If there’s one thing I love about betting, it’s the ease with which you can experiment.
I test other people’s systems all the time — it’s kind of the point of the site! — but, like everyone else probably, I always like to think I could do as well if I applied myself. 🙂
So: there’s an idea that’s been playing around in my mind forever. That I never quite got round to trying out before.
I’ve no idea if it will work of course.
But I’m intrigued as it came from a very odd source.
In fact, possibly the single most unlikely source you could imagine.
Someone from Betfair rang me up and suggested it!
The point of the call was, ostensibly, a standard customer service affair.
Would I mind giving ten minutes of my time to give my views in response to a questionnaire? And did I like the new Betfair interface? (Well, it was new then).
I didn’t know Betfair did this.
I’d not had a call like it beforehand and I’ve never had one from them since.
And frankly, for the first few minutes, I found it all a bit wooden and awkward.
But then it happened.
The guy on the phone got to the end of his spiel and started ‘freewheeling’. Asking what I was betting on these days, that kind of thing.
I wondered for a bit if he’d been reading the website but he didn’t mention it.
Anyway, I couldn’t help myself. So I asked him…
“Are staff at Betfair allowed to place their own bets?”.
And, somewhat to my surprise, he said yes, they could. And, in response to my inevitable follow-up, yes, he did.
And he was making a lot of money with his own little system.
Seriously, it would have been rude not to.
So I asked him… would he tell me about it?
And, little by little, he did.
What he went on to describe was the world’s simplest trading system.
In a sentence: the idea is to find football teams that meet certain criteria (which I won’t go into at the moment) then trade the Over 4.5 Goals market.
So I’m going to give it a go.
How could I not!?
I’ll do ten trades to start with, assuming I can find teams that match his criteria.
And I’ll start tonight… with Swansea City v Stoke City.
I’ve just layed Over 4.5 Goals for odds of 8 with the grand sum of £2. Meaning I have a liability of precisely £14.
I will aim to make 30% on average per trade.
And I’ll record my results as comments below this article.
Let’s see if my Betfair guy was really on to something… 🙂
Lucy
notify please
Remarkably, today’s programme for the Premier League and the Championship produce just a single match – MK Dons versus Hull City.
As ever, we’re trading the >4.5 Goals market: I have entered a lay bet at 11 for £2 and a back bet to go in-play at 16.5, with a stake of £1.36.
Here’s hoping we get back on track..
🙂
I apologise in advance, I don’t mean to appear hyper critical. I love your whole site and your information is amazing, in fact it’s the love of the information that made me comment on this post in the first time.
I just can’t see this working at all. You have a massive liability for what is a reasonably small profit. So far this season 13.6% of matches have resulted in >4.5 goals, 14/15 season 11.04% , 13/14 season 16.58% and the 12/13 season 15%. It is worth noting as well that the 14/15 season had a lower rate of average goals per match than the last 7 seasons (2.57 as opposed to 2.78ish) So I suspect that it is the outlier in the set and may well have contributed to something of this ilk being profitable last season.
That was why I harped on the actual profit, which I accept varies but at a glance appears to be around 5% of your liability.
IT seems that either you are hoping your selection criteria can remove 2/3 of the matches that end >4.5 goals scored. And if it could surely you are losing value in trading out, and should be really just straight betting it.
Or that 2/3 of the matches that end >0.5 at some point trade at a price above your profit threshold price.
More realistically a combination of them both. But even then, you’d need to have backed every EPL match so far this season, and removed 5 (and only those 5 matches) and had 5 of the remaining 10 matches get to a point where you could trade out merely to break even so far this season.
As far as simple systems go it’s interesting, but I can not see any way for it to possibly work.
Dan,
Thanks for your comments. I can understand them, really!
I think one of the key ideas is that goals clump together, so there are long periods when the price should drift out and allow a trade to be closed.
I’m plodding on with my test anyway!
Two matches this weekend:
Sunderland v Southampton
Man United v West Bromwich
Lucy
how is this trial going lucy, many bets have you completed so far?
Paul
I’ve completed 13 trades and am £5.50 down, needing 8 or 9 more winning trades just to break even.
In short, not great so far but at least today’s two trades came up!
Will upload results log soon.
Plodding on!
Lucy
Thats the trouble with betting at long odds on – you need a lot of winners to recover from the odd loss. 🙁
Ok I’m back now that the International break is over with a selection from the Championship.
Preston vs Blackburn is available in the Over 4.5 Goals market at 12.5 so I’ve layed that this morning. Will back in-play as usual to lock in our profit.
Did this go any further Lucy? Any success?
I ask because I was reading about a system on Profit Ninja’s where one of the members backs the under 3.5 and lays when he’s made 10%. The liability is only the bet and if there is an early goal it is still possible to get out with a small loss or possibly even profit later in the game. This could also be applied to the under 4.5 market.
I might have a play with this myself. I did the same thing some time ago with the under 2.5 but a goal is a killer in that instance whereas you do have a bit more wriggle room with the 3.5 or 4.5 markets.
Hi Lucy,
I’ve been recording and playing with some stats and I’m interested in trying something laying O3.5G or possibly O4.5G depending on liablility. Was there anything in the method you were trying here and are you able expand a little on what criteria was used to decide whether to trade or not..
MArtin
Sadly, this one fizzled out.
Inevitably, even short losing runs proved costly and I gave up. It was such a shame as the source of the suggestion was so appealing…
Lucy