First serious football trade…

So after my previous post I thought I best look into this football trading malarkey. I have traded the football briefly before although never with the thought of doing it seriously. The main reason being I know next to nothing about football! I’m not sure if this is a good or bad thing at this stage, obviously I’ll have no bias towards teams or players… its literally a blank canvas!


I’m hoping I can apply the usual common sense along with what I already know about how markets work and make a few quid. My first real go was just the other night on the Man City v Sunderland game.

After Man City being the favourites had scored there price crumbled to a supper short 1.05! Now this in hign sight was a good opportunity to get in, I’ve dabbled with the tennis before and much like a first set being won the odds can be artificially low. When their that low it gives the opportunity to open a position for low liability yielding a higher return if things change. Not only does it not have to be an equalizing situation but if Man City start to go though a rough patch of play the price will drift. Shortly after that did start to happen, also a player appeared to be injured for a while which pushed the price back out to 1.10 mark….. at this point I’d missed some of the value but thought I’d have a dabble, I think I got in around 1.08 or 1.09 for £15 liability, the potential upside though was far greater!… anyway, the point is it was a point of compression in the odds. When I entered it was around 30 mins into the game, I went on to hold that position untill about 10 minutes into the second half… the price was still trading at 1.10/1.11, it was here I exited for a £2.72 green i think it was.

Now it wasn’t a great profit at all although I see it as a very good trade, reason being it allowed me to be in the market for 30 – 35 minutes where something could have happened producing a big return, worst case I would have lost £15. It’s just sods law that Sunderland scored shortly after!… still I hadn’t hedged at all so my £2.72 green unhedged turned into £12 green…. not bad for a low risk dabble! I’ll be looking for more opportunities like this as at them odds the potential upside is always massive in comparison to a loss.

If anyone’s got any snippets like this they’d like to share feel free to comment!!

9 thoughts on “First serious football trade…

  1. Caan

    A newbie on Geeks Toy etc. I am finding the under 4.5 goals market relatively low risk and profitable footy market. Website called soccerstats provides simple % of teams scoring over/under 4.5 home away etc for research. Ave goal time of 1st goal is about 37 mins in Premiership. Backing first, if there is no goal you can make many pips as price comes down very quickly. Even if there is an early goal there is plenty of time to address and get back in at higher price which again comes in quickly if no goals for a further short period. Have look.

  2. Hi I trade football in my spare time pre match and know some in play strats also.

    Pinnacle can be very useful to monitor for match odds trading for example as very often betfair follow them and the professionals play a close eye to them. Say if the draw on a game is trading at 3.60 pre match and pinnacle have it at 3.50 then pinnacle raise the price to 3.60, the big layers will appear on the draw on bf at say 3.55 and 3.60 and draw will drift. Also consider fundamentals before entering match odds and overall trend/areas where lot of money been traded in market

  3. I know you use the Geeks Toy, but BetAngel software has a really interesting football trader model, much like their Tennis trader. I’ve not looked at it in any great depth, but may be worth having a look if it’s something you’re going to pursue.

  4. Hi, good to see a profit but… reading the post I’m not clear if you hedged or not. Did you make £2.72 or £12 ? You say you exited for £2.72 but then later you say you did not hedge and made an easy £12 in a low risk dabble. Which was it?

  5. Caan,

    Another great opportunity is around the 80th-90th minute mark. The most goals are scored in the last 10 minutes of matches and with more stoppage time being applied then ever you can get into the match odds market or correct score market at low prices and hope there is a goal.

    Does require research to highlight which teams score the late.

  6. Just be careful with the footy Caan, it’s a different kettle of fish to the nags. Not everyone can be a jack of all trades, avoid strats like Mike Ingham’s too. People love those types of strats cos they win most of the time but they play at such bad value they never come out on top in the long run. Bit like the players who lay 100’s at ridiculous odds then blame their luck when the inevitable one goes in and wipes them out.

  7. Good to see you are moving into the football as well, would love to see some more of this in the next season and potentially the WC?

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