Matched Betting Discussion Betfair Trading Advice

[Wardy]

Hi everyone - I’ve been a long term matched bettor and arbitrager. I’ve been banned from multiple accounts and bonus offers have started to dry up. The next step in my betting journey is betfair trading.

Has anybody got any experience with betfair trading? Are there any particular sports that lend themselves nicely to betfair trading?

All advice/ experience welcome!

 

[Lemonade23]

Hi everyone - I’ve been a long term matched bettor and arbitrager. I’ve been banned from multiple accounts and bonus offers have started to dry up. The next step in my betting journey is betfair trading.

Has anybody got any experience with betfair trading? Are there any particular sports that lend themselves nicely to betfair trading?

All advice/ experience welcome!

Hi! I love Betfair trading but it has taken me a long long time and many months of study to become consistently profitable. The best tips I could give you would be to firstly choose a sport you enjoy/know a lot about. For me it's cricket, but a lot of people favour football, racing, tennis etc. I have read a few good books for example the Market Wizards books, which are about stock trading but contain a lot of useful principles (I have these on audio books and listen on repeat) and Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas. I also like Betfair's own podcasts about your sport, the cricket one is excellent. Finally, I did join Betfair trading community for a couple of years, It's not cheap. However, their podcasts and Youtube video content is free. Caan Berry on YouTube is also good as are Mark Douglas' videos.

A lighter read is Game Set and Matched by Iain Fletcher.

Trading is nothing like matched betting though, it's not easy, like I said it has taken me years to learn and mindset is paramount or you can lose a lot of money. However, it's also addictive and fun once you get a handle on it.

 

[homie]

Its an excellent way to lose a lot of money. Monty Brewster would have had no trouble reaching his goal if Betfair had been around in the 80s

 

[geebobuk]

One piece of advice I would give, in addition to what @Lemonade23 has said above, is to trade on a sport that will suit your lifestyle i.e, one that will fit around your other commitments such as work & family,

 

[rninja]

Trading sounds glamorous on paper.

The reality: have you got an identifiable edge against the wisdom of the crowd? (which is what the exchange odds represent).
What makes your intended trade superior to the collective opinion of market experts, insiders, professional traders, PhD mathematicians, professional punters, etc

Fair enough, if you've run a statistical analysis on historical data sets and have identified genuine +EV.
Otherwise, IMO lots of "trading" is essentially guess work.

 

[Wardy]

Thanks everyone - really useful and insightful feedback!

What I’m taking from this is that I should proceed with caution and only bet what I’m willing to lose.

Sounds a lot riskier than matched betting so it’s unlikely to stick with me.

 

[geebobuk]

Trading sounds glamorous on paper.

The reality: have you got an identifiable edge against the wisdom of the crowd? (which is what the exchange odds represent).
What makes your intended trade superior to the collective opinion of market experts, insiders, professional traders, PhD mathematicians, professional punters, etc

Fair enough, if you've run a statistical analysis on historical data sets and have identified genuine +EV.
Otherwise, IMO lots of "trading" is essentially guess work.

A lot of this is definitely true from my limited experience. I always tread carefully and use data analysis before I get involved.