Betfair trading strategies – Moore of this, please

Goodwood or ‘Greywood’ 2017

Glorious Goodwood should have been renamed Greywood at the start of the 2017 festival. In my 20 years of sports trading, I really hadn’t seen such poor weather at Goodwood. All this on what should have been a glorious week on the Sussex Downs. It had the feeling that it may throw up an interesting trading market on Betfair. But it didn’t happen in quite the way I imagined.

But it was notable for one particular day. A day that brought a trade that a lot of people picked up on and a trade that lit up an otherwise really dull week! It’s one of my favourite Betfair trading strategies and it’s typically something you see at a major meeting like the Goodwood festival.

Weather impact

But first, that weather in 2017! It was a nightmare, especially for in-running Betfair traders, who couldn’t even see the action for most of the time.

The weather had a huge impact on the Goodwood racing in 2017 and produced a below-par performance from me and from the markets. I’d imagine most attendees on course spent most of their time hiding from the incessant rain and the bookies saw much less of their cash. That no doubt had an impact on the underlying activity on the Betfair betting exchange markets.

We were treated, however, to another jockey gamble. As I’ve often highlighted before it’s one of the best Betfair trading strategies that you can deploy in horse racing markets. In a nutshell, here is how it panned out. It was the highlight of the entire week and worth waiting for.

Ryan Moore, produces the trade of a decade

13:50 – The day started with a moderate trade on the favourite ridden by Ryan Moore. ‘Poets World’ had its price held up at 3.00 under a lot of pressure which eventually broke and set off a mini move to the low 2.80’s.

14:25 – The appropriately named ‘Beat the bank’ was the favourite and also ridden by Moore. It set off a carbon copy trade of the first race. Moore rode that to a win.

I waited eagerly for the surge of money, but if never really came. It did for a bit but not in any strength. The race was a competitive handicap so it sort of made sense that people didn’t go crazy for the next runner, but it was a little disappointing. Maybe the rain had kept the punters indoors and drunk enough to not spot the ‘opportunity’. The horse went off more or less where it started before the prior winner.

15:35 – Moore wasn’t watching the market however and stormed home to another winner, at big odds this time. That was enough for the floodgates to open. About two furlongs out I had the tweeted prepared and as he edged the horse over the line I hit enter.

Of course, the resultant move may not have been confirmed in the market. But fairly quickly it was obvious that every mother and their son was piling in on the next Moore runner. As we approached post time the market was getting really hot and a confirming message gave everybody a clear message on the market’s intentions.

Let’s hope it’s not too long before we see an opportunity like this again, it was great fun and a highlight of the 2017 meeting.

Watch the video for a detailed narrative of what happened that day!