Free Sports Trading Systems

Sports Trading is a form of betting which occurs in events with usually two or occasionally three outcomes.  You are using the fluctuation in prices during an event to give you a Profit, Whatever the Outcome.  Typical examples would be a tennis match, a cricket one day international , more or less than 2.5 goals in a football match.  In each case you must be Betting in Running, i.e. betting whilst the match is in progress.  The aim is to get into a position where you will Win Whatever the Outcome of the match.

As an example, assume you are betting in a tennis match between Nalbandian and Murray.  Before the game starts the odds might be 

Murray 1.9

Nalbandian 2.12

You cannot trade at those prices.  What you can do is back Murray at 1.9, and wait till the game goes In-Play on Betfair.  At this moment, all unmatched bets are cancelled, and a new market if formed, this time the market will react almost immediately to every point in the game.  Meanwhile you can calculate what %profit you want from your trade.  To do this go to the formula worksheet in the , and enter the price you backed Murray at into cell B6, then enter the price you want to back Nalbandian at in cell C6, lets say 2.22, the %age profit is shown in cell E6, 2.38% in this case.  Now enter the stake you put on Murray into cell B7 , let's say £300, and the required stake for Nalbandian is shown in cell C7, £256.76 in this case, now all you do is go back to Betfair and place this bet on Nalbandian.  Now if at any point during the match Nalbandian's price drifts to 2.22, your bet will be matched, giving you a profit of £13.24 whoever wins the game eventually.  It's amazing how much the price fluctuates in a tennis match, and >95% of the time your bet will be matched.  Not all the time though, and that's the catch.  So, in this section are presented some trading systems which do make regular profits. 

BETFAIR API APPLICATIONS

Betfair is a great thing, but one criticism of their website is that it does not enable users to do some thing that they would like to do.  I'm talking about things like:-

1)     Fast updates of prices (every 1-2 seconds), this is fantastic during a horse race for instance

2)     Graphs showing the weight of money backing and laying a selection (guides you when to back or lay first when trading)

3)     Ability to place a bet at a certain price at a chosen time in the future - great if you don't want to sit in front of the computer waiting for a game to go in-play - although Betfair now lets you leave a bet in place when the market goes in-play in some sports (but not all !!).

4)     Automated hedging and trading, you can set up a trade out at if the market reaches a certain price (after a goal for instance)

5)     Good interface enabling rapid placing of bets, and ability to quickly scan several markets where you have an interest.  It is a major boost to me being able to do this and keep track of 7-8 markets in different sports virtually simultaneously.

I can't understand why Betfair don't make these things (and much more) available on their site, but instead they have collaborated with a variety of software companies, who have created API (Applications Programming Interface) interfaces which enable users to do these things.  The one I use and recommend is Bet Trader (from Racing Traders) .  It's cheap, easy to use, intuitive and has a free trial available.  If you are at all serious about trading then an API Interface is essential.  Bet Trader does the job nicely, is improving with every upgrade, and I recommend everyone tries the free trial to get the hang of it, and see it's potential.  It's worth buying after that for a small monthly fee if you are doing much trading. 

This is a system I have developed for cricket one day internationals, although I have now extended it to English domestic competitions.  It's simple really, you back the favourite in a one day match just before or after the start, then back the other team for a 10% profit (using the as usual) as soon as the match starts.  One slight peculiarity with cricket is that the toss can have a large bearing on the perceived outcome, so there can be some big price fluctuations in the half hour or so between the toss and the match starting, so unless you want to gamble on the toss, wait till the market settles down when the toss result is known.

Some lessons I have learned are

Avoid dead rubbers - i.e. games at the end of a series when the series is already decided - you never know who will be rested or up for the game

Avoid matches involving Pakistan - you never know when they're trying

Selections from this system will feature in the

Incidentally, I should mention that it is possible that a one day match will be tied, in which case on Betfair, bets are cancelled and the stakes are returned.  This causes a great deal of anguish on the Betfair website cricket forum when it happens

The Betfair website forum

contains loads of useful threads, plus some duds.  Respected posters are Innocent Bystander, Riccardo, Get on Massive, Troy McClure, and Bigpoppapop.  Be careful about rampers, these are people who give disinformation about the state of a match or the weather to try an influence the price.

This developed from my ODI system, and is basically the same principal.  This time we're trading in Test Matches, and in this case there are three outcomes, home win, away win or draw, which are all priced up (it is possible to have a tie as well, not the same as a draw, but there's only been two in over 100 years of test cricket so forget it)

The principal is the same as the ODI system except this time with three outcomes you need to use the spreadsheet to calculate the stakes.

Again, the toss can have a bearing, but now there is an extra complication - the weather.  In the build up to a test match the cricket forums are full of threads about the weather and the chances of it influencing the result.  There are armies of people who do nothing else other than back or lay the draw on the strength of the weather forecasts.  There's always someone on the forum claiming to live within 2 miles of the ground.  This can be highly amusing, it is rumoured that some TV cameramen are in on the scam and go to work with a small watering can to simulate rain for the viewers.  John Kettley, a formally respectable BBC weatherman now has his own private company which produces dodgy forecasts to influence the draw price.  My advice is to look at the threads for a laugh, but to ignore them completely as far as betting goes.  Just watch the money.

Anyway, back to the system.  What I do is wait until the toss has been made, let the market settle, and then back the favourite, at 1.02 * the current price.  I use a progressive staking plan described in my free   At this point use the spreadsheet (formulas) to calculate your stake on the fav.  For example if your target return is £400 and the odds I want on the fav are 2.08, then the stake will be £186.92.  One slight complication is that the calculated odds will probably not be a decimal number that you can select in Betfair odds.  I just round up to the next selectable number using the place bets box on Betfair, but leave my stake as was calculated.  Now you have to wait until the match is in-play, normally as the first ball is bowled.  At this point jump in and get your bets in on the other two selections.  Note that the fav could be either team or the draw - this doesn't matter. 

This is a low risk, low return system which can be used successfully in a number of sports.  The system works like this

1)     Pick a sport where the favourite is odds-on

        Examples are Horserace, tennis match, cricket match, snooker match, football under/over 2.5    goals.

2)     The sport must be going in-play on Betfair (indicated in their rules for each event)

3)     You must be able to get a bet on once it is in play.  This means you have to be at your     computer, or use one of the Betfair API products which support automated re-loading of unmatched bets.

4)     The staking I am using will give approximately 5% profit if the 'favourite' wins and a break even position if it gets beat.  This is actually quite easy to do, you simple back the favourite for a certain stake at the current odds, and simultaneously lay it for the same stake at 8 ticks less than the current price.

5)    With UK horse racing there is sufficient fluctuation in prices in the time from 0800 till race time that more often than not you will be fully matched before the race even starts.

Selections from this system will appear on the page

This system exploits the fluctuations in price that occur during a tennis match.  There are three things which will have a big impact on the price of the two players

1)     Break points, or even more of an impact from a confirmed break

2)     Winning a set

3)     Any sign of a player being injured and liable to retire (see my advice on this issue - )

The price fluctuations are to my eyes out of proportion compared to the actual chances of a player eventually winning or losing the game, and this is where the system comes into its own.

The rules of the system are as follows-

1)     Only bet in mens games run by the ATP, where there is in-play betting offered by Betfair.  These are easy to find just go into the tennis section of the Betfair site, click on the coupons tab, and then click on 'Today's in-play tab').

2)     Only bet in matches where the price of the favourite is between 1.30 and 1.90, if there are many matches in a day that fit the bill then tighten this to 1.50-1.70.

3)     You have to be able to put a bet on the underdog when the match goes in-play ( or use an API application to do it for you) so make a note of the start time of the match on the 'Rules' tab for the match.  CAUTION - Matches quite often do not start at the stated time, they could get delayed by weather or a previous match overrunning, so you have to be flexible enough to be able to check regularly when the match is likely to start.  You can get a clue by studying the order of play and live scores via the .

4)     Before the start of play you need to check the prices offered by all your active bookmakers by using .  You select the book offering the best price for the favourite.  You then use my trading spreadsheet to calculate your stakes.  Enter the odds for the favourite into cell i6, then calculate your required stake for the underdog, by putting odds into cell h6, gradually altering them until the net profit shown in cell k10 is 15% (or just over).  You should end up with something like what is shown below.

5)     So now you place your bet on the favourite with the chosen book (which could be Betfair, or any other of your active books), this can be done several hours before the match starts.  Then when the game goes in-play you place your bet on the underdog at the calculated trading odds.

6)     I am using a progressive staking plan for this system, which is currently at small stakes.

7)     Bets will appear each day on the

This system is a development of the 5% trading system.  In this case I simultaneously back and lay the same selection with only 1 tic difference in the price.  A typical example is in a horse race.  If the current price for a horse is 4.5 to back and 4.6 to lay, I will back it to win at 4.6 and lay it to lose at 4.5 for the same stake.  If the stake is £50 then the profit will be £5 it wins and break even if it loses.  You can do all this manually on Betfair, but using an API application such as Racing Traders makes all this very easy to do, I often operate in about 4-5 markets simultaneously.

I usually do this with all the runners in a race priced at less than 10.0 on Betfair.  It's quite easy to scalp £5 per race without really trying - because you will have had a free bet on all the runners priced at less than 10.0, if a rag wins then you lose nothing.  I only use the system in events where there is an in-play market.