Trading Football on Sports Exchanges: The Match Odds Market

By Cambridge Memorabilia

Match Odds (1 x 2) is the most popular Football / Soccer market, not just for Sports Exchanges but also normal bookmaker sites. Traders love it due to extremely high liquidities and reliability of odds movement. This is our most complete, up to date and well-informed Guide to cover such a major topic, on what we hope, from beginner level all the way up to professional exchange trading.

550 images to back-up and demonstrate our thought process: match selection, initial checks, choosing the right System, how to apply any specific requirements, setting-up odds and correct stake amounts.
From Value Trading to Scalping, Dutching to Hedging strategies, all approaches will be aimed at Set and Forget. Multiple insurances, reduced liability, early cash-outs, automated entry and exit points – to make the most of what football exchange trading has to offer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781326219123

Cambridge Memorabilia

Dearest all,Our pen name Cambridge Memorabilia comes from/is the same name as our registered business Cambridge Memorabilia Ltd. We are professional Exchange Value Traders based in Cambridge, United Kingdom.Extremely passionate about sports, mainly football (soccer) and horses, we specialize in Sports Exchange Trading: Betfair Exchange, Smarkets, Matchbook, and BetDaq. Our approach to trading is a fine balance between knowledge over specific sport, how markets evolve and applied mathematics in bank management.Our material is unique and unparalleled, same as our techniques and vision. Whatever the Trading System or Strategy you might read from us - might work well for you or at the very least, open your eyes towards latest developments in the Sports Exchange Trading world. Because we are always up to speed and passing the message - continuously implementing in our Trading Systems.

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Copyright © Cambridge Memorabilia, a trading name for Cambridge Memorabilia Ltd, United Kingdom.

All rights reserved.

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Content copyright © Cambridge Memorabilia, 2021.

Illustrations copyright © Cambridge Memorabilia, 2021.

Published in the UK by Cambridge Memorabilia, May 2021.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher.

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information for Sports Exchange Traders. It is sold under the express understanding that any decisions or actions you take as a result of reading this book, must be based on trading and financial judgement and will be at your sole risk. The author will not be held responsible for the consequences of any actions and/or decisions taken as a result of any information given or recommendations made.

Trading Football on Sports Exchanges

The Match Odds Market

Cambridge Memorabilia

Cambridge, United Kingdom

May 2021

Match Odds (1 x 2) is the most popular Football / Soccer market, not just for Sports Exchanges but also normal bookmaker sites. Traders love it due to extremely high liquidities and reliability of odds movement. This is our most complete, up to date and well-informed Guide to cover such a major topic, on what we hope, from beginner level all the way up to professional exchange trading.

550 images to back-up and demonstrate our thought process: match selection, initial checks, choosing the right System, how to apply any specific requirements, setting-up odds and correct stake amounts.

From Value Trading to Scalping, Dutching to Hedging strategies, all approaches will be aimed at Set and Forget. Multiple insurances, reduced liability, early cash-outs, automated entry and exit points – to make the most of what football exchange trading has to offer.

Contents:

Foreword

Scalping

Value trading

Dutching

Hedging

Pre-set entries

Pre-set exits

Multiple entry and exit points

Match selection

Set and keep the odds

Matched before event or if closer to being matched

Set and forget

Small recovery system

Make adjustments

Re-invest

Write everything down

Go with multiple events

Recover where recovery is possible

Not all trades will be winning trades

Know when to let go

Play the odds/value game and not the match

No need to watch the event

Easy Systems / Strategies

Most profitable Systems / Strategies

Bank builders

Final advice

Foreword

Trading a Sports Exchange Match Odds market is a hugely important topic. You might have previously read much shorter publications of ours, where we focus on just one System / Strategy and try to explain every step, down to tiniest detail – somewhat putting in front of you the exact way in which we would approach a certain trade.

Any form of trading will carry some risk and yes, you can stick to just one system – and the limitations that come with it – but any professional trader will be using a more expanded range of strategies and techniques.

To better explain this statement, let’s give an example worthy of its importance – the UEFA Champions League final, a sporting event that will attract hundreds of millions of fans and sums of money that we cannot even begin to comprehend; can only assume that all sports exchanges and bookmakers in the world put together will amount to many billions of pounds / euros / dollars and all the other currencies on this planet.

The 2020 final (2019 – 2020 Season) between Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich, end score 0 : 1 crowning Bayern as champions. And we mention this for a very good reason as match was held behind closed doors after being postponed with almost 3 months due to the Coronavirus pandemic in Europe. The 3-month delay, end of May to end of August, caused a huge increase in liquidities traded and held by sports exchanges. Like nothing we’ve ever seen before, all online trading and betting was exploding in size. As a matter of fact, to this day – April 2021, we have only seen an increase in liquidities for all online markets and types of trading, caused by the pandemic and whole countries going into lockdown / isolating and work from home. This change will be irreversible as a lot more people have now discovered sports exchanges as a way of trading and making (or losing) money.

It would have been a total shame to only trade 1 market or to apply just 1 system for this fixture: PSG – Bayern, once we’ve realised that our funds (unless cashed-out) were going to be stuck for a much longer period of time compared to previously planned, it was Game On! And the game lasted for 3 long months as odds were still shifting across the event markets. Very similar to trading politics and election results, such as Donal Trump losing the election, a market open with about 2 years prior to November 2020 US elections.

So, PSG – Bayern, we’ve: scalped the Match Odds market in Betfair Exchange and we did so multiple times, hedged the favourite to a point of making a profit no matter the result, also scalped the Correct Score market repeatedly and ended in dutching for odds that doubled our investment, made some smaller trades in Over / Under 2.5 goals, Both Teams To Score and even Asian Handicap.

This book will have the Match Odds market at its core, but we will also explain how understanding other markets: BTTS – Both Teams To Score, Correct Score and Over / Under Goals; can only increase our chances of success and ultimately our profits – tremendously. You need to know football/soccer but also numbers and statistics. By recognising the real favourite in a match, how many goals are likely to be scored, if both teams are prone to scoring and roughly how the end result is going to look like – you can then better read the statistics, check the offers in Exchange, maybe also compare against bookmaker odds and statistics sites – to finally make a really well informed judgement if numbers/odds are good/in your favour and worth your time/investment, or not.

Systems and strategies will need adjusting over time and it is only natural because traders behaviour and markets appreciation of value, how precise, exaggerated or depreciated certain odds might be – will continuously change – leaving us with the money making or breaking question: is there value to be traded or should we just move on to a next market or fixture.

We absolutely love football here in Great Britain. Exchange trading has grown exponentially in the past decade and even more so since Covid-19 pandemic started and people have been working from home, basically a lot of environments swapping physical locations for online. A great deal of people ended up losing their jobs and are now seeking work from home opportunities; online trading became an attractive option in trying to replace a normal place of work with an 100% online way of making an income. This is how we are now polluted with adverts to: trade from home, invest online, sell online… like mushrooms after rain. No matter your interests, knowledge or skills, if you know what you’re doing, you’ll have better chances of success, if not – best to wait until properly confident, before making any big investments.

Trading communities, online forums and even social media outlets are nowadays offering all kinds of support: guidance, tips, access to systems or group investments, live following of other traders – normally for a fee or monthly subscription. Some platforms and information they provide will be quite valuable, competent and reliable; others only partial and, unfortunately, too many that are selling total rubbish and if you follow what they advise, to the letter, you’ll end up bankrupt in a very short time.

If someone holds some supreme System, Strategy or knowledge, why don’t they just keep that information to themselves and make big piles of money? Because there is no such thing as a miracle solution that will always guarantee a profit or some get-rich-fast scheme. Every strategy and system will have its own limitations and, remember, for my better odds and amounts I’m putting in a trade, someone needs to buy that at the other end. The way a Sports Exchange works, you Back and someone else needs to Lay. You need to be matched or yourself to accept someone else’s odds. Tit for tat. So, will some people or trading communities encourage a certain system or form of investment whilst knowing fully well they’ll then go and use a system / take advantage of that from the other end? Of course, they will. In the same way Laying the Draw became so popular and inflated that nowadays it is relatively easy to spot exaggerated / really generous Back the Draw odds and scalp that for a very nice profit before match even starts, with no need to go into play-time at all.

We have knowledge of a handful reputable trading communities, paid membership to join, that are selling trading systems and live coverage of in-play trades but also offer and educate their members on so called Systems Graveyards – a reference to exchange trading systems that used to be profitable but have now become obsolete, due to being employed by too many people or just a change in trading behaviours. To make a long conclusion shorter, you end up with too many traders on one side of the market and only a very few on the opposite to match the trades, to a point of your odds not being bought or just not making any sense; and hopefully you will not launch yourself into a trade that is doomed to fail before even launched.

Let’s now cut to the chase and see the difference between fixtures with plenty of opportunities to trade and others that are already over-saturated.

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Figure 1

Fig 1. Above image of English Premier League 2021 April schedule. As you can see, we have quite a few trades placed and already matched for the coming weekend. We will be showing and explaining in detail tens of different trades and many Systems to easily employ for the Match Odds market.

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Figure 2

Fig 2. We can still work with some of the markets where high liquidities have already been matched – if we discover good value is still there – but let’s have a first look into the following week, matches and markets that are only just starting to take shape.

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Figure 3

Fig 3. Tottenham v Southampton will be played in more than a week from where we are now. Tottenham(Spurs) are serious favourites, Back and Lay odds are pretty much settled on their chances of winning the match, but the market is still undecided where to exactly place Southampton (Backing odds of 5.3 and Lay 5.9) and The Draw (4.1 Back and 4.5 Lay).

We will show a dozen other checks on this football fixture, what to check and how to read the odds, to then make an informed decision on what system to use and where to place our investments. We do follow the English Premier League very closely, so we do have some pre-existing knowledge on teams performance and how odds should look like on fixtures, little bit of country and league specifics will also apply.

But right from the start, and because it is too obvious, we notice that Backing odds on Southampton and The Draw are exaggerated / higher than where the market will eventually put them; with also a potential to go a little higher before dropping.

Scalping immediately comes to mind:

We will Back The Draw for £10 at the existing odds (what is on offer) of 4.1 and also set £10 more at odds of 4.3 (and wait to be matched by someone). Then set a £10 Lay at odds of 3.8. Not even 24 hours have passed, our 4.3 Backing was also matched in the meantime, until The Draw market took more liquidity in and quickly levelled-out at Backing odds of 3.75.

Our £10 Back at 4.1 was auto-cashed-out by the Lay at 3.8, leaving a small profit of £0.90 but the higher Back at 4.3 is still active, giving us the option to Cash-Out for a profit of £2.70 (£0.90 from the 4.1 Back trade + £1.80 from the 4.3 trade). Because we can now see The Draw market settling somewhere 3.7 – 3.9, we will take the decision to Cash-Out. So, a £2.70 profit in 24 hours, for a market we’ve not even intended to trade, but it was too visible to miss and a shame not to do it. £100 trades, instead of