Winning Football Trading Strategies for Betfair Traders

A man sat in front of his laptop and punching the air after making a football trading profit on Betfair.

Over the past few years, there has been a huge shift from the old way of betting at a bookie to football trading online.

There are a number of reasons for this. Not least is the fact that bookies are trimming margins finer than ever and restricting profitable accounts much more quickly.

That makes profitable football betting increasingly difficult to achieve. After all, even the most successful football betting systems struggle when you can't get bets on!

Technology is also playing a part. Most of us now have fast internet connections, mobile devices and access to websites which help us to stay in touch with football matches all over the world.

Betting exchanges - such as Betfair, Smarkets and Matchbook - mean that trading football markets is easier than ever.

Finally, we have the simple fact that trading is more profitable. The best football betting system is no match for a skilled football trader. The challenge, of course, is finding Betfair trading systems that work so that you can take full advantage.

Over the next few minutes, I will explain how football trading differs from betting, how to start out with Betfair football trading strategies and how you can aim to trade football for a living. It's not easy to achieve, but it's not as difficult as you think either.

I'll also give you a FREE football trading strategy so you can get started today!


What is Football Trading?

Football trading is in-play betting on football matches via a betting exchange, such as Betfair. Football traders take advantage of predictable price movement, entering once the match has started, exiting before it has finished or both.

As well as being able to back teams at better prices, with trading you're able to lock in profits and avoid the agony of late goals spoiling your bet. There are lots of Betfair strategies that work and I'll share a few of them with you shortly.

From a Betfair trading point of view, a football match is nothing more than a 90 minute stock market.

Let’s say that Dave is a financial trader looking to buy shares in Coca-Cola. He checks the financial history of the company, strength of the competition, current market conditions and so on.


Based on all the data he can find, Dave makes an informed judgement about future profit and growth potential. He looks at the share price and, if it shows some value, he decides to buy.


If Coca-Cola release some good news – perhaps a new flavour which starts selling very well – the price rises and Dave can sell his shares.


The difference between the price Dave bought his shares at and the price he sold them for is his profit.

Switch out Coca-Cola for Manchester City and the same criteria apply.

Football trading is no different from trading the stock market, except it's condensed into 90 minutes.

As a football trader, Dave checks previous performance, strength of the opposition, recent form and any other useful statistics that he can find.


In exactly the same way, he makes an informed judgement about Manchester City’s likely performance in their next match and looks for value in the various markets.


It may be that Dave expects Manchester City to score the first goal of the game during the first half. He then has a number of markets he can choose to trade in; match odds, next goal, half-time score and many more.

Each of these markets lasts for a maximum of 90 minutes and Dave will know the outcome of his investment when the final whistle blows. It’s as if a stock market has been condensed into a very small amount of time.

As a football trader, you have complete control over your risk/reward. There are a number of ways that you can adjust your positions in-play depending on goals, cards, substitutions and even time decay. I will explain what this is shortly.


How do Betting Exchanges Work?

A traditional bookmaker offers punters the chance to back various outcomes. It might be the home team to win, over 2.5 goals, a particular player to score, or any one of dozens of other options at prices set by the bookie.

However, at a betting exchange it is the punters who set the prices on both sides of the book. In other words, you can choose to back an outcome as if you were using a traditional bookmaker or go opposite and lay it.

That's right, you can do what the bookies do!
 
Backing then laying  - or laying then backing - is how Betfair traders make their profit. Once you can accurately predict which way a betting market is likely to move, how much and when, you will be able to make money from it.

Don't worry, I'm going to explain exactly how Betfair trading strategies work and show you some real-life examples.

Betfair betting exchange Match Odds market for the English Premier League

Here's an example of the Betfair betting exchange

If you're new to all this, I have explained betting exchanges in much more detail here including back and lay betting, betting exchange commission, Betfair's Premium Charge and more.


Why do Betfair Prices Move?

Price movement is all you need to make money with football trading. The only challenge is that you need to figure out which prices are going to move and in which direction so that you can "buy" or "sell" in the football stock market.

There are three main reasons why betting exchange prices move in-play:

Time Decay

This is the process of prices reducing over time.

Goals

Goals change games and they affect prices too.

Red Cards

Red cards often cause betting exchange markets to overreact.

Time DecayYou may well have seen a very low 0-0 price towards the end of a football match and that's because there's not much time for either of the teams to score a goal. Because it's so likely in this situation that the match will end 0-0, the price is low even though it might have been very high at kick-off.

If there are no goals in the first half, 0-0 will often be around a third of the price it was at kick-off. The price continues to tick down as the second half progresses and hits 1.01 at the final whistle.

GoalsFor example, if a match kicks off with the home team priced at 2.00 to win and they take the lead, they are now more likely to win the game and the price drops accordingly.

The price of 2.00 converts to 50% probability of a home win. At 1-0, perhaps the probability of a home win rises to 75% which makes the price now 1.33. That's quite a drop!

If you tap this scenario into our hedging calculator, you will see that from a £100 back of the home win at 2.00 you will now be able to lock in £50.38 profit (before commission) no matter what the final result.

Red CardsMany fans think that a team with 10 men will automatically go on to lose by a large number of goals, but traders know very differently.

A 10-man team may sit back to defend, especially if the score is level. It's not very easy to break down a well organised defence when a team has 11 men and it's not that much easier against 10 either.

The market, however, usually moves in favour of the team with 11 men and sometimes that isn't helpful.

Personally, I don't trade matches with red cards.

There are so many fixtures played worldwide that I can quite happily avoid taking any unnecessary risks. If a match I'm already trading has a red card, I try to scratch (exit the trade for no profit or loss) and move on to the next opportunity.

A football referee holding up a red card

Price movement also occurs before matches even kick off. There's no chance of a goal going in to move the market and no time decay, so pre-match trading strategies (also known as 'scalping') rely on other factors.

One of the most popular scalping strategies revolves around team news.

If Chelsea's top scorer isn't playing, for example, the markets will move once thenews breaks. While we know that Chelsea will name another international striker to play in his place, the markets react and present an opportunity to 'scalp' some profit.

When playing a lesser team, Chelsea will be expected to win anyway and the Match Odds market won't tend to move too much. However, the Over 2.5 Goals market may see a bigger shift.

Pre-match trading is especially profitable during early cup rounds when team news is announced.

If one of the elite Premier League teams is drawn against opposition from League Two, they will often field a weakened team. Once the market becomes aware, prices move and there are profits to be made.

Without significant inplay events such as goals, pre-match prices are much steadier but they do shift up and down.

Also, there is less risk so traders can use much larger stakes and some even use their entire bank.

Pre-match markets generally don't move too much and most 'scalping' strategies rely on making a tick or two of profit. The challenge - as always - is knowing which way the Betfair prices will move.

At Goal Profits, we have a 'Pre-Match Scalping Module' tool which monitors upcoming fixtures, tracks prices and identifies moving markets. Having all of that information on one page makes pre-match trading much easier and quicker.

Pre-Match Scalping Module

All Goal Profits members are given the opportunity to try out our Pre-Match Scalping Module for free.


Best Football Trading Strategies

Most new traders believe that they just need to buy a good football trading strategy and then they will make a lot of money.

Unfortunately, it's not quite as simple as that.

Think about it... if profitable football trading was so easy, then you wouldn't go to work on Monday morning! You'd be sat at home, pulling money out of Betfair like it's a magic ATM. But you don't do that, do you? Nobody does!

Amazingly, some people still fall for the promises of easy riches.

There are lots of shady characters online. They will tell you that they have unlocked various football trading 'secrets' which has allowed them to develop amazing trading strategies, so now sports trading for a living is no longer a dream and so on.

Don't fall for that rubbish!

While there are certainly low-risk football trading strategies, there's no such thing as a football betting system which never loses.

You will probably come across websites which try to claim otherwise, but ask yourself... if no mathematician has ever worked out a way to avoid losing footy trades, then how come a normal guy managed it in his spare time while working a 9-5?

It's just not believable in the real world.

A sign which points to "Success" and "Failure" in opposite directions.

The truth is that in order to be a successful football trader, you need to learn and develop a range of skills over time. Patience, discipline, bank management and all that other 'boring' stuff is just as important as finding the strategies which work for you.

And that's another thing... we're all different!

Some traders are quite aggressive and like to go for bigger profits, knowing that there will be a lot of smaller losses along the way. However, most beginners cannot handle that at all and need to see regular profits to feel comfortable.

Part of the learning experience is discovering what sort of a trader you are, then building a portfolio of strategies around that. You're not going to work it out right away, so try out lots of different strategies and it will fall into place.

Let's take a quick look at a few types of popular football trading strategy.


Lay the Draw Trading

Lay the draw (LTD) is the most popular in-play trading strategy and one that just about every football trader uses regularly.

Very simply, you place a lay bet on the draw and, once the favourite scores a goal, the draw price rises. This is because the favourite is now leading and more likely to go on to win the game. The draw is less likely, so the price is higher.

At this point, you can close out your trade for a profit. Even if the match ends in a draw, your profit is already in the bank.

When I first started trading, I would use lay the draw almost exclusively. However, LTD profits were so easy that its popularity went through the roof. As more and more Betfair traders jumped on the bandwagon, profit margins were squeezed.

When you have too many people wanting to back the draw after a goal is scored, market liquidity runs out and prices fall. That affected my profitability and meant it was more difficult to cover the losses which occurred from time to time. 

Betfair markets are always evolving and this was my first experience of it. I certainly didn't want to stop using such a fantastic strategy, I just needed to find a better way.

Nowadays, rather than look at the full 90 minutes, I split each match into two 45 minute halves. It reduces liabilities and increases profits which works a treat! The downside, of course, is having less time to find a goal.

Lay the draw is a strategy I use almost daily, sometimes combined with other markets. Our Team Stats software does a fantastic job of identifying opportunities and I often share them with other Goal Profits members in our chat room.

I've written a very detailed explanation of how to lay the draw here.

Lay the Draw: How to Profit with LTD Trading Strategies
Lay the draw trading (also known as LTD) is still one of the most popular football trading strategies on Betfair. Here's everything you need to know to start laying the draw today.

Correct Score Trading

While lay the draw is fairly safe and steady, correct score trading strategies are much more exciting!

There are many ways to trade the correct score market and, because the prices are much higher than Match Odds, the profits can be substantially more. However, that can also mean more risk because laying - especially early in a match - is expensive.

The Match Odds market has 3 possible outcomes - win, lose or draw - whereas the Correct Score market has 19!

Unless you have a crystal ball, you don't know whether a match will end 0-0, 4-4 or any score in between and this is why correct score betting is tricky.

Trading correct scores (instead of betting) is much more reasonable and most traders target groups of scores, aiming to get close enough to them at the right time to make a profit.

As with most football trading, a patient approach is essential.

It is very easy to create large liabilities - for example, laying the current score at half-time - but then you're relying on goals so that those liabilities don't become losses which seriously dent your trading bank.

It's possible to patiently chip away at liabilities and often end up with a 'scratch' trade - no profit or loss - but aggressive trading will result in large losses from time to time, there's no doubt about that.

Scales balancing "Risk" and "Reward".

Any correct score strategy you use must be well balanced between risk and reward. You also need a long-term view as there is no way you are going to hit target scores over and over.

Rather than trade the full 90 minutes, what you can do is use the 'Half-Time Score' market instead. Less than a third of matches are 0-0 at half-time, it's much easier to predict the half-time score and liabilities are much easier to control.

Also, your trading time is cut in half!

At Goal Profits we use a number of correct score systems, but the majority of our trading focuses on banking steady and more regular profits. Having said that, it's very exciting to hit a target score and bank a big profit!

If you're interested in reading more about correct score trading, click here.

Correct Score Trading Strategy for Betfair Football Markets
Correct score trading on Betfair is exciting and profitable! Learn how to predict correct scores and profit with easy-to-use football trading strategies.

In-Play Football Trading

Thanks to the availability of live football stats and video, the popularity of in-play trading has risen in recent years.

Almost any betting exchange market can be traded as long as there is enough liquidity. In other words, that there are traders looking to back and lay so you're able to get your bets matched.

As well as Match Odds, the Over/Under 2.5 Goals market is especially popular and regularly has enough liquidity for trading, even in smaller leagues. There are a number of trading systems based around both overs and unders.

Some football traders specialise in backing Under 2.5 Goals, hoping to 'scalp' a bit of profit while a match remains 0-0. Time decay works in just the same way here, moving prices as the minutes tick by.

If an early goal goes in, they may trade out for a small loss or hope to get back to scratch before a second goal is scored.

For me, football is about scoring goals and I sit firmly on that side of the fence. Goals win games, so hoping for nothing to happen feels uncomfortable when I have my hard-earned money at risk. I just don't do it.

Of course, exchange betting is just like the game of football... all about differing opinions. While I may be backing Over 2.5 Goals, if there's not someone else looking for Under 2.5 Goals then my bets are not going to get matched!

the word "Opinion" with up and down votes.

And here's another differing opinion between traders; a number of them have convinced themselves that they can somehow 'read' the action and that watching the matches they trade is important. I couldn't disagree more!

If you put 100 men in a room and asked those who considered themselves as above average drivers to raise their hands, about 90 would do so and it's the same with football.

Most blokes think they know everything about football... except trading is all about maths and probabilities.

Besides, who has the time to sit and watch lots of football matches in obscure leagues?!

Our Live Stats Module (LSM) tracks the progress of dozens of matches all at once. Shots, corners, dangerous attacks, attack ratings - it's all there. We know exactly which matches have plenty of action and which teams are actively trying to score.

Rather than watch one or two matches on video, we can follow them all. We don't even need to log in at kick-off because the LSM tracks all the action for us while we're getting on with our lives.

Live Stats Module: In-Play Football Stats for Betfair Traders
Our Live Stats Module is the best in-play football stats tracker available anywhere online. It's ideal for beginners but essential for professional traders.

Football Trading Mindset

You already know that a betting exchange matches a back and a lay bet. One wins, the other loses.

Profitable football trading is simply a case of winning more than you lose, but in order to do that you have to take money from other people who are aiming to do exactly the same to you.

It's a ruthless game of cat and mouse and you cannot allow emotion to get in the way of your decision making. As soon as you lose control - perhaps to the temptation to chase a loss - you will lose money.

Legendary investor Warren Buffett once said, "the Stock Market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient" and it's exactly the same on Betfair, Smarkets, Matchbook or any other betting exchange.

If you log in on a Saturday afternoon looking for entertainment, you will lose money. Of course you will have winning days, but overall you will lose.

You must be patient and disciplined enough wait for opportunities to outsmart the market.

Even the best Betfair strategy in the world will fail if you don't have the patience to use it at the right times! You will get bored and risk your money on something you shouldn't (which we've all done at one time or another).

Mindset

Professional Betfair traders avoid losses as much as possible. While you may argue that all bettors, traders and gamblers do that, it's subtly different.

Avoiding a loss is not the same as trying to win a bet. It's a strange concept for most who are new to trading because their mindset is geared up towards winners, winners and more winners.

A simple football betting system usually has two outcomes; win or lose. When you trade, however, there are always three possible results; win, lose or scratch.

A scratch trade is one in which you neither make a profit nor a loss though remember this... every time you make scratch, you have won your stake back and had a free bet.

Essentially, scratch is a winning trade and once you see it that way, trading becomes much easier.

Don't assume that the more trades you pile into, the more profit you’ll make; it's all about patience and discipline.

There will be days when nothing quite fits and you don't trade at all. That's fine. It's better than getting frustrated, laying the draw when you shouldn't and hitting a loss. You then have to find a winner or two just to get back to where you were in the first place!

A pair of scissors cutting the word "RISK" in half.

FOMO (fear of missing out) is a bank killer and it threatens us all.

Think about the last time you 'knew' a team was going to score but you didn't back them. You've probably said to yourself, "I knew that was going to happen!" except, of course, you didn't know it at all.

What do you think happens in your brain the next time you see a similar situation?

You start thinking about when you 'missed out' and the little voice in your head tells you that you'd better not miss out again. You feel like you're owed something by the market because of that last time, you get tempted in by 'fear of missing out' and - very often - you lose money.

Remember that the market owes you nothing, it never does and it never will.

If you hit a surprise 0-0 and lose money, you're not owed a profit to make up for it. If you let that FOMO mentality tempt you into chasing losses, you will lose more money.

If you research a trade and decide that it's not quite strong enough to risk money on, then that's your decision. If it goes on to 'win' then you haven't 'missed out' on a thing. It was a weak trade and sometimes weak trades win, but more often they don't.

Don’t kick yourself, don’t get mad, applaud your discipline knowing that long-term it was the right thing to do. You can't let FOMO trick you into thinking that the market owes you something.

In order to win money on Betfair, you have to be as ruthless as the markets and keep emotion well away from your trading.

FOMO: Fear of Missing Out

A great way of staying disciplined is to put a trading plan together before you login to Betfair.

Go through the fixtures for the day and build a shortlist of matches which you are interested in. Once you have done that, dig deeper into the stats and look for any reasons not to trade.

You might find that the team you're going to bank on has a series of poor results against similar opposition, perhaps they are in a run of indifferent form or maybe the underdogs have been playing above themselves recently.

You can afford to drop potential trading opportunities because they don't look quite right, but what you cannot afford to do is ignore warning signs and trade them anyway. Remember, a winning football trader is patient and disciplined.

If there are no fixtures which up being tradeable, so be it. There will be more tomorrow... and the next day... and the next...

Once you have your plan for the day, it's set in stone and does not change.

It's very easy to hit a couple of losses and let your brain trick you into thinking that you're owed a winner to make up for it. Perhaps there was a missed penalty which cost you a profit earlier on so you look for another trade to even things up.

Emotionless markets don't work like that and you can't either!

Your brain starts making excuses why a weaker match is suddenly strong enough to trade, you lose more money and feel even worse. It's so avoidable, yet everyone gets sucked in at some point.

If a trading opportunity was not strong enough earlier in the day when you judged it with a clear mind, it's certainly isn't strong enough later on when you're feeling frustrated about a loss.

Take losses on the chin, learn what you can in order to improve your trade selection process and come back tomorrow with a fresh mind. You will learn a lot from losses and they will always happen to every trader, so accept them.

Trading Psychology: Think Like a Professional Betfair Trader
It's no secret that trading psychology and mindset is a vital ingredient for success, but how exactly do you start to think like a professional Betfair trader?

Does Trading Need Lots of Time?

Betfair football trading takes a bit more time than betting – of course it does – but you get so much more control over your money that a bit of effort is well worth putting in.

An experienced trader will be able to reduce losses and increase profits which makes trading significantly more profitable overall than set-and-forget betting could ever be.

Let's be honest though, trading really doesn't take too long at all. I mean, an entire football match is only 90 minutes and many Betfair trading techniques focus on either the first or second half which immediately cuts that in half.

You can login to Goal Profits at half-time during midweek, research the matches with favourable half-time scores using Team Stats and open a trade or two before the second halves even kick off.

Once your trading position is open, what do you have to do anyway? You're usually waiting on a goal, so you can go watch TV, read a book or do some housework and a score site such as Flashscore will tell you when a goal goes in.

You can even download the Flashscore app to your phone and go outside to wash the car. With Betfair on your phone, you might not even need to come back inside the house!

"I don’t have time to trade" is such a poor excuse, yet those looking for a reason to make quitting acceptable still use it.

If you really want to be successful at trading, you’re going to find a way to make it work for you, just as every pro trader did.

Everyone Has Enough Time For Football Trading Success
The most common reason for quitting football trading is, "I don't have time". It's more of an excuse to quit though, because everyone has more than enough time!

FREE Football Trading Strategy

If you haven't traded before, it can be difficult to know where to start.

I'm not going to tell you that you can start trading today and immediately start to rack up huge profits. It goes back to what I said earlier that if trading was so easy, then no-one would go to work on Monday morning.

In the real world, success does not come easily and everyone knows it.

But... everybody has to start somewhere, right?

Here's a simple in-play system to get you started. It's completely free, makes a steady profit and I'm even going to give you FREE football trading tips for life!

Once you have practiced trading and made some profit, you will be ready to progress onto one of the exchange betting strategies which has a bit more going on.

Membership of the Goal Profits football trading community includes full access to our football trading course. It's going to help accelerate the time it takes for you to learn how to trade, but you should still be patient and have reasonable expectations.

Remember that Betfair is full of very clever traders whose sole aim is to take your money. Don't make it easy for them!


Trading Football For a Living

The world of professional trading is very different from what most imagine it to be.

It's nothing to do with knowing what colour laces Harry Kane wears in his boots, but everything to do with mathematics. In particular, compounding and working your trading bank smartly.

Financial security and lifechanging freedom is well within the grasp of everyone but - just like football trading - it's a lack of patience which trips most people up. You don't need to be a genius, you just need time.

A naked man playing with his laptop computer.

Let's assume you start trading today with a £1,000 bank and split it into 100pts of £10 each.

You only need to make 10pts profit per month from football trading for two years, resetting your bank to 100pts at the end of each month, to grow your bank to £9,850.

If you carry on for another year, your bank will be worth £30,913 and it accelerates from there.

This is what compounding does for your bank.

Breaking it down, that's £10 x 10pts = £100 profit in your first month. If the month has 30 days, then you need to make £3.33 daily in order to hit your first target on the way to turning £1,000 into £30,913. That's absolutely achievable!

Of course, if you're brand new to trading then it might take you a few months before you can regularly hit your monthly target.

Maybe it takes a year of learning before everything clicks into place, but then you turn £1,000 into £30,913 over the following three years. Would you be happy with that return? I'm sure you would be!

Your Complete Guide to Trading Football for a Living
Here is your complete guide to trading football for a living. Plan your journey from betting beginner to professional Betfair trader and then make it happen!

Goal Profits

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