Betting stats are critical when it comes to choosing which matches to trade on Betfair. No one has a crystals ball when it comes to predicting sport, but, following team statistical and watching form certainly helps tip the balance in the favour of a Betfair trader.
What is it that needs to go into the mixer for successful bet trading?
Match selection for a draw trading strategy on Betfair
Match selection using goals for and against stats, corner stats and goal scorer stats. For instance, Jamie Vardy has been a prolific shot taker at Leicester City so far. Currently top scorer in the Barclays Premier League with 9 goals. Apart from being a good anytime goals scorer bet, Vardy, can help traders. With Vardy’s goal scoring prowess Leicester City matched against the right opponents make excellent ‘lay the draw’ trading opportunities.
By checking Leicester City’s fixtures Betfair traders should find some interesting opportunities when playing the right opponents. The right opponents should have the following characteristics; to be further down the league than Leicester, to have conceded more goals on average than Leicester. Features like these affect the dynamics of how the odds will move during the match. To secure a profit a trader needs the odds for the draw to move higher than the entry odds (lay low and back high). If the opposing team concede a goal first the market will expect that Leicester will win and the odds should swing higher than the entry odds no matter how much time has passed.
Exit strategy
Equally important, a good exit strategy will reduce loosing trades and the amount of losses. Using the example above. As time passes with no goal being scored the odds of a draw will drop. How fast this happens depends on the game itself. If you have someone like Vardy playing well and looking for goal opportunities the odds may take longer to drop (expectation of a goal is enough to stop the odds dropping). The question is how long should you wait for a goal to be scored? You can base this on time or on how much loss you have made. Personally I prefer exiting a trade when the loss hits a preset amount. Exiting after a set period of time would exclude opportunities to profit from the trade.
Time of first goal
The time of first goal statistic is useful for knowing when to enter a trade. If the average first goal time for a team is after 30 minutes then a trader may want to avoid trading for the fist 15 minutes. This avoids the odds dropping too far.
