Betfair Trading Strategy for Dummies: An Idiots Guide

Betfair Trading done properly is VERY lucrative.

Whether you are looking at it as a potential full-time career or as a way to generate a side income.

The freedom and flexibility that developing a profitable Betfair trading strategy offers, is extremely appealing.

But how do you get started?

Football, horse racing, tennis, greyhound racing or basketball?! There are so many sports that you can look to trade on Betfair. Within each sport, there are multiple strategies that can be used.

In today’s article, we are going to break down how to approach Betfair trading as a beginner right now…

How to Approach Betfair Trading for Beginners:

The best piece of advice I could give to anyone who is looking to start making money from Betfair trading.

“Keep Things Simple”

• Choose one sport to focus on
• Look at using one strategy (until mastered)
• Develop your understanding of the market

It is easy to be overawed by the number of markets offered on Betfair. There are a lot of videos and articles written about making money from Betfair Trading. This makes it very easy to try something for a day, disregard it as useless and then find something new.

There will always be something new and shiny in the world of Betfair trading that can catch your eye. Every successful Betfair trader that I have ever met, has one thing in common…

They put in the time to master their craft, and they focused on one thing at a time.

I don’t know anybody who has been successful over the long term. Who immediately opened a Betfair account and could crush the Betfair markets within a week.

It doesn’t happen!

Approaching the markets with the mindset that it may take time to master and that profit won’t come straight away. It puts you pretty far ahead of the majority before you even make your first trade. Take your time to plan and understand and you will be rewarded tenfold.

Common Mistakes Beginners Make In Betfair Trading:

Let’s take a look at some common mistakes that beginners make when they first start trading Betfair.

No Planning

“Failing to plan is planning to fail.”

I have to hold my hands up. When I first started Betfair trading there was almost zero planning on my part.

My trading sessions usually consisted of watching a random Betfair trading strategy for beginners on YouTube. See someone make a profit from a strategy I didn’t properly understand. Load up the first market I could and usually lose some money.

Why?

My trading was completely reactionary. It was reactionary with very little understanding of the markets that I was trading in.

I didn’t understand that different market situations require different strategies, wasn’t staking appropriately and failed to account for the potential risk vs reward of the strategy I was using.

Often I would go into my trading with no plan at all.

It wasn’t overly surprising that I failed in those earlier days.

Planning To Win

Let’s flip that then, how should we plan to profit?

If you want to make money from Betfair trading then you need to treat it with the appropriate respect it deserves.

Treat it like you would a business…

Nobody launches a successful business without a plan, that would seem ludicrous right?

If you really want to be making money from your Betfair trading then this really should be how you should look at it, as a business!

What should your trading plan look like?

Staking:

The first thing that you should really think about is your trading bankroll.

How much are you willing to invest in your Betfair trading start-up? my advice would be to start pretty small, but don’t scrimp don’t the time spent. As noted earlier it takes time to become consistently profitable with your trading. You need to build your understanding of how the markets work.

Think about your profits and losses initially as percentages.

A common mistake many beginners make is they focus on how much they could win, you really should be thinking the opposite:How much can I potentially lose?

Losing trades are what normally separates winning traders from losing traders. Make sure you have planned for losses and understand that they will happen.

Start Small (Aim For Consistency)

It is advisable to start with a small bankroll of maybe £100 or less, using £10 per trade. Understand what happens when things go wrong.

What is your maximum risk on a trade? How much can I expect to make when things go right?

Staking small initially removes a lot of the fear and adrenaline that can happen when trading with bigger more meaningful sums. What it does do however is it gives you valuable time to experience the ups and downs of trading and refine your strategy to find something that actually works.

Once you have found a strategy that works in the sport you have chosen, then you can think about increasing your stakes and scaling things up.

Check out the beginner’s school section of the site here.

What Sport And Market Are You Trading?

Your plan should include the markets that you are intending to trade.

For example; if you are trading a football game, which markets are you intending to target?

The match odds market, the goal markets, half time, correct score markets?

Before the game kicks off, you should have an idea of the strategy you intend to use.

Does the strategy work well on favourites or underdogs?

When’s the best time to implement the strategy? first 20 minutes, last 20 minutes, if the underdog takes the lead?

If you don’t know the answers to these questions, then that is absolutely fine. Watch the markets and make notes. On Betfair, you can put in different stakes and odds giving you an idea of different scenarios.

Note down how quickly odds moved between different time periods.

Did the odds move quickly or slowly? What was happening in the game at that time?

Develop that understanding of the market. Good trading is painless trading, because you know what you’re doing…

What’s the Easiest Betfair Trading Strategy For Beginners to Use?

Here on the website, we have multiple different trading strategies, covering a number of different sports.

See these 3 horse racing trading strategies once you’re done here.

My suggestion would be to start with a sport that you understand and have an interest in. Having an interest in the sport is going to help you maintain your interest in trading, as noted before, becoming consistently profitable will take time.

Then pick one strategy that you want to utilize in the markets.

Make sure the strategy suits your risk profile.

Are you happy with lots of small wins and the occasional big loss? Or would you prefer the opposite?

Do you want to be active in the market for long periods of time or short periods of time?

Trade before the start of an event or in play?

Then gain as much data/experience as you can using that strategy…

When you start trading you want to be answering as many questions as possible. Gaining data from every market that you trade.

For example, you may choose the lay-the-draw football strategy.

A simple strategy involves opposing the draw in a game. You may find that it works much better in the second half when the home team starts as a significant favourite.

Perhaps you find laying the draw profitable using in-play statistics, or your results are better when you can view the game live.

Betfair Trading Strategy Conclusion:

It is still very possible to make decent returns from Betfair trading…

From my experience of Betfair trading, there is no “holy grail” that wins every time. Those who are searching for the “Holy Grail” usually are so busy jumping from strategy to strategy. They never spend the time required to find something that really does work.

Serious traders should see the Betfair trading strategy links below:

Intermediate: Pre-Race Trading Guide
Advanced: Video Pack Course