Football Trading Guide for Beginners (2024): Betfair Trading

There’s no question, football is the biggest sport on Betfair. It’s where all the money is flowing, and if you’re starting your trading journey in 2022 you need to focus on football.

Football trading for beginners can be as difficult as you make it. A lot of traders try to walk before they can run. This only ends in disaster. If you’re looking for the ultimate football trading guide the best advice is to focus on one area, find out which signals are best and build up an edge.

An example of an area to focus on might be the Over/Under 2.5 goal market. Maybe you like the first half markets, or have an eye for picking out xG stats that the market underrates. The best bit of advice is don’t try and do too much as you start out – juggling multiple trades and markets only come with experience when football trading.

With football trading strategy, there are a couple of shortcuts which we will detail in this article. By the time you’ve read it, you should be armed with the best knowledge to start football trading, basically, as the title says; this is the ultimate football trading guide!

Football Trading Tricks And Tips:

There are a lot of nonsense articles about football trading strategy and football trading tips out there. The best advice is to find an edge, and laser in on that. You might be thinking where do I find an edge? There’s a simple thought process. Basically in a nutshell you want to start with these thoughts:

• What am I very knowledgeable about?
• What do I enjoy about football?
• Ask yourself do I know more than other traders on this subject?
• Am I correctly pricing my opinion against the market price?

Let’s break down the above with a little bit more detail, these are some football trading tips and tricks if you like.

When you’re a beginner to football trading, you need to start at a very basic level – you won’t have a set football trading strategy straight away – you need to develop it. The best way into the football markets for a new trader is to focus on the team or league that you are most knowledgable, and then try to form a strategy from there. Perhaps you want to leave aside Betfair trading on your own team because of the bias, but you will know a lot about the league and other opposition teams.

This is where to start; because you can get a feel of how the market rates each team and see how it reacts to events.

The next step is you apply what you enjoy, it’s very important that you enjoy your football trading strategy long-term. I feel you can get a lot of value from xG figures on Infogol for example so I spend multiple hours per week doing research. If you’re the type of person who doesn’t enjoy stats or research, then that might not be for you. It will always be better in the long run if you enjoy what you’re doing and football trading is no different. Take some time to make sure you have a solid football trading setup, and give it some proper attention!

And lastly, we combine the final two points above – do I know more than other traders in the market and am I correctly pricing my opinion? That’s why I suggest starting in a league you know very well because you will quickly see how the market works against your opinion as I said football trading for beginners can be as hard or as easy as you make it. Remember, football trading long-term isn’t about picking the winning teams; it’s about calling what way the market will move for a very short period of time.

Let me give you an example from my Football Course – the angle is that we expect a slow start, and we have done our research to see both sides score very little and create very little in the opening 20 minutes. The strategy here is to allow the market time to settle – i.e. the opening five minutes or so, then begin to build a position on Under 2.5, as the market ticks down with the slow start to the game you begin to trade out of the position, after 20 minutes (or whenever you’re happy with the market movement) you fully green up. In this example, you’re in the market for 15 minutes max and possibly even as little as five minutes. Just because you’ve projected a slow start with the stats, doesn’t mean the game will finish with less than Under 2.5 goals. This brings us back to one key bit of advice – you’re not looking to be right on the full-time score; just be right for a short period of time. A lot of new football traders miss this point. If anyone asks you “what is football trading?” There’s your answer.

Football Trading Strategy:

Once you have decided on your area to focus on, you then build a trading strategy. Essentially, your strategy will bring together everything that suits you. What league do you trade, what market to trade and what angle do you want to trade? Your strategy doesn’t change; the only thing that changes is the fixture. You must find a fixture that fits into your strategy, rather than trying to fit your strategy into any games.

Examples of certain strategies might be like the one mentioned above in the Under/Over 2.5 goals market, or a betting example would be a ‘Last 15 minute strategy’ where you back a goal to come because you see a stat saying the two teams play very open in the final 15 minutes. Other strategies like compression points, laying the draw and time decay all feed into the same logic. You are picking an area that you are very good at and targeting it. Everyone looks for football trading tip these days looking for easy cash, but football trading isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme.

It takes years of experience to see a very good compression point in a market. If you don’t know what a compression point is, it is basically a point where the market stops moving away and stalls.

Remember there is always time decay in football trading. If a team starts at 1.3, once the game goes in-play and it’s 0-0 the market has to get to 1000.0 eventually unless a goal is scored. So you have moments of normal time decay, accelerated time decay and then compression points. For a beginner, it’s easier to focus on moments of accelerated time decay and have the market working with you rather than always ticking away from you.

Football Trading For Beginners…

As a beginner to football trading, you’re going to get a lot of “advice.” Not all advice is good advice. You want to focus on your time management and bankroll management at the start of your journey – those are two things you can easily control and don’t need a trading talent to do so. The next big thing is learning what to avoid when football trading. This is almost, if not as important, as knowing what your strategy is!

You need to understand your trading style, what works for you and if there’s anything you dislike or struggle with, you need to avoid it. It’s easier said than done I know, but it’s a fact that you need to do it. Take my trading, for example, if I start at 12-30pm on a Saturday – do the 12-30pm, 3pm and 5-30pm games – sometimes I’m tired by the 8pm game. It’s usually a La Liga game at that time, and unless I see a massive angle I just switch the computer off. Trading is mentally draining, and you have to know when to stop. This is when you make mistakes.

Likewise, if you have a problem with keeping your cool after a trade goes against you, the decision has to be made to step away for ten minutes and cool down. You’re only going to overreact and make a bad decision again. Another common mistake I see is people unsure about what to do when they are “feeling unsure” – the answer is this; if you’re unsure about a trade you’ve just entered, close it out. Simple as. Don’t get stuck with a position you have only opened half-heartedly. You have to be 100% confident in every trade. Ultimate football trading guide for beginners? Master the basics mate!

Let’s not forget how important staking is too. Again, this is something you can fully control without having a trading talent. Controlling your staking will be a huge benefit to you in the long term. No chasing, no upping stakes for no good reason. The idea is you find a stake you a comfortable with and stick with that – especially if you are a beginner.

Another good staking system might be a points-based staking system where you opt for three sections – 1 point, 2 points and 3 points where you rate your confidence in the trade. There will always be some better trades than others, so these are worth more money. It also allows you to stake lower on markets you feel offer value, but only marginal value.

Football Trading Course

If you’re looking for a “get experienced faster” lesson, then the Football Trading Course is a nice option for you. It ticks a lot of boxes from a beginner’s point of view, it’s going to be really helpful to see where are the key areas to spend time on, and what strategies to focus on. You’ll see things like;

In the end, with football trading, you have to keep researching, stay focused on the ever-moving markets and find the right strategies for you. They say football never sleeps for a reason! However, being a successful football trader isn’t as difficult as you might think, you just have to find the right tools for the job.

Advanced Help: Football Trading Video Course for Betfair