Best Matched Betting Services In 2022 – Comparing The Top 3 Services

Matched betting is a great way to earn some extra money. More and more people have discovered this in recent years. If you really want to make the most out all the matched betting opportunities out there then you will have probably looked at a matched betting service.

Due to this surge in popularity there are more and more matched betting services competing for customers. Competition is good for us as matched bettors as it means we get better services and they have to offer us more value for our money.

Best Matched Betting Service

What is the best matched betting service in 2020? – Profit Maximiser

Lets take a look at one of the first and most popular matched betting services.

comparing matched betting services

Profit Maximiser was the first service that really showed you how to exploit every opportunity available. I had known about matched betting previously but after joining Profit Maximiser I realised there was a whole lot more money to be made.

What Does Profit Maximiser Offer?

  • Step by step guide to matched betting and exploiting casino bonuses
  • How to make money from bingo bonuses
  • How to take advantage of spread betting offers
  • Making money from reload offers
  • Private members Facebook group
  • Access to private member area
  • Matched betting calculators
  • Matched Betting Spreadsheets
  • Betfair Renegade (Betfair Value Betting Software)

 

My Experience With Profit Maximiser

Like I said previously Profit Maximiser really opened my eyes to all of the betting opportunities out there.

I found the service to be very professionally run. There are videos of the offers and walk through guides in the private members area. Help is on offer through email support if you have any questions.

Exploiting casino offers is the area that Profit Maximiser really excels in. Mike Cruickshank is really ahead of the curve when it comes to making money from casino bonuses.

Another aspect of Profit Maximiser that I really enjoyed was the Facebook group. It was really active with a lot of experienced matched bettors and useful advice being shared. Quite a few members of Profit Maximiser have gone on to make large sums from matched betting.

Best Matched Betting Service
Some members have achieved some big profits.

The whole service is very well put together. Furthermore the man behind Profit Maximiser Mike Cruickshank deserves a lot of credit. This service really was a big part in the growth of matched betting which has really exploded in popularity.

Profit Maximiser – Pros And Cons

Cons

  • No monthly subscription.
  • Initial Cost is £116 pounds for a years subscription.
  • Multiple up sells for other products (Each way Sniper, Accumulator Generator)

Pros

  • The original matched betting service
  • Strong and active community
  • Continuously developing the product (addition of value betting tool.)
  • Good value for your money

What is the best matched betting service? – Oddsmonkey

Best Matched Betting Service

Oddsmonkey began life as a odds matching service and software provider for matched betting services.

A few years ago after seeing the rise of matched betting services they created their own. The ethos of the Oddsmonkey service seemed to be to emulate a service like Profit Maximiser but also add as much value as possible at a reasonable price.

What Do Oddsmonkey Offer?

  • Matched Betting Tutorial
  • New Customer Sign Up Offers
  • Bingo and Casino Offers
  • Oddsmatcher software (Odds matching software for arbitrage and matched betting)
  • Racing Matcher (Software that highlights odds matches for racing offers)
  • Dutch Search
  • Each Way Matcher (Software that highlights each way arbitrage bets)
  • Matched Betting Calculators
  • Spreadsheets
  • Matched Betting Forum
  • Acca Matcher (software that highlights profitable accumulator bets using bookmaker promotions)

My Experience With Oddsmonkey

After my Profit Maximiser subscription ended I joined a few different services to see what they offered. Eventually I settled on Oddsmonkey as I found that it was the service that by far offered the most value for my money.

The service is excellent with a clean interface that is easy to navigate. For £17.99 a month they really packed a tonne of useful software into the service. I mentioned a con of the Profit Maximiser service was receiving multiple up sells to other products. For example there is the Each Way Sniper (around £47 plus VAT) and Accumulator Generator (£148.99 plus VAT).

Best Matched Betting Service
Each Way Matcher shows you how to make risk free profits from horse racing.

Oddsmonkey includes services similar to Each Way Sniper and Accumulator Generator with its £17.99 pound a month service. So as much as I like Profit Maximiser ,I believe that Oddsmonkey offered me much value for my money in terms of matched betting.

Another point that I liked about the service was that I wasn’t tied in to a long term subscription. If I was going away for three weeks and wasn’t going to use the service much I could cancel. When I was going to make full use of the service I could then sign up again. The subscription options offer great flexibility.

Oddsmonkey – Pros And Cons

Cons

  • Community not as active as other matched betting services

Pros

  • Most value for your money
  • Everything included with your subscription (no up sells)
  • Excellent Support
  • Service suits all levels of matched bettors (beginners to advanced)

What is the best matched betting service? – Profit Accumulator/Profit Ninja’s

Profit Maximiser and Oddsmonkey are the two services that I have used the most. However there are a lot of matched betting software providers looking to offer their services.

Profit Accumulator is one of the big three services. This is not a service that I have used but from talking to members of the service it is very similar to Profit Maximiser. Profit Accumulator have done a great job of marketing matched betting to the public.

Here is a great review of Profit Accumulator

They boast to my knowledge the biggest matched betting community around 20.000 plus members. Subscription cost either £22.99 month or £150 for the year.

(Update (2018) Profit Accumulator now match Oddsmonkey subscription qt £17.99 a month or £150 a year.)

Best Matched Betting Service

Another service that I used for a few months was profit ninja’s. Profit Ninja’s is one of the lesser known services but they offer quite a good product. On top of a general matched betting product with odds matching software they also provide a few Betfair trading strategies.

They offer subscriptions for £10 a month or an annual fee of £100 with odds matching software. 

Best Matched Betting Service

 

Comparing Matched Betting Services

 Profit MaximiserOddsmonkeyProfit AccumulatorProfit Ninja’s

Monthly Fee

n/a£17.99£17.99£10
Annual Fee

£116.00

£150.00

£150.00

£100

Free Trialn/aYesYes

Yes

Refund Guarantee

30 days30 days30 days

n/a

 

 

 

 

 

Matched Betting Tools    

Accumulator Matcher

Additional £148.99Included in subscriptionIncluded in subscriptionn/a

Eachway Matcher

Additional £47.00

Included in subscription

Included in subscription

n/a

Odds matching SoftwareAdditional £98.97Included in subscriptionIncluded in subscription

Included in subscription

     
Support Features    

Member Forum

YesYesYesYes
EmailYesYesYes

Yes

What is the Matched Betting Service? – Conclusion

You can probably guess from this article which service I am going to recommend.

For matched betting Oddsmonkey is the service that I currently use and it continues to be the stand out matched betting service for me.

On top of it being such an excellent service. You trial Oddsmonkey yourself for 30 days. If you don’t get enough value for your money you can get a refund.

It’s a no brainer for me if your looking to make money from matched betting go with Oddsmonkey.

Best Matched Betting Service

 

Jonas Gjelstad – High Stakes Poker To High Stakes Sports Betting

Jonas Gjelstad Betting

Jonas Gjelstad – High Stakes Poker To High Stakes Sports Betting

Who Is Jonas Gjelstad?

Jonas Gjelstad is a high stakes poker player who turned his attention to sports betting. Originally from Norway Jonas started playing poker at a young age. 

Starting at low stakes sit and go tournaments before transitioning to heads up games. Jonas Gjelstad eventually Specialised in the game of PLO and quickly made his way to some of the higher stakes games online.

At the age of 20 years old he was appointed as an instructor for well known poker training site CardRunners.

Jonas Gjelstad Betting

Finding Value In Sports Betting

In the last few years Jonas has turned his focus towards sports betting.

Value betting was the approach that Jonas used initially to become a profitable sports bettor. Jonas stated that he would manually compare the odds between the sharp Asian bookmakers and soft European ones.

When the soft bookmakers offered greater odds then the Asian markets they would often become value bets after market movement. Jonas would take these value bets whenever they appeared.

Automating the process of finding value bets was one of the next steps in Jonas’s sports betting journey.

Jonas Gjelstad and some of his colleagues created a value betting tool which was later released to the public as Edgebet (which then later became Trademate.)

Jonas Gjelstad Betting

Finding himself limited from the majority of the soft bookmakers Gjelstad turned his attention to beating the sharper Asian betting markets. Applying what he learnt from studying the markets whilst value betting Jonas developed a way to profit from the sharper bookmakers.

In a video series which profiles Jonas Gjelstad’s sports betting activities he states that he turned an initial bankroll of $10k into $1,000,000 over 12 months time.

Whilst little is known about the way Jonas approaches the betting markets and how has been so successful. The way he has quickly progressed in both the poker world and sports betting world are pretty unheard of.

It will be interesting to see what the future brings for Jonas Gjelstad.

One thing is for sure he is obviously somebody who has mastered the art of gambling.

Resources 

Jonas Gjelstad profile – video series 

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Laying The Correct Score Tips – Betfair Trading Strategy

Laying The Correct Score Tips – Betfair Strategy

Goals are the most exciting aspect of a football match.

They cause the biggest odds movement and there are numerous strategies based around goals.

Laying the correct score in the second half is the strategy I am going to write about in this article.

When is the best time to lay the correct score?

Generally I like to the lay the score in the second half of the game in the final 30 minutes.

There are a few factors that I look for in a good lay the second half score trade.

Laying The Correct Score Tips - Betfair Strategy
Cup games are good for this strategy.

 

Urgency – There needs to a reason why a teams need to score and preferably as quick as possible.

One goal difference – I like there to be a one goal difference between the teams. Psychologically this can make a big difference to the way players react. One goal is always very attainable whether there are 20 minutes or 2 minutes remaining.

Home team losing/Cup game – These situations can create an urgency within a team to score. A rabid home crowd spur their team to push forward and can give a side that extra energy. It can also leave them open to the counter and exposed at the back as the pressure from fans builds.

Teams that generally score/Opposition stats – This is probably obvious but you want to look at teams that have a good goal scoring record at home. Also consider on average how many goals there opponents concede away from home.

Game Tempo – Being able to watch a game is an advantage as game tempo can be key.

  •  Is the leading team looking to counter?
  •  Are they wasting time using stalling tactics?
  •  Is the referee stopping the game at every opportunity?
  •  Are the crowd behind the home team? Changes in tactics/substitutions?

Laying The Correct Score Tips – Betfair Strategy

Example

Last night there was a game between Liverpool and Southampton in the league cup semi final. Liverpool were the home side and found themselves down 0-1 on aggregate. It got to the 60 minute mark and the score was level at 0-0 with Liverpool needing a goal to have any hope of qualification.

Laying The Correct Score Tips - Betfair Strategy

Given the conditions of the game meeting the factors above and Liverpool’s tendency to score at home I entered a lay bet on 0-0 at 3.35.

It should also be noted that Southampton were missing there best defender Virgil Van Dijk and this season had conceded twice as many goals in the second half compared to the first. These were other factors that I felt increased the likely hood of a goal being scored.

Laying The Correct Score Tips - Betfair Strategy

Liverpool pushed hard for the goal but ultimately it was Southampton who scored in injury time on the counter. The lay bet was successful £28.53 was made after commission for a stake of £70.50.

I prefer to trade the match odds markets pre match and in the first half. The strategy above however is a good one to consider in the second half if the right conditions are met.

This strategy is basically an outright bet on a goal being scored. Like all betting strategies you need to consider correct bankroll management and game selection to be successful in the long term.

Hopefully this article on laying the correct score will have given you a strategy to consider when trading the second half of a football game.

Resources

https://www.soccerstats.com/

Looking to make money from the sports betting markets.

Check out our recommendations below.

 

 

Paulo Rebelo – The Millionaire Football Trader

Paulo Rebelo – The Millionaire Football Trader

Who is Paulo Rebelo?

Paulo Rebelo is a football trader who is quite well known in his native country of Portugal.

In Portugal he has appeared on national television several times and runs the popular betting/trading website https://www.academiadasapostas.com/

 Paulo Rebelo - The Millionaire Football Trader
Picture courtesy of www.paulorebelotrader.com/en

At the age of 17 Paulo Rebelo began studying the stock markets. Before going on to study at university.

Rebelo notes that he left university after the first semester as he was disappointed by what was taught. He began to study economics and began to develop and test theories on the stock exchange.

Failing to get a job in portfolio management due his age, lack of experience and no degree Rebelo returned to university.

The Betting Begins 

When Paulo returned to college his interest in sports betting began. Consistent results and profits were made from “simple statistical analyzes” in Paulo’s own words.

Sports trading became a major focus of his.

After about a year of betting Paulo Rebelo found Betfair. He realised that he could apply everything he had learnt from studying the financial markets to the Betfair markets.

Rebelo eventually developed his own database and created a model which was able to identify profitable odds in the Betfair markets.

 Paulo Rebelo The Millionaire Football Trader
Picture courtesy of https://www.paulorebelotrader.com/en/paulo-rebelo-diary/

Live trading was Paulo’s next focus and he writes “after identifying, analyzing and correction of some mistakes done, I managed to step-by-step profit with live games. When I started winning consistently I dedicated myself exclusively to trading live.”

There is quite a lot of material from Paulo Rebelo available online. Although it is not perfectly translated into English there are still some useful bits of information and insights to be read.

You can learn more about Paulo Rebelo in the links below.

Resources 

https://www.paulorebelotrader.com/en/paulo-rebelo-diary/

https://www.youtube.com/user/SirPauloR

https://www.onlinebettingacademy.com/

References

https://www.paulorebelotrader.com/en/about-me/

Looking to make money from the sports betting markets.

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Accumulator Betting Tips – Can accumulators be profitable?

Accumulator Betting Profit

Accumulator betting profits

Is there a way of making long term profits from accumulator betting?

Accumulator’s are a bookmaker’s best friend they love them.  

In fact you very rarely see a bookmaker highlighting a winning punters success. If however that punter hit a 16 team accumulator for £150,000 you might here about it.

Those bettors that are able to find value week in week out against a bookmakers odds over the long term. Will likely find themselves limited to pennies or unable to bet.

Accumulator betting profits
My weekend accumulator

Why then do bookmakers love accumulators?

Bookmakers love accumulators generally because it compounds their margins.

A bookmaker margin is basically the percentage of profit a bookmaker would make if the amount of money bet on all outcomes of a game were equally balanced.

For example if a bookmaker has a 5% margin on a game this would mean they would expect to make £5 for every £100 staked on the game. In a way this is similar to arbitrage betting if a bookmaker has a perfectly balanced book then they are guaranteed a profit no matter the outcome.

So bookmakers in general love accumulator bets because its compounds that margin for them with each selection. A 5% margin on a single bet becomes much more with each selection that you add.

Accumulator betting profits
Oddsmath shows what each bookmakers margin is. The margin is the percentage on the far right.

Making a profit from accumulator betting

It is possible to make a profit from accumulator bets and like all methods of betting its about finding value.

I have written about using Asian bookmaker to find value bets with softbooks before. We can use this same approach when making an accumulator have a positive expectation.

For this approach we need to find two or more value bets with the same bookmaker. Then put them in an accumulator.

Accumulator betting profits
Oddsmath also shows the no vig odds of a bet. This is the odds of a bet with the margin removed.

You can see from the above that Marathonbet have Osasuna at 7.10 whilst Pinnacle have them at odds of 6.61. The no vig odds are 6.74 which indicates Osasuna are a value bet.

Betting in this way is still going to be very volatile but if you are going to place accumulators bets you may as well look for value whilst doing it.

Accumulator betting profits

Using bookmaker promotion’s against them

The best way to make money from accumulator betting is by using bookmaker promotions against them. Oddsmonkey is an excellent matched betting service and has something called the “Acca Matcher” which was created just for this.

Accumulators are such a big money earner for soft bookmakers they want to entice people to bet on them. A popular promotion is “back 5 selections get a free bet if one loses.”

This offered by William Hill, Coral and Ladbrokes alongside several other soft bookmakers.

Accumulator betting tips
Oddsmonkey’s Acca Matcher find the best value accumulators available

Selections from the bookmaker are found by Oddsmonkey which are close in price to the Betfair lay odds. This means generally they are close to the true odds.

The Oddsmonkey “Acca Matcher” then uses the Betfair odds alongside the bookmakers money back promotion to show you the expected long term value of placing that bet. There is also the option to lay these selections on the betting exchanges to guarantee small profits.

This process can also be done manually by searching for odds close to the Betfair lay price yourself. Oddsmonkey just enables you to do it quicker and works out the calculations for you.

Bookmaker’s accumulator promotions are a great way of creating accumulator bets with a positive expectation.

Accumulator betting tips
Oddsmonkey’s Acca Matcher at work

I hope this article has given you a few ideas on how to make money from accumulator betting. When used correctly it can be a good way of keeping under a bookmakers radar whilst still extracting some value.

Dobbing – Betfair Trading Strategy

Trade horses pre race

Dobbing Betfair Trading Strategy

What is Dobbing?

Dobbing stands for “double or bust” it is a Betfair trading strategy used on the horse racing markets.

The Dobbing Betfair strategy involves backing a horse pre race and having a lay bet matched in-play at half the odds of the initial stake. 

Dobbing Betfair Strategy
Double or bust

The aim of a Dob (double or bust) bet is to make a profit that is even to your stake essentially doubling it.

Lets take a look at an example of a potential Dob bet.

Dobbing Betfair Strategy

In the above image you can see that I have put in a potential back bet of £100 on Bonnie Gals at odds of 5.00.

I have also placed a potential lay bet of £200 at odds of 2.5. If both of these bets were matched you can see that this would equal a profit of £95.00 (£100 – 5% commission) across all outcomes.

If the lay bet is not matched in-play then you would lose your stake, this is where the bust part of the name Dob (double or bust) comes from.

Dobbing essentially works like a straight betting method where you are getting odds of 1.95 ( After 5% commission) on every bet.

Dobbing Betfair Trading Strategy

How to find a good Dobbing Horse?

The double or bust strategy is one that is quite popular so there are a number of good resources available online.

Patternform for example has an excellent page showing you the historical percentages for horses that have dobbed in the past.

Dobbing Betfair Trading Strategy
An example of the Patternform Dobbing overview.

This is a good starting point when looking for a horse that will potentially Dob in-play. 

There are several factors to take into account when choosing horses that will be a successful Dob trade.

For example you might look at filtering horses that have historically dobbed 75% of the time, look at whether they favour specific courses, Are they likely to lead the race? Weather conditions?  Do specific odds ranges work better?

Dobbing Betfair Trading Strategy
Patternform Pace Card

The pace card is another excellent resource from Patternform which gives you an indication of likely front runners in a race.

There are a few different variants of this method with some people opting to try to take more then 100% profit on there stake and others taking less. The most common method however seems to be for people to aim for basically an even money bet minus the commission.

Dobbing can be a profitable angle to consider when looking at trading the horse racing markets and might be something to consider having in your trading arsenal.

Matched Betting to Sports Trading – What’s Next?

Matched Betting to Sports Trading

Matched Betting to Sports Trading – What’s Next?

More and more people are moving from matched betting into sports trading. 

Matched betting is a great way for anyone to get involved in the sports betting and trading markets as it is the easiest way of making money. Eventually bookmakers remove any bonus eligibility from your account or in some cases (Boylesport) close your account all together.

Matched betting is a great introduction into sports trading as it shows people that money can be made from the bookmakers. You should also become familiar with the betting exchanges and how they function.

Matched betting to sports trading
Matched betting is an easy way of making money. Whats the next step?

Life after matched betting what’s next?

  • Value Betting

First off you should still have a lot of bookmaker accounts left. There is still the potential to make more money from these accounts and value betting is probably one of the best ways of doing it.

By exploiting the fact that many bookmakers move their odds slower then the sharper Asian bookmakers such as Pinnacle we can find odds that offer good value.

  • Sports Trading

At this point you are familiar with the betting exchanges and are looking to start making money trading. There are lots of potential options with sports trading.

Which sport? Pre match or in play? Lay drifting horses? Back potential steamers? Lay low odds in Tennis?

Its important to find your focuses and break down the sport that suits you best. Which sports are you most knowledgeable about? How much time have you spent looking at the markets? What have been your most profitable markets?

  • Sports Betting

Matched betting might have allowed you to build up a big enough bank to consider going into sports betting. 

One way of taking on sports betting is to build up a portfolio of proven profitable tipsters and looking at sports betting as a long term investment.

Recommended Reading

What is value betting?

Sports trading which sport?

Sports betting as an investment

 

Matched betting to sports trading
Its ok to lose sometimes

Matched Betting to Sports Trading

Major differences?

  • You will lose sometimes

This is the big difference from matched betting to sports trading and betting. If you have been matched betting you will be used to constantly racking up the profits but trading and betting is a different animal.

Losing money is never pleasant but it is inevitable that at some point you will lose money and you have accept this as part of the game.

If you look on social media you tend to see lots of nice screenshots of winning trades or people going 5/5 in sports betting for the day. If you are not experienced this might give you the impression that sports bettors and traders rarely lose but in truth everybody has losses.

Once you accept that losses will happen it makes it much easier to find long term profitability as you aren’t constantly changing strategies, sports or tipsters.

  • Learn about variance 

This ties into the above buts it is really important to learn about variance.

Variance in the short term can make us believe an unprofitable strategy is profitable and a profitable strategy unprofitable.

If you start to build an understanding of variance then it diminishes the stress and shock of losing periods or losing trades.

Recommended Reading

Understanding variance

Learning from your losses

 

 

 

Mastering Tennis Trading Review – An Expert’s Insight

Mastering tennis trading review

Mastering Tennis Trading is a book written by respected professional tennis trader Dan Weston.

Dan Weston has written articles for Pinnacle and Matchbook. He also runs the site https://www.tennisratings.co.uk/ which has lots of good articles on tennis trading and betting.

Mastering Tennis Trading Review
The tennis markets attract huge amounts of liquidity.

Mastering Tennis Trading Review

The book mastering tennis trading is as the name implies all about trading the tennis markets on betting exchanges.

I don’t trade tennis myself but I always love to read how professional traders approach trading the betting exchanges. This book does a great job of that and has really given me the motivation to take a much deeper look at trading tennis in 2017.

Mastering Tennis Trading is a total of 117 pages long. It starts with a basic introduction to tennis trading and how to setup yourself up when you are trading. General aspects of the betting exchanges are also explained such as price increments, laying, liquidity etc.

After the general introduction different trading strategies and situations are discussed in detail. One recurring theme that I really liked about this book is the use of data to explain why a trade had or might have a positive expectation.

Mastering Tennis Trading covers quite a large number of trading situations with the main topics including

  • Pre-match trading
  • Projected service holds
  • Pre-match lay to back in-play 
  • Backing favourites when losing
  • Laying bad servers
  • Pressure situations
  • Backing the server
  • Tiebreak trading
  • In-game trades
  • At the end of the first set
  • The deciding set
  • Dangerous situations
  • Psychology risk and bankroll management

So you can see from the above that this book is very thorough and covers pretty much all aspects of trading tennis.

 

Mastering Tennis Trading Review

Final Verdict

I really enjoyed reading this book and felt that I was getting expert advice from somebody that is trading the tennis markets profitably for a living. Mastering Tennis Trading does an excellent job of explaining the basics of trading tennis and then progresses to show well explained examples of how you can find profitable angles within the tennis markets.

This book gets a clear recommendation from me. It is well written, easy to follow and would add a huge amount of value to anyone that was looking to trade tennis on the exchanges.

It gets a five star rating from me.

(This article features affiliate links. This means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. I use or have used any product I review. If I recommend them it is because I believe they are helpful, useful and offer value to their customers. Please do not spend any money on these products unless you feel they will give you value or that they will help you achieve your goals.)

 

 

Understanding Variance in Sports Trading and Betting

Positive Variance

Understanding Variance in Sports Trading and Betting

Variance can be defined as the expectation of the squared deviation of a random variable from its mean, and it informally measures how far a set of (random) numbers are spread out from their mean.

If you struggled with that don’t worry your not alone. This definition doesn’t help those of us that are not very mathematically minded but there is a simpler way of looking at variance.

Variance is one of the key reasons why a lot of people struggle with sports trading and betting. It is something that I myself struggled with a lot when I first started sports trading and betting.

Understanding Variance in Sports Trading and Betting
Heads or Tails?

If we look at a coin flip there are two outcomes heads and tails. An equally weighted coin means that there is a 50% chance of it landing on either heads or tails. The nature of variance however means that if  we flipped a coin a 100 times it may land on heads 63 times and tails 37 times or heads 44 times and tails 56 times.

The results of a 100 coin tosses would not be exactly 50/50 very often.

We know however that with a fair coin toss the odds are 50/50. With a greater volume of coin tosses the number of heads and tails recorded should move closer to evens.

Understanding Variance in Sports Trading and Betting
Variance isn’t always negative and we sometimes do better then expected.

Understanding Variance in Sports Trading and Betting

Variance exists in sports trading and betting. There are several variables that we need to take into account when we looking at variance in our own betting and trading results.

We need to be aware of the odds that we betting/trading, the sample size of results that we have and what our expected edge is in the market we are trading or betting in.

It is important to develop a better understanding of variance as a sports bettor or trader. When we don’t understand something it often to leads to feelings of frustration and anger.

These feeling often have a negative effect on our sports trading. By breaking down and understanding the different aspects of sports trading we become better more profitable traders.

I am not an expert in probability and statistics it is something I am constantly learning about and trying to develop a greater understanding of. Luckily we live in an age were we can easily access articles and books published by experts in these fields.

Here is some recommended reading if you want to develop a better understanding of variance.

Its all about variance

Luck vs skill in sports betting

 

 

Treat Your Sports Trading Like A Business

The first time that I really took gambling seriously was when I started to play online poker. A big influence on me managing to make a consistent profit from poker was from a book called “how to treat poker like a business.

One of the best poker books I have read.
One of the best poker books I have read.

Now sports betting and trading are different from the game of poker but a lot of the same principles apply. In this article I will look at how to treat your sports trading like a business.

Treat Your Sports Trading Like A Business

Record Keeping

So lets start with what might be the most boring aspect but also one of the most important.

You need to be recording your trades and bets. Its important to see where you are making money and where you are losing money. What is the most profitable part of your trading business is it pre match trades, inplay, favourites, underdogs etc.

All good businesses will have detailed record keeping to know where they are making their profit and look at where they may be potentially losing money.

It is fairly easy to keep on top of this with so many software programs available to help with record keeping.

Recommendations

Open Office

Bettings

 

Look at the small margins

Small margins amount to big profits in the long term. Increasing a profit margin by 2% or 3% is going to make a huge difference to your profit over the course of a year.

One of the best ways of looking to increase those small profit margins is to look at Matchbook and Smarkets.

This year I have really looked a lot more at Matchbook and Smarkets as obviously the 3% commission difference between these exchanges and Betfair is a big factor.

Betfair is still the most ideal platform for trading it has the most liquid markets and the most real punters. There are markets you can trade on Betfair that you couldn’t on either Matchbook or Smarkets.

Matchbook and Smarkets are however growing and you see more and more liquidity becoming available in these markets. If I am looking to make a standard bet or pre match trade on the bigger football leagues its Smarkets and Matchbook that I look to use ahead of Betfair.

If you can transfer some of your trading or betting to Matchbook or Smarkets then its going to make you are lot more profitable in the long term.

Invest in your sports trading business 

If you are treating your trading like a business then you should not be afraid to invest or reinvest some money into it. Even simple investments like a comfortable chair or extra monitor might pay dividends in the long run.

Don't be afraid to put money back into your trading.
Sports Trading and betting could be looked at as your new startup business.

If you prepared to invest in a more formal trading education there are some good traders out there that are offering face to face courses. Peter Webb, Steve Howe and Caan Berry all offer courses that focus on trading the horse racing markets.

If you are trading fast moving markets then you should probably look at using some api software such as Geeks Toy, Bet Angel or Gruss.

You can take a look at some of my recommended betting and trading products to see if there are any that would benefit your sports trading business.

Structure

Structure is very important in trading and betting. You really want to structure your trading and betting to be as efficient as possible.

Successful business’s don’t trade at random and erratic times. They have a structure in place to capitalize on the most profitable times and most profitable customers.

You want to do the same. You want to make sure you are trading when the best opportunities are available.

What is the best day to take off? When should I spend time with friends/family? How can I trade around work?

Spend some time structuring how and when you are going to trade. This can make a big difference to your mentality and help maintain discipline when trading.

If you treat your trading and betting like a serious business you have a much greater chance of making it a success.