Trading on Betfair full-time is a dream for many. The ability to work full time from home earning a tax-free income is a huge incentive to learn to become a professional Betfair trader.
In today’s article, we got together 5 of the best full-time Betfair traders, specialising in different sports. I asked them all 3 key questions regarding trading full-time on Betfair.
The 3 questions are;
- What would be your top advice or tip for a newbie trader on Betfair?
- What would you suggest readers use as a good resource for any statistics or research when trading?
- What’s your most memorable trading moment?
Need Trading Help? Join the mailing list and get a free trading lesson now.
Here is what everyone had to say…
Sammy – Full-Time Trader on Betfair
Sammy is from Sweden. He’s been a professional gambler since 2007. He started betting in 2004-2005 at virtual poker tables online. After years of playing poker, he made the transition to trading sports in 2012. After 7 months he hit the first level of premium charge.
Today he has come a long way and makes substantial amounts from the tennis markets. The Tennis markets are very liquid on Betfair, if you are looking trade sports full-time. With the right tennis trading strategy, it’s extremely lucrative.
To read more about Sammy’s experiences you can find a list of links at the bottom of this post. Here are his answers to the three questions…
- My best advice is to learn the math behind a trade. So you know how to calculate the risk/reward for each trade you are doing. There is no way you will be able to quantify if you made a correct trade or not otherwise. And I’d also like to emphasize the importance of knowing how the market moves for your sport in each given scenario.
- Tennis Insight is the one I use for tennis stats. Basically, all I’ve ever needed.
- You always remember the bad ones right?! Well, this one is probably the worst trade I’ve made. There was no stream for this match so I was trading the scoreboard only. Lu won the first set and held serve for 1-0* in the second set and he was trading around 1.50ish. Suddenly big money started backing Harrison @ 1.50. During this time there had been some weird amounts of splashing around so I thought Christmas came early that evening and I was all over it. 2-3 seconds later after I got a big chunk matched Lu retired and I had swallowed a not-so-sweet loss.
Here’s the screenshot from Sammy’s Geekstoy Software when that dreadful moment happened!
Mark Iverson – Full-Time Trader on Betfair’s Cricket
In August 2006 Mark started trading sports markets. Armed with an initial trading bank of just £250. Since then he compounded monthly profits to help scale-up his trades.
In May 2008, he reduced his working hours and focused on the markets. While working 3 days a week as a Project Manager he developed his trading knowledge. Early in 2011, he took a sabbatical from his day job, this was when profits began to increase rapidly. Mark eventually became a professional cricket trader when his profits from trading exceeded his day job.
To read more from Mark you can find a list of links at the bottom of this post. Here are his answers to the three questions…
- Keep records of your results as you’ll be able to measure important performance indicators such as your average win, average loss and strike rate. Doing this will help keep you motivated and allow you to plot your progress. Sports trading is a marathon, not a sprint, so having small goals will help push you along.
- I’ve built my own databases over a number of years, but many cricket traders find Cricbuzz, Cricinfo and HowStat as good places to source information.
- The day I lost over £5000 in 3 hours sticks in my mind. After a good run, I’d failed to assess the risk of a T20 market sufficiently. It had relatively low liquidity, fast picture players had a bigger than normal time advantage and the match itself was a dead rubber. By not assessing these risks properly beforehand, I’d got sucked into the trap of overstaking and over-trading. Things spiralled out of control and before I knew it I was staring at a big loss.
Paulo Rebello – Full-Time Football Trader
Paulo started to study the stock exchange back in 1999. Through a mixture of his love of football and interest in investing, he found his way onto Betfair. It didn’t take too long before Paulo Rebelo became one of the most respected full-time Betfair traders when it came to football.
Paulo Rebelo’s YouTube channel has attracted thousands of views from those looking to emulate his success in becoming a full-time football trader on Betfair. He is a man who has made millions trading on the Betfair Exchange and is well worth listening to!
Here’s what he had to say in response to the three questions…
- On Betfair, you trade bets, which can be seen as very fast-moving financial assets. That’s why you can make a high profit (percentage of the investment) in the very short term.
“Keep that in mind to always remember this: the greater the potential profit, the greater the potential loss”
I have a few pieces of advice for beginners in the world of trading bets:
- Never start with money that you cannot afford to lose
- Always use a bank management system, for example, a stake of 10% of your bank, this way you will bet less in a negative streak, and bet more in a positive streak
- Always justify your bets for future analysis and reminder, not only the lost bets but also the winning bets
- Never make the same error twice: analyse the error and write it down in a post-it in front of you
As I trade only football bets, the statistics resource I use is only what I designed: the stats page for each match available in the online betting academy.
That match stats page has all the relevant statistical information for me: the last 3 years head-to-head, the last 10 matches in all competitions, all the last matches from this competition, clean sheets and average goals on only as home/away and only in this competition, the moment of the goals in 15min interval.
Other than this, I recommend always reading the news and checking for the line-ups of each team.
I will tell you the story of how I decided to risk 1320€ in the last minute of a match… and it paid out very well.
This story was an update on my diary, as it was an identical situation to what had happened to me on the first day of my diary, only this time my profit was even greater.
Match – Getafe vs Athletic Bilbao (Football Trade) – 14/03/2015
- Getafe was winning for 2-1 and there were only 30 seconds remaining of the match.
- And there is a free kick to be made by Athletic Bilbao, possible to have a cross into the Getafe’s area.
- At this moment the Odd to Lay Getafe’s victory was at 1.04.
- FACT: I know from previous studies that Bilbao is the team that scores the most goals from set pieces, in the entire Spanish first division.
- I decided to risk the bet against Getafe’s victory, as this was the last change of the match and an eventual goal would be definitive. against Getafe’s victory, therefore I was betting that Bilbao would score a goal on that play.
- If we think on the other way around, the chance of Bilbao scoring a goal on that set piece was highly above 4% (indicated by the 1.04 odd: 1/1.04=96%), so this reasoning makes the bet against Getafe a very good value bet.
- Well, the goal didn’t come from the free kick, but it resulted in another set piece, a corner.
- I decided to keep my bet for the corner.
- During the time between the free kick and the corner, I got matched a total of 33000€ laying at 1.04 odd.
- Notice that this lay bet at low odds implies a small liability: I risked only 1320€ to make this bet where I could earn 33000€!
An example image of a Lay bet of this amount at that odd:
- GOAL: and indeed Bilbao scored a goal from that corner!
- The match ended 2-2, and this last lay bet added me a very good profit of 33000€ extra to the near 2000€ that I was already winning on that match.
- Betfair profit/loss resume the final result.
Related Article: Simple Football Trading Strategies
Paul Shires (AKA TradeShark) – Full-Time Tennis Trader
Paul Shires started trading Betfair in 2008. By July 2010 he had leaped full-time trading. As a no-nonsense Yorkshire man, he has been trading the tennis markets ever since. Paul played tennis as a youngster which has helped him in understanding the tennis markets. He is one of the most respected full-time Betfair traders in the tennis markets and is still active in 2024!
He runs the popular tennis trading blog Tradeshark. Alongside his own tennis trading, he offers trading advice and predictions via his blog.
Here’s what he had to say in response to the questions…
- One of the most common pieces of advice given out is to protect your bank. To a new trader that might not mean a great deal. For example, if you are in a trade and the price has moved a reasonable amount in your favour think about reducing your risk/liability by laying off part of your initial trade to leave either a free bet on one player (ie zero on the other player) or at least reduce the amount of red you have on the other player. This also decreases the pressure on the trader to exit a trade but improves their “break-even” price. Especially useful in markets with just 2 outcomes.
- Easy one. For tennis, there is no better site than Tennis Insight. They make a small charge but I haven’t found another site that delivers everything they do. It certainly speeds up my research.
- For this one, I was thinking about big trades or big escapes where I dug myself out of a hole. However, the moment that probably meant the most to me in my trading career came back in 2008. I had just discovered trading on Betfair. I was following advice from Adam Todd and was scalping the horses. I was using the grid interface and the tick offset tool. I had understood the theory but that was the first time I completed a green trade and it opened my eyes to the possibilities. I think I greened for 2p!
Dave Beaman – Full-Time In-Play Horse Racing Trader
Dave has been working in the betting market for several years. From the very early days, you could find him in the trading room at Canary Wharf. Quick decision-making and balls of steel mean he has seen many come and go on the way, particularly in the in-play markets. He now works from home these days and spends most of his time drinking beer or down the beach.
If you’ve seen his blog (listed below) you’ll know he’s quite a colourful character, quite the opposite of the stereotypical trader. Here’s what he had to say!
- Find a strategy (or strategies) that work consistently and stick with it! Trading can be like any other job, so you need to make sure that you have a strong and reliable strategy that gives consistent results, ideally based on a sport that you like watching! If you are trading the horses then try to determine whether you are better at spotting runners that are going well, or those that look as if they are about to fall out the back of the TV. Above all, keep things simple. The game is complicated enough, so find a basic strategy that works, stick with it, be patient and above all trade consistently.
- For in-running, I like to use my own judgment, so nothing beats watching the replays and making notes on any horses of interest. For instance, look for horses with early speed, those that miss the break, ones that travel well and those that don’t, good jumpers/poor jumpers, etc. By having this information under your belt you can approach most races with that extra bit of knowledge that gives you an edge over most other traders.
- This was actually from my first ever day trading in The Canary Wharf Exchange. I was a novice using the Gruss software. In the closing stages of one race, it looked as though Roman Ark was getting caught for a place (I normally played in the place market) so I laid it for an even £100. The race was at Kelso which had a super long run-in and after the last, it looked as though I had got it wrong and in fact, Roman Ark was staying on for second place. I tried to back it back for an even £100 but I had ‘verify bets’ ticked and I managed to get myself in a right pickle. About 10 yards from the line I managed to fire my bet into the system, but by now Roman Ark should have been 1.01 to get placed! As they crossed the line I looked across and had a £2000 green on Roman Ark! WTF! I asked the guy next to me to check what had happened and we found out that just as I asked for an even £100 someone put up a lay of £100 at something like 22.0! So I backed it for 22.0 right on the line and won the best part of £2K.
Caan Berry – Full-Time Pre-Race Horse Racing Trader
Last on the list of full-time Betfair traders is myself. For more information on my background, you can check out the ‘About Me’ Tab at the top of the page.
After hearing the valuable input from the other full-timers above I answered the questions as well…
- Starting out in the markets can be a very confusing time. Obviously learning as much information as possible about the markets in question is very important. However, I would say it’s just as important to learn about yourself. Over the time I’ve been trading and blogging, I’ve had the privilege of talking to some very intelligent guys. Some of which had brilliant ideas about the market and why certain things happen. That’s great, but if you don’t know enough about yourself and how you respond under pressure it’s likely to prove even harder. As I’ve said before; edges are ten-a-penny but the execution is everything. Without efficient execution, things will be a lot harder. Learn about yourself, your mindset and what makes you tick! Being aware was half the battle for me.
- One of the most useful tools I use for trading Pre-Race, and of course backing to lay at the start of a race is the GG Alerts service. It’s free, give it a go!
- The most memorable moment for me had to be one of the last times Kauto Star ran at Cheltenham. I think the majority of people knew there wasn’t the gas in the tank for another big win, but it didn’t stop them from backing him. You could literally feel the tension through the TV, the public was rooting for Kauto to win. This made me add to my position at the time and well I over-staked, but it turned out very well… shortly after I did the market went into free-fall and, at that point in time it was my biggest ever win in one race. Looking back on it, it wasn’t quite part of my trading plan but I got away with it and the whole experience was exhilarating.
References from this post: