Smart Sports Trader, Author at Smart Sports Trader

Profitable betting strategy – Don’t discount short odds

All bettors hope to stumble upon a profitable betting strategy and sometimes they can be fairly simple.

So I have admitted to being somewhat of a gambling geek I have spent lots of time reading forums, blogs, books and whatever I can get my hands on that is betting/trading related.

I am always looking for a profitable betting strategy. One theory that I found interesting is the favourite-longshot bias in betting.

Here is some reading material for some of you that this might interest.

https://www.gamblingonlinemagazine.com/gambling-features.php?articleID=35

https://www.football-data.co.uk/blog/favourite_longshot_bias_football.php

https://www.progambler.co.uk/favourite-longshot-bias-in-fixed-odds-football-markets/

In a nutshell if you don’t want to read through those articles it shows that by blindly betting on every favourite you would lose a lot less then if you blindly bet on every underdog.

Bookmakers exploited the fact that a punter was more likely to back at higher odds. Given the chance to risk say £10 to win £90 then they would be to risk £10 to win £2.50. This lead to longer odds being much poorer value and further away from the real implied odds.

It indicates that is easier to find value in favourites then it is to do so in underdogs. A lot of the research I have read was from many years ago so I wanted to see if this trend is still prevalent in today’s markets.

Profitable betting strategy

Looking at Pyckio a tipster site that has ranked thousands of tipsters we can see that the number one tipster bets at average odds of 1.28 (at the time of writing) going by the name of PistolPete with 6.1% yield over 568 bets.

He has achieved this by betting exclusively on low odds in Tennis. This is one indicator that the favourite-longshot bias is still prevalent at least in Tennis.

Profitable betting strategy — Betting short odds on tennis has shown to be profitable.

My second indicator was a service called Banker Bets which also focuses its betting on short odds over varying sports.

Over two years the service has banked an increase of 192.90% to the average available odds (meaning this could have been bettered by selecting the best odds available at the time.)

Spurred on by the success of the two above tipsters I then looked at how I could emulate their success and improve upon it. Another profitable betting strategy or theory known as value betting or chasing steam exists.

It basically states that by bettering the odds available at the sharpest bookmakers Pinnacle, SBObet etc in efficient markets such as the Premier League you will have a value bet. A value bet is a bet that has a greater chance of winning then the odds imply.

This wasn’t too difficult to do especially at the lower odds. Bookmakers such Ladbrokes, Betvictor and William Hill often had better odds then the sharper bookmakers. The exchange Smarkets with its 2% commission alongside another low commission exchange Matchbook also often provided greater odds then the sharpest bookmakers could offer on several occasions.

Using these two theories alongside some filters such as no injuries to key players, no heavy weather conditions, no major changes to a side I have small yet profitable sample size of bets to suggest this is worth continuing with.

From October 2015 to February the 14th I looked at home teams between the odds of 1.2-1.6. I only bet on teams that I was familiar with and had easy access to likely team formations, general team news etc.

The teams I chose were

Man City
Arsenal
Man Utd
Chelsea
Tottenham
PSG
Juventus
Atletico Madrid

After 53 bets at a level stake of £100 per bet the profit and loss was £618 with an ROI of 11.6%. The only overall losing teams over this period were Chelsea with a loss of -166 from £700 staked and Man Utd with a loss of -29 from £600 staked.

This is a small sample size however it is encouraging and with in play betting and trading an option there are ways which may improve this method.

For example teams such as Bayern Munich, Barcelona and Real Madrid that often start home games as 1.1 or below. In cases such as these we could explore the half time market or over 1.5 goals market in play.

There are many angles to take with this type of betting/trading.

I hope that this article has given you some insight into the profits that can be obtained from short odds. It could be a betting angle that is worth looking into.

Looking to make money from the sports betting markets.

Check out our recommendations below.

How to trade the horses pre race as a beginner

Last week I reviewed Caan Berrys pre race trading guide and gave it a recommendation.

In the past week the football schedule was pretty lacklustre and I decided to delve into the horse markets.

I don’t like horse racing to be honest I find it very boring however as a trader I can see that it is probably the market with the most opportunities for trading.

Now I have tried to trade these markets two or three times before but it had always followed a similar pattern.

Win a little lose a lot more then I’d won and say to myself “f*** these stupid markets its impossible to trade them.”

This week I approached the markets with a different mindset and some help from Caan Berrys pre race trading guide and things started to click. I was making money cutting my losses earlier and starting to read the movements in the markets much more clearly.

Pre race trading horses — and stayed consistent

Top 5 tips for new traders approaching the horse racing markets

1. Don’t go in to a market expecting to make money

If you go in with this mindset it will be hard to accept a red should you need to, often this will lead to a bigger red.

Go in with the mindset that you will look for the best opportunities and take advantage of them if you see them. If you can’t see them that’s fine there are plenty more races to come.

2. Make notes and review your performance

Don’t rush from market to market take a step back and note down what you learnt from the last race market.

When did the big money come in? what happened to the favourite that had steamed in under 2.0 with 5 minutes still left? Was the market steady or volatile? ask yourself a few questions and write down the answers is there a pattern?

3. Remember to breathe

The horse racing markets move quick and you can get flustered, pissed off or bewildered. Its important to clear your head from time to time. Before a race or even mid race if I am struggling I will take a few deep breathes to regain my focus and slow things down.

Honestly in all of my trading/betting activities this has helped me the most. Removing the fog and retaining clear thinking throughout the day has been a huge factor in becoming a profitable trader.

4. Start Small

Sounds obvious but at this stage of your development as a trader you want to remove the stress and allow yourself to learn from the markets. It is a lot easier to keep this mindset when the losses are in pence rather then pounds.

5. Patience

Give yourself time don’t expect too much to soon. You might not see results straight away but don’t give up it is often just a case of persistently gaining experience combined with persistent analysis that leads to becoming a profitable trader.

Serious about trading the horses? This guide is one the best investments you could make.

Pro X Trading Review

In this article I am going to write my views on the Pro X Trading mentoring program. Here is my Pro X trading review where I will review the X traders part of the service.

If you haven’t heard of Pro X Trading take a look here:

https://www.proxtrading.com/sports-trading/

What is Pro X Trading?

Pro X Trading is a Betfair mentoring product which looks to educate its members on how to successfully trade the Betfair markets for a profit. It is run by professional trader Matt Finnigan and has been running since 2007. The cost of this service is normally £150 with a £60 recurring fee every four months.

What do you get?

Over 60 trading strategies on across four sports Football, Cricket, Tennis and American Football. A sports trader course, one to one advice with Matt Finnigan and hosted trading sessions every week.

The Good –

I had been trading full time for around 6 months mainly on the football markets and thought that the X traders part of Pro X trading might provide some additional knowledge to help me profit from football and also give me a chance to look at other sports that I may trade in the future.

The strategies are all in video format and are clear and professionally produced. They give you the odds range, staking, entry and exit points for each strategy. There is a timeline for the football strategies which explains the optimal times to use these strategies.

Overall I was very happy with the amount of content available on signing up. The sports trader course was is aimed at new traders but reaffirmed a few things that even experienced traders can benefit from going again.

The Football strategies made sense to me and were explained clearly. I don’t have a lot of experience trading the other 3 sports however I noted down these strategies and all of them had sound reasoning and staking built into them.

The Bad-

My initial impressions of the service were that it was very professionally run and I was excited to be part of mentoring program however there were quite a few things that changed this.

Customer service was poor –

The product is fairly expensive so after signing up to the service I was very keen on going through the strategies and viewing one of the hosted sessions on a Saturday. The website was then down for a few days so I couldn’t access the strategies. It was put up again just before the hosted trading session.

There wasn’t any warning that the site would be down for this period. I sent Matt an email asking to put in the Skype group and asked when the site would be back up. I never received a reply and never received an invite to the Skype trading room. I felt this was quite poor for such an expensive and then at least a courtesy email would have been polite.

The Upsell –

Again at £150 this isn’t a cheap product so to have Matts other products or affiliate products pushed on you after you join up I found very off putting. In the sports trader course you have a horse racing upsell in the one of the strategies without purchasing such product the strategy won’t work that well.

Matt says that pre match trading should be a corner stone of your football trading and goes into around 80% of games with a pre match trade. I agree and uses this a lot in my portfolio .

However the trading session don’t open early enough for Matt to share his own pre match trades. In fact how Matt offers to help with pre match trading is to sell his X-base database that offer pre match prices which may help you see which direction a pre match trade is moving.

Maybe these are discussed in the Skype trading room your supposed to have access too but I never received an invite so wouldn’t know.

Lack of Transparency –

In the hosted trading rooms some strategies are called out whilst others are left to yourself to determine whether you should enter the market or not. I don’t really mind this however viewing the hosted trading session a few things stood out to me.

At the end of every profitable session Matt would ask for peoples profit figures. You would then get 10 to 20 answers of whatever percentage profit people achieved, this is cool everyone likes to celebrate their wins. There was a day with two clear losing sessions.Matt never asked anyone about the losses barely anything was said. As a trader I know that losses are inevitable and it is as important as anything to learn how to lose. It seemed strange to me that this was brushed over and not discussed.
In one session a strategy that is taught about making money from scalping time decay was in use, a goal was scored which meant there would be losses to all involved.When a member asked Matt if he has been caught out he replied that he’d used a different strategy and was out before the goal. However he never mentioned this previously in the session. Again this was strange to me that a strategy taught by Matt himself was not used and in a live session hosted by Matt no advice was given as to why he used a different trade.

Overall Verdict-

I have a hard time rating this product as it has some good aspects to it. The video content is very good and clearly written, I do believe that Matt Finnigan is a good trader and makes money from the Betfair markets. But there is also a lot of salesmanship techniques and poor customer service/communication for such an expensive product.

I think the bad points outweigh the positives.

I believe that there are better and cheaper options on the market so in this Pro x trading review I will score it an overall rating of