Category: Football trading strategies
Betfair football trading – Profiting from knockout stages
Knockout Stages of Champions League
February brings the knockout stages of the European Champions League. The group stages tend to eliminate weaker teams from the tournament. The remaining, generally higher quality teams, know they are a few matches away from a shot at the glory of the champions league title. It’s all or nothing from here!
Fewer matches occur at this stage and the liquidity in the markets is focused on the remaining markets. So overall matched betting totals on …
Betfair trading – Football trading – Who scores first?
Watch a football match and often you will see the outsider team take a ‘shock’ lead according to most sources, but how often does the away team score first?
Goals
Football is a, generally, a low scoring contest. Not only that, you can have a lot of shots and still not score. The chance of a goal from a statistical perspective is interesting because goals are ‘rare’. This lends itself to seeing away teams taking a ‘shock’ lead more often …
Trading the FA Cup
It’s the FA Cup third round this weekend and marks just over halfway point in the season.
Has the FA Cup lost it’s ‘magic’?
If you are talking about a smaller club meeting up with a goliath, then perhaps not. But it may be that the smaller club faces a diminished version of said goliath. As they say, Money talks and it doesn’t say much in the FA Cup, apart for smaller teams.
Win a game in the second round …
Predicting goals – Part one
To get some context into this post read the goal ratings thread…
When you’re looking at a football match, goals are obviously of great importance. Every strategy you deploy on a football match is reliant to some extent on whether a goal is scored or not.
Starting point
The first place to start when you trading in football is to work out if you think there will be a goal, obviously.
Low scoring rates
High quality matches between even teams, …
Trading Football on Betfair – Trading under 2.5 goals
The Soccer Mystic profiling tool is a way to help identify opportunities and give you that all important edge when trading soccer matches – it’s packed with a number of features to assist you when trading any of the Match odds, Over/Under or Correct Score markets and will help you pin point what times to get into and out of positions for the most value.
If you prefer the Over/Under markets then Soccer Mystic can offer you some invaluable help, …
How to win the Premier League
As the new season is upon us all football fans up and down the country will no doubt have fresh hopes about what the season will bring. Transfers have been done and hopes raised. But what is it that makes a team successful? What is the most defining characteristic?
The defining characteristic
As is well known, a lot of club revenue gets spent on wages to attract top players. This is in the hope that buying talent buys performances. Quite …
Are Arsenal getting better or worse?
Arsenal to finish fourth and win the FA Cup? Maybe not this year then, so it’s Wenger out?
Financial fair play?
I look at many different aspects of football aside from the general market pricing. Being able to read a financial report, a club’s financials can be quite useful for predicting long-term performance. Clubs that carry a lot of debt expense will see their ability to finance the purchase of new players squeezed. Clubs that are flush with finance can …
The footy season – My general approach
Now the football has started again, here is an insight into how I approach the whole season.
Off-season
During off season I am most active on research and new information for the next season. I gather a huge amount of data during the season and during the off-season I analyse it to take ideas forward to the next season. Same story this year.
I started analysing football matches in the 80’s, so I tend to focus on very specific problems …
What’s working in Euro 2016
As we move into the knockout stage, let’s review what’s happened in the Euro’s so far from a market perspective.
Turnover
The first thing to note is that the volumes are down a fair bit from Euro 2012 on Betfair. In 2012 in the group stages the lowest turnover match was £7.7m before the off and £17.8m at the end of the match. This year it was a paltry £1.6m and £3.3m, slightly lower than in 2012! I think it’s …
Finding an Edge in Football Markets using Soccer Mystic
How can you to find an edge and profit from Soccer markets? The answer is as the title suggests with the use of Soccer Mystic, a profiling tool which is included as part of Bet Angel Professional.
If you have never used or even heard of Soccer Mystic then now is the time to give it a try.
What is Soccer Mystic and what exactly does it do??
Soccer Mystic is a module included with Bet Angel Professional that profiles …
Are England just unlucky? No!
When brushing up for the Euro’s I had a good look at prior records to see if there were any trends. One of things that stood out was England’s terrible opening game record.
Since this Euro’s started in 1960 England have never won their opening game, a proud record that was upheld yesterday. So in 15 competitions spanning 52 years. It will be at least 56 years before England win their opening game of the tournament, possibly more. An amazing …
Interesting statistics for the FA Cup Fi-nil
So the FA Cup final is upon us and, rather predictably, the final has delivered us two premiership teams. But what will the match deliver? Is that going to be as predictable as well?
While today’s match may throw off differing characteristics based on what I saw of Palace last weekend, I’ve delved back over a number of years to see if I can unlock some prevailing trends.
History has shown us, the FA Cup is no particular respecter of …
Last match could be the most interesting
If you keep your eyes open, opportunities can occur from the strangest of circumstances.
On Sunday May 15th, 2016 we faced an interesting final day in the English Premiership season. The title and relegation battles had already been settled. But there was still the qualification for European competition to decide.
Qualification
Most of the focus was on Man City, Man Utd, West Ham, Southampton and Liverpool. Some could qualify for Champions league football, some for Europa league football.
You also …
Will Leicester really stuff the bookies?
Lot’s of PR, sorry, I mean talk, from the bookies recently about how much they will pay out if Leicester win the title. But is that a reality?
My worst bet ever!
Here is a confession – I will lose money if, when, Leicester win the title. But I have to say it will be one of the most enjoyable losses of my career! Why, because it’s great to see a competitive season in the premiership. As a supporter of …
Discounted opinion in sports trading
Here is a little-discussed aspect of trading, discounted opinion. First let’s explore what it is?
Discounted opinion pre off
When a market is formed everybody has had a prod a what the odds should be. In some markets, this is obvious; in others less so. But generally, a convergence appears. Unless there is any significant change, that’s the way the market stays until the event starts.
Discounted opinion in-play
When the market gets underway, an opinion forms and the odds …
Echo’s of 77
Leicesters heroics this season echo me back to a period in English football when the impossible happened. The 1977/78 season.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977%E2%80%9378_Football_League
Liverpool were the dominant team and had been for some time. Then out of nowhere popped Brian Clough and Nottingham Forest to storm to the title.
Of course back then things were a bit different and teams didn’t have £1bn to spend on a squad. So success now would be even more remarkable.
More remarkable about that period was …
Hope the Cheltenham trials are rubbish :)
Sorry for the provocative headline, but I’m not able to trade today. It will be the first time in over a decade that I will miss the highlight of January. So I hope it’s rubbish 😉
If you are trading however, good quality racing will great you today at Cheltenham, Doncaster and Fairyhouse; it should be a good day.
I’ve traditionally done well on this day and would hope that it lives up to expectations. I’ll be keeping in touch …
Option to profit
Been nosing at the Derby vs. Man Utd FA Cup this evening with interest.
Man United are about evens for the match and playing away. This struck a chord with me.
First off, everybody knows how bad Man Utd have been recently. Their last 11 home games at half time have been 0-0,0-0,0-0,0-0,0-0,0-0,0-1,0-0,0-0,0-0,0-0. OK they are away and at a team a division lower, but confidence is obviously fragile. If Derby want to make things difficult, especially tactically, they can.…
Can Leicester qualify for the champions league?
Did you know, Leicester have been here before? Read on….
Analytics
The thing I love about the modern football analytics movement is there are increasing amounts of, free, data out there that will help you make good, sensible, rational decisions. Far more than I could have ever imagined.
It’s a long way from when I wrote to a magazine in the 80’s about in-play football and the editors response was that he couldn’t see how it would interest anybody.
Quite …
FA Cup third round shocks
Ah, the romance of the FA Cup
The romance bit comes from a non league team coming up against a major club and beating them. But the evidence for regular giant killings is getting a little thin on the ground. But the third round and confidence can make a huge difference.
Small teams and progression
In 2014 we had Sheffield United getting all the way to the semi finals and of course in 2013 Wigan ensured the demise of Mancini’s …
Are you getting a duff price?
Had an interesting conversation with somebody recently about how they can’t use the exchange any longer because the prices on the sports book were much better.
Here is why he realised he had made a mistake: –
Industry pricing for football
The first thing to note is that industry prices on football are much tighter than they used to be. I’ll have to dig out some very old prices to see what they were in the distant past, but typically …
Incentive to score and how it benefits your trading
That one word is how I would describe the next two evenings worth champions league matches.
Some teams will have a big incentive to score, others to not lose and others no incentive to do anything at all. If a team needs a goal, as the clock ticks to the end of the match all hell could be let loose as they chase it. It’s my favourite stage of a any competition!
Difficult and easy
This often makes it difficult …
Finding value in Football matches
Yesterday I posted the following:-
There were a number of reasons I said I was looking for some upsets, far too complex for one blog post. But one of the things was confidence. Not confidence in my ability, that’s not a problem :), but more confidence within the teams playing each other. It looked fairly ripe for an upset or two. Therefore I was looking to lay (and / or trade) with that in mind. I was opposing the …
Saturday Soccer Stats
These stats are brought to your by our friends over at Football Form Labs. Check out their site and the powerful software that sits behind these comments. Football form labs is on offer at the moment, big savings available during August.
Editorial notes: –
A couple of interesting bits this week, the match preview of Spurs vs Liverpool (I do wonder whether we will see the new manager effect come to the fore here) and some interesting analysis …
Spreadsheets alone can’t win games
When John Henry took over Liverpool football club I was intrigued to see how things would pan out.
I had known for a number of years that Liverpool had net underspent in comparison to their peer group in the Premier league. This meant that they were likely to start slipping down the league as their competitors had much more fire-power when it came to the transfer market. I often detail this knowledge at the start of each season and you …
Why trading works so well – On football
With the champions league football starting up again, I thought I’d take a look at football at a simple level and explain why trading works so well, using football as an example.
First off a simple maths lesson.
Finding value
When you look at odds on Betfair, they refer to the implied chance of that event occurring. If we saw Manchester United priced at 2.00, we simply divide one by those odds and it produces the implied probability of that …
Free money
With today’s incredibly short priced international football mismatches, I thought I’d review just what has happened in the past on matches where the odds are incredibly short. The results may surprise you.
First I looked at the real shorties in our database. We found 19 matches with decent data that went off at 1.01 for the home win, all 19 ended up as home wins. Indeed you needed to head out to 1.04 to find Luxembourg’s shock win in Switzerland …
Saturday Soccer Stats
These stats are brought to your by our friends over at Football Form Labs. Check out their site and the powerful software that sits behind these comments. Football form labs is on offer at the moment, big savings available during August.
Arsenal v Newcastle, Sat 12:45
Newcastle picked up a point at Old Trafford last weekend but while they had a chance to win the match late on they conceded several great chances and against an Arsenal team that …
Football is getting more boring
I’ve been doing a lot of work on football markets recently. Once the evening horse racing is out of the way, I’ll start turning my attention to football properly. At the moment I am dabbling and revisiting old material and updating new stuff for the season ahead. I’ll miss the odd opportunity, but I always feel the need to improve on prior years.
I was browsing goal data today and thought I’d have a look at how goals have changed …
The curious story behind Brentford & Midtjylland
Midtjylland meet Southampton this evening in the Europa league. When Saints drew Vitesse in the last round I wasn’t pleased they had drawn the top seeded side. As the draw came out for the next round I had have an eye on Midtjylland. Sods law dictated that they were immediately paired with Southampton. Why my interested in this club? For that you need to look to Matthew Benham.
Benham is an Oxford gradute turned pro gambler. He has fingers …
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