Laying the draw in football
There’s more to be made once you have signed up with the bookmakers that have given you free bets.
Now take advantage of the wide range of bookmakers you have to find ‘arb’ bets. These are bets where the ‘Back’ price is bigger than the ‘lay price - ones where you just can’t lose !
Enter the world of Betfair Trading !
There are loads of strategies around..
My personal favourite of all strategies, mainly because, if you apply this tactic to the correct type of match, you are almost guaranteed to profit 100% of the time. I’ll explain what I mean by ‘the correct type of match’ later. For now, here is a summary of what the system involves.
The concept is simple - when a goal is scored in a football match, the prices of all the match outcomes (home win, away win or draw) changes. How it changes depends on many factors such as which team scores the goal and the time of the goal. In this strategy we are trying to lay the draw prior to kick-off, with the aim of backing it at a higher price, once the first goal is scored, therefore securing a tidy profit.
For example, say Liverpool are playing at home to Portsmouth. Liverpool, odds-on at 1.45 are expected to win the game and should score the first goal. In this event the price of the draw (7.20) would drift out, and you would then back the draw at the new price, giving yourself a free bet or equal profits whatever the outcome, depending on how you choose to play it.
This on its own however, is fundamentally flawed, for two main reasons. Can you think why?
If you came to the conclusion that either the underdog, so Portsmouth in the previous example, might score first or the game could finish 0-0, commend yourself. Obviously, should the unfancied side score first, the draw odds you steam, leaving you in a nasty position. Similarly, if no goal was scored, the price of the draw you continue to steam, further and further inwards, leaving you out of pocket.
The good news, however, is that both of these problems can be rectified leaving us with the perfect strategy (or at least I’ve never lost money this way after using it many times to make money). I discuss how we nullify the risk of the 0-0 and the underdog scoring in the next section. For now, I leave you asking if you can think of what the solutions are? It’s not a brain teaser, the answers are straight-forward and this is just a simple exercise to help you solve your own problems when/if you create strategies like this on your own.
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Do you think you have the solution to the problem we had earlier on.’? Congratulations if you came up with the idea to back the 0-0 so that, if it wins, it covers the liability of your lay in the correct scores market, to eliminate the chance that the game could finish scoreless, and potentially penniless.
Equal congratulations if you were able to think of only choosing games where the two teams had a relatively equal chance of winning, to eradicate the possibility of an unfancied underdog like Sunderland scoring against one of the footballing giants like Manchester United.
Simply add these new filters to the previous version of the lay-the-draw theory discussed in ‘Part 1’ and you create a no lose situation for yourself.
Below is a real example of the type of game you should looking for and one that I put money on. Germany vs Argentina. The odds represented the game would be a tight affair. Germany were slightly favourites at 2.80, the draw was available at 3.15 and Argentina were also available to back at 3.15. The fact that the odds suggested the game would be close meant that there was no real underdog, meaning, regardless of which country scored the first goal, the price of the draw would still shoot up afterwards, to be backed at a higher price.
Confident I had created a no-lose situation, the draw was layed for a £465, giving a liability just under £1000 and, to cover my loss in the event of a 0-0, I backed the 0-0 at for £120 11.0, to leave me with a tidy profit, of £80, if the score finished 0-0. (£1080 from the 0-0 win after 5% comm. take away the £1000 liability lost on the draw lay).
The game promptly started and I sat back waiting for the first goal. Argentina provided it and the price of the draw shot up immediately after the brief suspension that occurs once a goal is scored. I backed the draw at 6.50 with a stake of £250, knowing I’d just secured a nice profit, for doing very little.
As it turned out, the game was a great example of why discipline is so important. I could have been greedy and waited a while trying to get a higher price for the draw. This could have been disastrous for me, because, as it turned out the Germans equalised and the match ended 1-1 (with Germany going through on penalties). Consequently, the price of the draw dropped to odds-on and, had I not stuck to the rules strictly and secured my profits immediately after the first goal, I would have been down a lot of money!
In the end, my profit/loss figures from the game were as follows…
£1375 - £1000 = £375 (or £356.25 after comm.. on net winnings)
£356.25) - £120 = £236.25
PROFIT/LOSS = + £236.25
Not bad for less than an hours work!
NOTE:
With regards to where the figures from the calculations come from.
£1375 comes from winning the £250 back at odds of 6.5
£1000 comes from the liability of the £465 stake used to lay the draw
£120 comes from the stake used to back the 0-0