The Bank of England vs San Marino
The racing looks poor today, so I’ve turned my attention to the Euro qualifiers this evening. But I can’t trade them as I am fulfilling my promise that after a long summer earning some money I’ll use the quieter part of the season to spend it. So this evening I’m taking my son to watch England thump San Marino.
The misery of watching England
When I was young I went on several school trips to Wembley but never saw England win (nothing new there) so I thought I would launch my sons England supporter career with a memorable thrashing to the bottom ranked team in the world. Ranked so low they have zero ranking points.
I was surprised to see money still available to back England yesterday, there was £0.5m available. So I took a nibble to pay for this evenings hospitality, will I regret it? While I don’t have as much data at this level, I did have a look at previous low priced matches.
What happened at previously low odds?
The only matches that cropped up regularly starting at 1.01 to lay for the home where, unsurprisingly when San Marino were playing away. Even Wales traded at 1.05 to back against San Marino. Northern Ireland started at 1.08, Slovakia 1.02, Poland 1.02, Sweden 1.10, Hungary 1.20, Moldova a meaty 1.09 (4-0 win) and Montenegro 1.01. So 1.01 for an England win, curiously, looked good value.
Sometimes looking at failures is a better way of viewing things, when did things actually go wrong? Looking at their historic results there have been few high points so we had to broaden our search to all teams at short odds. I looked at a range of matches where the home team was 1.09 or shorter to win.
The average odds were 1.05 and 95% of the times the teams did win so the market, again, was brutally efficient. The key failures on record were: –
Switzerland vs Luxembourg, Portugal vs Cape Verde, Barcelona vs Hercules, Canada vs Puerto Rico, Celtic vs Arbroath & Spain vs Finland
So all in, it would be pretty amazing for England to not see off San Marino and the reality of the situation is that if this match was played 100 times England would most likely win 100 times so you have to consider how many times would the match have to be played before England didn’t win. Maybe just by complete fluke, 120, 150? If so 1.01 is value.
From a trading perspective the thing that is likely to move the market this evening is team news. If England start with a less than full lineup the market may adjust the number of likely goals a bit but the time of the first goal or goal scorer a bit more. So I’d be looking out for that if you are trading. The 0-0 score line will plunge quickly from its starting price of 190 and may present an opportunity to trade out quickly. But of course you are pretty much accepting 100% that it will lost at some point. So that’s you call. Under 2.5 starts at 21 so that may offer a moment of insulation but larger goals targets will inevitably be more tradeable realistically.
As for me, I’ll be going hoarse cheering the 13th goal of the night!
Category: Football trading strategies
