Knowing when to bet is a crucial part of obtaining the value that will provide a successful betting account. All regular bettors have experienced the frustration of taking a price early only to see those odds drift, sometimes significantly, before the ‘off’. Similarly, the best price may have been offered only at the opening of the market, and bettors not striking early will again miss the best price.
There are no simple rules for obtaining the best price about your fancy, and it would be naïve in the extreme to expect to always be able to do so. However, it is possible to become something of an expert in striking at the right time, and generally beating the book.
The best price available in most sports often occur early in the formation of the betting market, it follows that the prospective backer should already know what price he considers worth taking. In How to price up your bet, we demonstrated how to make your own ‘tissue’ price, which should be done as early as possible, so you are in a position of being ready to strike your bet as soon as necessary.
An idea of what represents value is crucial in the quest to take a price that will eventually disappear. In horse racing, where betting markets are more fluid than most sports betting, the early fluctuations are generally down to shrewd bettors taking value not, as many imagine, people ‘in the know’ backing a certain winner.
Sports betting markets will fluctuate in the early stages due to value takers. The time to bet early in any market is when your fancy is priced at value odds, and a good proportion of your bets will be struck early. One of the pre-requisites of pricing in football, as in many sports, is an awareness of the fixture list.
For example, West Bromwich Albion faced a trip to Stamford Bridge on Boxing Day 2008 and then entertained struggling Tottenham just two days later. Albion’s manager Tony Mowbray correctly pinpointed the Tottenham match as the game mostly likely to yield points and used his two main (fit) strikers, Moore and Bednar, only as late subs at Stamford Bridge in order to have his strongest line-up possible for the Spurs match. An experienced bettor would have priced that possibility into both games and successfully predicted a much-improved Albion performance in the second game.
A side facing a massive match, say a crucial Champions League tie, may well under perform in the game before and this can be factored into the ‘true’ price of the match. Manchester United’s performance at Derby County in the Carling Cup four days before the vital Premeir League clash with Chelsea in January 2009 is a clear example. It is surprising how often bookmakers quote standard prices early on without any regard to the surrounding fixture list. Similarly, some managers, Steve Coppell for instance, are virtually guaranteed to field severely weakened teams in cup ties. This is another area that backers should look to price in and bet on early, either before the ‘confirmation’ through the media of a weakened team or immediately following the news, as it is almost guaranteed that the price about the weakened team’s opponents will contract by quite some margin.
However, it is important to have patience and only bet when the odds are in your favour, and this may well not be early in the market. In football, the betting market is often at its most volatile the closer to kick-off time. The market often over-reacts to team news; a key player’s sudden absence or presence may change the price far more than is warranted. For example, a top player may return but after a lengthy absence you may consider his immediate impact negligible although the market reaction is ridiculous, a betting opportunity may suddenly present itself where none before was apparent.
Similarly, you may reason that a team line-up is far weaker than expected and the market has failed to react accordingly. In 2007/08, Bolton were struggling in the Premier League and Gary Megson rested seven players, including Anelka, Davies, and Jaaskelainen, from their FA Cup tie against a Sheffield United side whose under-fire manager Bryan Robson desperately need a result.Though several bookmakers made dramatic price changes when the teams were announced, one big firm simply cut Sheffield United’s win price from 5.00 to 4.50, a great example of when to bet late.
Moreover, the markets, at least the Asian markets and Betfair, tend to bet to ever tighter margins as the kick-off approaches. As a rule of thumb, a strong favourite will tend to contract through sheer weight of money and this is often the best time to back an outsider, either with the handicap or on the Match Result list, when you feel the favourites are too short without any relevant team news to influence the market.
In-Running betting is a different beast altogether and there are far too many variants to explore here. However, a loose rule of thumb is to bet against the general flow of the market as it tends to overreact to the immediate passage of play. In tennis, a server may fall behind 0-30 and more often than not the market will overreact with the price becoming greater than is warranted about the server; that can often be a price that would be the same in the event of an actual break of service. Now would be the time to place your bet on the server, all things being equal.
Similarly, in a football match the team you feel, on balance of play, will win the match may be under pressure, conceding a couple of corners etc, again the market will often overreact to this immediate passage of play so now would be the time for a little bravery, go against the market and strike your bet.
Of course each event should be treated on its own merits. The server at 0-30 may be particularly flaky and you may expect him/her to fold under pressure. Moreover, a tennis match between two poor servers will see several breaks, maybe more than service holds, and the initial breaks of service may again precipitate too volatile a price change. Women’s tennis is notorious for this. However, never forget, always bet only when you feel there is value in the price.
The advent of betting exchanges has resulted in bettors being able to behave exactly like bookmakers. Despite the bookmakers’ protestations that the likes of Betfair enables bettors to behave like bookmakers without having to pay the levy or costs, backers have always been the other side of the same bookmaking coin. A bet on Roger Federer at 1.33 to beat Nikolay Davydenko is, at the same time, a lay of Davydenko at 4.00. If you back a 51.0 shot to win the 40-runner Grand National, you are also effectively laying the other 39 runners at 1.02.
Bettors now enjoy the ability to lay off a winning bet; backing a team at say 5.00, and then laying off the liability at a much shorter price once the team is ahead. However, it is important to stick to the rule of value when hedging, just as much as when betting originally. Laying off at a poor price is simply giving another backer value at your own expense and will result in long-term losses or a depletion of your profits. Hopefully, we have at least given you some food for thought, even if you claim to bet simply for enjoyment, it is far more enjoyable to win than it is to lose.