Sports| Horseracing| Football| Soccer| Tennis

Horseracing The biggest volumes -- liquidity -- on Betfair exists in the horseracing markets, averaging around £700,000 on the lower grade racing and up to £5,000,000 on Group and Listed races. There are nearly as many strategies for trading horseracing on Betfair as there are traders. Do you enter a market 3 hours before the race? An hour before? !0 minutes before the Off? Do you take a Momentum or Positional approach? You will find the strategy that suits you best through user experience. However, whatever your modus operandi it is worthwhile to keep in mind some guidelines. 1) Only trade one horse in a race. Having a financial interest in more than one WILL result in unforced mistakes. Leave multiple trading to the very expert players and the bots. 2) Focus on a horse that is at the front of the market -- first, second or third favourite. Ignore the outsiders; the liquidity will be relatively low for the "rags". Odds of 50/1 might seem attractive to Back but you may find it hard to get out of the trade -- nobody might be prepared to match you when you want to lay off. 3) Follow the money. Don't go against the market unless you are privy to some information that nobody else has. Always remain aware of the Weight Of Money indices; if there is £10,000 available to back but £65,000 available to Lay it is likely that the odds will move upwards. ( The sheer amount of Lay money will force the price outwards.) It is useful to identify those races which provide good trading opportunities. Conveniently, Betfair offers an excellent charting facility which, if interpretated correctly, shows market trends and charateristics. The two graphs below show the Price/Volume movements of two horses in the same race. Graph A at first sight reflects a movement that seems flat and static, but the trader can glean quite some information by more than a cursory look. Most important aspects to consider are the Support and Resistance Points. The Support Point is basically the floor or bottom price which the market has reached. In this instance, the Support Point is around 9.0 (the price has once dropped very briefly and very slightly below this but this aberration can be ignored). Similarly with the Resistance Point at 12.0 - 12.5. You will notice that all the major betting activity has occurred between the Support and Resistance Points. Graph B indicates a horse which clearly is continuously and consistently shortening in price. A B Which horse should you as a trader concentrate on? Horse B is an attractive proposition so long as you are on the Back side (so you can subsequently Lay off for a profit). However, horse A is also worthy of consideration if the price reaches the upper Resistance Point (to Back) or the lower Support Point ( to Lay). Conversely if you have Layed Horse A you need to "get out" if the price nears the Support Point. If you are holding a Back position on it, you should be thinking about closing out if it nears the Resitance Point.

FOOTBALL (Soccer). Football is the biggest sport in the world and has volumes of liquidity on Betfair concomitant with that. Football is right up there with horseracing in sheer volume of betting amounts, and on some occasions like high profile Premier League and World Cup games the liquidity would surpass that of horseracing. The amount of football games played in the many leagues around the world 24 hours a day means the footbal trader is never wanting for an available market. Besides the pre-match betting, a significant amount is also traded during the course of a match -- In-Play or In-Running trading. However, you do need to have some background familiarity with the teams involved; a basic knowledge of the rules and procedures of the game; and a facility to watch the game live. A red card or a free kick awarded can change the odds severely. Remember too, that there is a 5-second suspension of all betting after a goal is scored. In pre-match betting, selecting the "right" football match to trade in is vital. Factors to be considered might include ................ 1) Conditions. Real Madrid playing Liverpool on a rainy North-Of-England Tuesday night are at a disadvantage. And will the prevailing conditions be a hindrance to goal scoring? 2) Previous statistics pertaining to previous meetings between the side. Have a majority of previous matches been low-scoring affairs or even goalless draws? 3) Confidence. Is one team low on self belief after a run of poor results? A simple and worthwhile strategy to open a profitable trade is to Lay the Draw pre-match if the odds are below 3.0. If you have correctly chosen you match there should be at least one goal scored at which point you trade out ( Back back the draw) at much higher odds. Personally, I will Lay every draw if the pre-match draw odds are less than 2.0. Even in the event of no goal being scored it is unlikey that the odds during the game will drop below that 2.0. Games to avoid: Cup Games. Unpredictable and can surprise. Previous form matters little in Cup games. b) Local Derbies. Again unpredictable. Games between teams from the same city or between teams which are close geographical neighbours ar so full of pride and passion and commitment that a shock result is often the consequence. c) End of season. Teams in the relegation zone of a league in the last fortnight of a season often carry a sting in the tail. They are fighting for their league survival and can often spring a shock surprise against much more fancied sides.		TENNIS Tennis does hold some attraction for the ambitious trader. There are certain advantages to trading the tennis markets. There are only two possible outcomes to a tennis match -- Win or Lose -- so the odds are directly linked to each other. Points are scored frequently which allows a good amount of trades to be transacted. And unlike football, a tennis match does not become "suspended" after scores. Some suggestions for profitable tennis trading: Back the favourite when he/she goes behind. You will be getting a Back bet at inflated odds which will almost inevitably contract again when the favourite regains his lead. And when a favourite loses a set, statistics show that there is a 75% chance that he will recover in the next set. Even if he doesn't regain the lead, the odds should not increase much further and you will be able to get out at a small loss. 2) Back a player BEFORE he's about to score the game point. Lay it back after he scores for locked in profit. 3)Consider laying a short-priced favourite pre-match. It is a little-known fact that the price of short priced favourites mostly drift during the course of a match even if he remains in the lead. However if the underdog plays more promisingly than expected or more surprisingly takes the lead the odds of the favourite will drift dramatically resulting in large profit. One downside of Tennis trading. A cautionary tale. A London based tennis trader went to New York every summer. He was able to rent a townhouse in an up-market neighbourhood and still show a profit of £500,000 at the end of three months. How? He was trading the tennis markets from courtside against the other traders back in the UK watching the games on satellite television. The U.K. traders were subject to a 7-second picture delay caused by the uploading of the television signal to the satellite and transmission back to their screens. Our New York based trader was effectively several seconds "ahead" of his co-traders. Be aware of the picture time-delay when trading tennis in-play.