The betting exchanges are not what they used to be

A few years ago there was a popular belief that the weight of money on the betting exchanges was a key factor in knowing which way the price was going to swing. For a while this was true but as always people started to write about the fact and soon that information was disseminated throughout the gambling world and everyone was alert to the idea.

Then we have savvy streetwise punters who were in tune to this and were then placing fake action in the system purely to trap punters who were using this strategy.

In fact even until a couple of years ago I knew a sports betting punter who was still trying to exploit movement on the betting exchanges in this way despite the evidence being clear that the opportunity had vanished. This of course was in reference to the horse racing markets.

These are where the greatest volatility can take place with regards to the betting odds and this is especially the case with live betting action.
These days whenever I am active on the exchanges I use the weight of money in a different way and use it merely to indicate liquidity and not direction of movement.

When I know that a certain market has high liquidity then I know that I will be able to enter a certain position at strength and know that if I did trade or I needed get out with the minimum available loss that I will be able to do so because the volume of available money will be there for me.

A few people may not have been sure what I was referring to when I mentioned about placing “fake action”. Let us say that someone placed £5000 on the back side who was looking to lay the horse (remember that the money on the back side is placed there by punters who are looking to lay).

In actual fact this was merely a ruse and this money wasn’t put there with the intention of giving action at certain odds at all but to trick other punters that the price of this horse was about to fall.

There are all sorts of insider tricks with betting exchanges and it does sort of leave the day to day punter at something of a massive disadvantage if they attempt to go toe to toe with the professionals in this way.

I am aware of many professionals on the betting exchanges who have a background in financial trading in the city. This is a fantastic preparation for exchange trading and in fact is the ideal training platform because they are essentially the same thing.

Using theory and advice to attempt to make money on the betting exchanges that is too old is a recipe for disaster. In this aspect, it is no different to online poker in nature as both environments have moved on massively over the past couple of years. Much of it comes down to experience and as usual, this is something that cannot be taught.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson