a profit. More experienced Betfair traders might want to do the following. If everything goes according to plan and City look like they are dominating: exit half the trade value for a profit and leave the remaining half as a live trade, to produce a larger profit if City go on to win the game.

Queens Park Rangers  V Arsenal, Saturday March 31, 2012 Kick off: 15:00

Arsenal enter this game on the back of decent performance in Europe, in the FA Cup and the Premiership.  Arsenal are at the top of the table whereas QPR are at the bottom.  Here are the head to head stats that suggest that Arsenal, as favourites, should go a goal up allowing the trader to profit from placing an early lay bet on the draw.

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• Most of Arsenal’s Premiership games produce more than 2 goals.
• Arsenal score half a goal more than QPR on average.
• Arsenal have a massive away team rating at the moment.
• QPR concede more corners than Arsenal.
• Arsenal have no major injuries other than Wilshire.
• On balance QPR have more injury problems.
• There is an 80% chance that the game will not produce a draw using stats from the current season.

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It’s not all going Arsenal’s way.  Arsenal actually concede more goals than QPR by a small margin. Other than that most things go in Arsenal’s favour.

Trading recommendation

Lay the draw and exit for a profit as soon as Arsenal score.  If QPR score first wait a little in order to minimise the loss and exit. The odds for the draw will decrease by a small amount as you wait, depending on how well Arsenal recover.

Which game to trade?

This all depends on how much money there is to trade.  Man City V Sunderland looks like the better game.  The expected goal difference is more than with QPR v Arsenal.  Traders may want to take the money they would have traded on Man City v Sunderland and split it 50:5o with trading QPR v Arsenal to reduce the risk of trading just one match.

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