Well laying makes it even easier and less risky to hit the 30k target, I think you will find it is changing the sport from football to horse racing and laying 30/1 shots makes the difference, but you are still no where near risking a million, Lay 666 straight 30/1 winners in 111 days and you will have lost a million, but that is little unlikely.


I don't agree with this 3% profit thing either I think it is a fair bit higher than that, I know nothing about football, in fact I could only name one current England player and certainly do far better than 3% and with very little risk.

trebor.

3% is a massively lucrative proposition over the long term and on here it is relatively easy to turnover a large amount of money.

Of course in a relatively short period of time or sequence of bets one can show an ROI many times better than my hypothetical 3%, but the more you play the more likely it is you mean revert to your actual true edge, and that is the rub ultimately, the more you play, the more you need to play (earning a living) the more likely you approach that true figure and that leads me on neatly to the point below.....

On a sport such as mainstream football, those 3% edges (likely much higher because of BF's commission) definitely don't exist. If you could avoid the commission that edge would be 6-8%.....that would be a virtual license to print money and there would still be a reasonable statistical probability you could go bust along the way.

I'm not saying you can't make it pay but being ignorant to the resources you are up against makes me seriously question the likelihood of someone being a long term winner ;-).

Gl.

Ericster-you are absolutely right. But only PROPUNTERS like you and me with extensive and long experience know this. Others have to learn it the hard way! It's not how long it takes, it is how much it costs!

You will get there -if you live long enough and I am NOT being facetious!

Smarkets. Matchbook. Zero percent...

nathanr,

I'm not sure that I understand your post or why you posted it.

I shall just keep amusing myself in a serious kind of way, if that makes any sense, and I shall either make a few quid or I won't. Whatever.

Enjoying the thread.

Keep posting guys.

nathanrh.

Interesting posts, not sure we are talking about the same thing as I am coming from a trading angle and maybe your 3% is a betting number?  But I am also going to guess that you will tell me it makes no difference as it depends on the value obtained?

Have seen many posts on here over the years on this subject and guess the general theme of them would be getting more negative over the years, it is for that reason I am grateful that many of them go rite over my head, still remember 45 years ago at school thinking "who is ever gonna need this algebra cr@p"  I don't disagree with a lot of what you post, but do disagree with your comment at the end of your post about the 5 ways people win on Betfair "if you are not one of the above you are paying for the above", you seem to only see the negative, have to much reliance in your figures and little faith in what other methods produce.

17 years ago when I was new to exchanges if I saw a thread like this one,  it would start me thinking about ways to create a system, many times while walking the dog or falling asleep at night I would think of a way doing it, only to find out that when put down on paper something was amiss. I knew if it was possible no one would ever give away their systems, but remember thinking that maybe someone could just be kind enough let me know if it was possible.

Well I am happy to tell you that you what I would have liked to have known 17 years ago that it is possible. But I also agree with nathanr that football is one of the easiest sports for compilers to be spot on mathematically with prices at any given time before or in play, but maybe with a little help from nathanr I can show you what they don't have control over.

nathanr as I type England are 7.4 to win the World Cup (101.5% market), if I bet £100 on them and hypothetically did that 100 times in an exact same situation and they won 15 times of those 100 what would my ROI be?



Ericster ..I would respectfully suggest that with experience that a pro gains, he, or she, cuts their plays to an absolute minimum but ups the ante. No?


Being selective is the biggest advantage you can have, but for me size of bet depends on the market, two golf markets last 4 days I used completly diferent sized stakes as one a lot less liquid than the other, and could give away lots if needing to get out of a trade, I always pay more attention the loss than the potential winnings.  Pre off football market would use larger stakes as will do in The Open golf in a couple of weeks time.

As you say self discipline is good as well of course, bit dangerous being on any betting site if you do not have discipline.

"not sure we are talking about the same thing as I am coming from a trading angle and maybe your 3% is a betting number"

It's just the edge/ROI/yield (for me all interchangeable as a straight bettor ie bet and leave it, rather than a trader). If, let's say over a football or flat racing season, you bet £10,000 and make a profit of £300 (ie get £10,300 back), 300/10000=3%.


"as I type England are 7.4 to win the World Cup (101.5% market), if I bet £100 on them and hypothetically did that 100 times in an exact same situation and they won 15 times of those 100 what would my ROI be?"

true price=6.67 (100/15)
price obtained=7.4

Edge/ROI=7.4/6.67=1.109 (ie 10.9%)

And that's another old chestnut.

Staking Plan.
Fixed stake or percentage?

Fixed stake might be considered the real test but even with percentage betting it would soon become apparent if you weren't getting anywhere.

At the moment, mkts permitting, I intend to stake a percentage of my bank. Right now I'm trying to build. I won't be throwing my hard earned at this. Also, my targets are modest. Yes, of course. 100K pa would be nice but if I could find a way of supplementing my pension with a few quid a week when I retire that would great. Assuming I live that long of course.

I suppose percentage you will be placing smaller stakes on your winning bets if you expect losing runs, am sure someone can give good advice on it tho, just takes a lot longer to get your answers now than it used to.

Andriy, nathanrh or anyone,  here is a question then, and I don't know the answer but am pretty sure we will disagree.

I place a bet of £1000 because I believe the odds are going to move 2 ticks in my favour to gain £100 green after trading out. it is a match odds football market.

I have 27 instance's of placing this bet (certainly not all for above stake) of these 11 made the two tick profit, 8 made a one tick profit, 7 scratched and 1 loser of 20% of stake, so £1300 winnings, £27000 staked, what would the ROI be?

It's the draw in match odds, 3.50 dropping to 3.40 for example.

With you now, my adding up is wrong, would have probably picked up my mistake if using my stakes, but I have used all different stakes, plus I have traded the correct scores at same time as connected of course.


So in reality I would have used the green on the draw and taken it in-play, backed over 2,5 and one maybe 2 other scores, but for this example we will say I laid off for £1000 and greened match scores.

trebor,

just curious.

Are you talking inplay here or before the off.


I had a go at a similar thing with the nil-nil leading up to k/o.
Sometimes, when the pink side of the mkt seems  weak you can go for a quick one but it IS a minefield imo.

trebor,
maybe the match mkt is less volatile than the nil-nil but with a grand in there I'd worry.

trebor,

obviously if you're looking to green up and not stay in all you're really risking is the value of a couple ticks, as you call them. If you're doing this on a regular basis you must be getting something out of it and if you are I can't/wouldn't knock it. Profit is profit. Good for you mate.

Many years ago someone said to me in one of the bf 4ums, and I quote, "It's not about winning, it's about not losing." I've never forgotten that. Think about that for a moment.

Yes of course it's about winning but what if you never EVER had another losing trade?

You'd have to have winning days sometimes and how cool would that be.

So if you're making a profit and you're happy with it GO with it and good luck.

trebor,

So as I understand your strategy;

1. Back the draw for £1000.
2. Lay the draw as soon as the price ticks downwards (for £15 profit on all selections).

My question:

1. In a liquid market how many minutes of the game (rough guess will do) have to elapse for you to get your lay matched?

And therein lies the problem. Markets on here typically adjust using fairly well understood time decay principles, the draw price gets shifted downwards on a fairly consistent time-delay curve (the rate might be slightly adjusted depending on how the game feels but ultimately the curve works its way down to 1.01 assuming no goals are scored).

I just don't see the 'edge'. Your system works as long as you can trade out, but there will be far too many matches with goals in the first 5 minutes so how can you consistently identify those matches where there won't be an early goal?

Cheers.

So effectively you are trying to trade on pre-match price movement (in this instance the draw).

I still don't see the edge unless you have some sophisticated method of predicting that a price will move the way you would like (and by sophisticated I mean something the market doesn't or won't have accounted for).

Sometimes the market will move pre-match the way you want, other times it will drift and others you most likely just have to scratch the trade. All of those will even out in the long run and you will lose to your commission rate. The best I can say is that at least you aren't totally chancing your arm by allowing a position to go in-play.....

Tell me if I'm misunderstanding? or if you are massively in profit over the last 5-10 years. If you are actually in profit be sure to tell me (privately) your selection criteria, I'll be retired in a few years if it holds up ;-).

Cheers.

Good luck. Irrespective of whether it works out or not this has always been the fun part of gambling for me- coming up with a hypothesis and testing it.

Lay Ural      +0.95
Lay Levante   +0.95
Lay Heracles   +0.95
Lay AC Horsens -5.0
Lay Caen       +0.95
Lay FC Zurich  +0.95
Lay Reims      +0.95
Lay Aris       +0.95
Lay Charleroi  +0.95
Lay Torino     +0.95

Total 9/10  +3.55pts

Today looks ok, but there were 4 other matches that became selections, 3 winners and 1 loser @6.0
Therefore 12/14 (85.7%)  profit +1.4pts