How Betamin Builder Helps You Make Money In Betting Exchanges Like Betfair
Betting Exchanges, such as Betfair, Betdaq and Smarkets, offer even more opportunities for bettors to find value and make money. What are some successful betting strategies for exchanges? In this article we talk about how the betting strategies made with the Betamin Builder tool can be used together with exchanges to win more, either by getting bets on at better odds than traditional bookmakers or by creating selection methods for trading strategies such as Lay The Draw and so on. Ready to win more? Keep reading!
Betting exchanges are to bookmakers what Ebay is to Amazon. On Amazon, you can buy an item at a fixed price, but on Ebay, individual sellers offer different prices, and if it is an auction, buyers can offer the prices that they want to buy something for. With bookmakers, you can bet at their fixed odds, but on a betting exchange, you can be the buyer (a backer) and “ask” for higher odds, or you can be the other side of the deal, you can be the seller (a layer) and “offer” odds for people to bet on.
Obviously, betting exchanges have many advantages and a few disadvantages over traditional bookmakers. Let’s check them all:
Advantages of betting exchanges
- No limits. There is no risk of getting “banned” for winning too much, as some bookmakers do. Pinnacle is one of the few bookmakers who do not ban winners, but they do sometimes have limits on how much you can bet on each market. With an exchange, the only limit on how much you can bet is if there is someone willing to take the other side of your bet (market liquidity).
- Get the best odds in one place. It is always important to get the best odds for your bet. But having multiple accounts with different bookmakers and being aware of all the different deposit and withdrawal fees and rules each bookmaker has can be complicated. Exchanges generally have some of the most competitive odds on the market. This is because their odds don’t have a bookmaker margin in them. So it is much more convenient to have your betting funds in one place that also happens to have the most competitive odds.
- Be the bookmaker. You can take the side of the bookmaker and lay odds instead of backing them. This opens up a whole new side of betting.
- Trade in and out. If you make a bet and want to cancel it, there is often a chance to offer the reverse side of your bet and basically get out of the bet. Also, you can trade out or cash out your bet before the end of the game if the match is in-play so that you make a profit regardless of the final result.
- Trading strategies. Exchanges are similar to the financial markets. They open up the possibility to research historical data, find a pattern and then enter the market with a plan to exit at certain point and make a guaranteed profit. There are a wide variety of trading strategies on the internet focussed just on the betting exchanges. Betamin Builder is an excellent research tool for finding the right matches to trade in for your strategy. I will discuss a few of them in this article.
Disadvantages of betting exchanges
- Liquidity. For some of the more minor events, (i.e. the French National League) there is sometimes not enough money in the market to take a large bet. This lack of liquidity sometimes means a bookmaker is a better option for smaller leagues.
- Commission. The odds do not have a bookmaker margin in them, so they are higher than the bookmaker odds, but the websites charge a commission on profits as a fee for using their site. Betfair commission starts at 5% of each bet’s profit (the percentage may change depending on the country), but through a points system, they reduce the commission for regular users over time (an exception to this is the Betfair exchange in Spain that charges only 2% commission, but with less liquidity). Smarkets and Betdaq have less liquidity than Betfair but a lower commission of 2% as they are trying to get some market share away from Betfair. In order to compare bookmaker odds with exchange odds, you can calculate the real odds after commission is deducted with these formulas 0.95x(Betfair odds – 1) + 1 or 0.98x(Smarkets/Betdaq odds -1) + 1
Profitable Strategies for Exchanges: Get Better Odds and Follow Betaminic Strategies
All of the Betaminic Public strategies are made with Pinnacle bookmaker odds. Exchange odds are generally higher than Pinnacle’s odds, even with the commission factored in. So if you can get your bets on at even just a few ticks higher odds, it will have a huge impact on your winnings in the long term. For example, if you followed the Betaminic PRO strategy Colossus17 Dog draw, and bet on Pinnacle’s closing odds, it would have made 598 points profit, but if you had managed to get just one tick higher on your odds for each bet on an exchange (e.g. for the 3-4 odds range, one tick is 0.05, that means betting on odds of 3.68 instead of 3.63), you would have got an increase of nearly 20% in profits. If you managed to get 2 ticks higher, a 38% profit increase. Over the long term, getting even one tick higher on your odds means a big difference in profits. So by using Betaminic strategies with exchanges, the opportunities for profit are even better.
Profitable Strategies for Exchanges: Selection Methods for Trading Strategies
Since bettors have become able to trade in and out on the sports exchanges, a number of trading strategies became popular. One of the most famous of these is Lay The Draw (LTD). The idea is simple: lay the draw in a game, and then trade out of your position after a goal is scored, because the odds of the draw will go up and you can trade out for a guaranteed profit whatever the result (green up). All you have to do is find matches where you are very sure that there will be a goal. Over the years some people claimed to make a lot of money from it, while others said it did not really work, but that was probably from poor match selection. The most important part of the LTD strategy is the selection of which games to trade and your exit plan. That is an area where there are a number of different opinions. Regardless of the opinion, they all required a lot of researching the fixture list and, for the more advanced selection methods, a lot of time in Excel databases and on football data websites. With Betaminic, the selection process is a lot easier.
First of all, let`s look at the different opinions around LTD. I am going to talk about two of the most opposing views:
- First, the “Goal Focus” LTD system aims to find games where goals are expected. This means looking for games that have over 2.5 goal odds that are below evens, looking for teams that have not drawn recently, and looking for teams that even if they have drawn, are in high scoring games with plenty of chances to trade out. Also, look for games where there is a strong home favorite since if the home team scores, the odds for the draw will go up more since the favorite looks set to win, and then we can trade out for even more profit. So, the first LTD system is looking for goals.
- Another “Profit Focus” LTD system is looking for games with low draw odds of around the 3.00 mark. The idea here is that if we can lay the draw at as low an odds level as possible, we maximise the amount of possible profit from trading out after a goal. With the previous “Goal focus” LTD system, the draw is not expected, so the draw odds may be over 4.00 and that means we get less profit potential from our betting capital. The “Profit Focus” LTD version tends to be games where the draw is expected, and an additional advantage to that is there are many people betting on that draw and depressing the odds even further.
Another area of debate is the exit point. Some people trade out at the first goal, some people wait for a specific time such as the 60 or 70 minute mark and then trade out. If the game is still drawing at their exit time, some people wait until the end of the game (Let It Ride) hoping for a late goal. Some people wait until the odds drop to a certain level such as 2.00 or 1.70. And then trade out for a small loss. There are a number of exit plans and it is up to your betting style which one you want to choose.
My favoured system is the “Profit Focus” LTD system with 65 minutes as my exit point. If it is a draw at 65 minutes, I trade out for a small loss. If either team is winning by a goal, then I trade out for a profit. If either team is winning by 2 goals or more, I let the trade ride until the end. If either team gets a goal back and the winning margin is just 1 goal, then I trade out.
I also use the “Goal Focus” LTD system with 65 minutes as my exit point, but in the Goal Focus LTD trade, I never trade out for a loss. If it is a draw at 65 minutes, I let it ride until a goal is scored. My view is that the game has a higher chance of goals being scored than in the Profit Focus games, so over the long term, it is better to let it ride.
Both of these systems need a good selection method. Betaminic’s Betamin Builder Tool is an LTD trader’s best friend in this respect because we can filter it to find the most suitable games of all the fixtures in the world, not just the leagues we have confidence and special knowledge of. They become more consistent, scientific and information based selections.
I have researched two selection methods for Lay The Draw with Betaminic. One for each of the systems I described above.
Selection method for the Goal Focus LTD strategy
I managed to get picks where 88% of the matches did not end in a draw. That is a high hit rate. To do this I used the Double Chance Market (AH +0.5) and the “12” bet (betting that the home team or the away team will win). I first limited the 1X (home win or draw) odds to “1 – 1.33”. This is in order to exclude strong away teams. In this strategy, my view is that if a strong away team scores first, the draw odds will not shift enough for a decent profit because the game is expected to have goals and the home team is likely to come out and push for an equalizer. So I want to get games where the home team is expected to win. Then I filter the over 2.5 goals odds to “1 – 2” so that we only get games with goals expected. After that, I filter the home team to only include home teams that have NOT drawn any of their last 6 home games. I also filter the away team to only include teams that have NOT drawn any of their last 6 games home or away. I don’t want any dogged away teams that scrape draws. I want teams that either win or lose, that have a good day or a bad day, and not settling for draws. Finally, I filtered the leagues according to a list I have built up of which leagues are good for LTD trading. In the end I am left with my selection strategy, ready to receive picks. I no longer have to scour the fixture lists myself. We can see from the last 10 results that all 10 were winners. 9 ended in a win for one side and the other one, Sporting v Tondela, finished 1-1, with the first goal on 9 minutes for the home team and the equalizer at 67 minutes. Because I had traded out at my exit point of 65 minutes, I was ok. It did make my heart jump when I saw the “market suspended” sign come up just as I had traded out, though.
| Leagues Filter: ARG Superliga, ARG Primera B Nacional, AUT Tipico Bundesliga, AUS A-League, BEL Jupiler League, CHN Super League, HRV 1. HNL, DEU 2. Bundesliga, DEU 3. Liga, DNK 1st Division, ENG Championship, ENG League Two, FRA Ligue 1, FRA National, FIN Ykkonen, GRC Super League, HUN OTP Bank Liga, ITA Seria A, ITA Serie B, IRL Premier Division, JPN J-League, NLD Eredivisie, PRT Primeira Liga, POL Ekstraklasa, ROU Liga 1, SCT Premiership, ESP LaLiga2, CHE Super League, CHE Challenge League, SWE Superettan, TUR Super Lig. |
Selection method for the Profit Focus LTD strategy
I really tried to take advantage of draw odds being pushed down by people and Bookmaker models expecting the draw. So much so that the draw itself becomes undervalued and even just laying the draw in those matches long term without trading out could lead to profit. Adding LTD trading on top of that makes a strong strategy. To do this I reverse engineer what draw backers are looking for. They are looking for teams that draw a lot with low goal scoring averages. First I filter in home and away teams that have had 40%-100% of their last 20 matches ending in draws. Then I filter in teams with average goals of “0 – 1.00” for both the home and away team. My selection strategy is now ready. Looking at the last 10 results, 8 were wins for the home or away team and 1 game was a 1-1 between Rubin Kazan and Ufa with the away side scoring in the first half and the equalizer coming in the 71st minute which is after my trade out time. Only one game of the last 10 was a loss, which was the Dynamo Moscow vs FK Rostov game that finished 0-0. Since this is the Profit Focus LTD strategy, I traded out for a 33% loss on my initial capital at the 65 minute mark. For the other 9 selections I made between 10-50% increases on the initial capital. By laying odds of around 3.00 with 100 euros of initial capital, there is a chance for 50 euros profit if there is no trade out. Trading out when a team is winning by 1 goal often leads to smaller profits of 5-20 euros.
So you can see that Betaminic is a perfect match for using with betting exchanges as well as bookmakers. For sports betting traders who know what kind of matches they are looking for, then you can save a lot of time and also get the very best quality fixtures picked for you from over 50 of the biggest leagues around the world.
Feel free to create these two LTD selection strategies in Betamin Builder as private strategies, or even modify them to best suit your needs. You can do it easily by signing up for free to use the Betamin Builder on Betaminic’s website. You can also research and create your own selection strategies and see the power of Big Data Betting.
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