Trading on the betting exchanges

Ever since the arrival of the betting exchanges a few years ago, there has been a huge interest in the subject of trading. I think that the underlying philosophy behind why this is so popular is because people are seduced by the idea of risk free betting. There is a growing culture now of people who are aware that selections can be either backed or laid and then backed or laid again at some future point in time to guarantee profit.

This process has become known as trading and the successful practitioners of this skilled art earn or can earn six figure incomes on betting exchanges like Betfair and Betdaq. With the exchanges, there is the facility to bet in running as well and this creates even more volatility. It is no coincidence that many of the top traders on the betting exchanges stem from a career working in the city or other financial institutions.

Then there are those who have come from a background in professional sport for instance. These guys know their sport inside out and are best placed to understand how games can be played out. This is especially useful information to have in live betting situations (like with bwin live bettingfor instance) where the game can and will fluctuate violently.

Quite often prices move in certain directions for clearly designated reasons. With markets like horse racing for instance then there are numerous traders and bookmakers operating on the exchanges. So small short term moves can and are totally natural and can be for numerous reasons. There are large numbers of traders operating on the exchanges now so many of them will be closing their positions and this can lead to a certain price movement.

Also bookmakers can be looking to hedge as well and these types of accounts can lead to short term movement on the exchanges. Longer term movements or bigger movements tend to be based around other reasons and sometimes these can be psychological. There are many misconceptions with the betting exchanges and one such misconception is that the exchange is always right.

This is based around the fact that such a large cumulative opinion must be right. This is clearly not the case as the exchanges are dominated by an awful lot of group psychology or even bias. For instance in the recent England vs Brazil friendly, Brazil were priced at more than even money with many football betting firms including the exchanges. England had almost their entire first team either injured or missing.

Brazil were almost at full strength with the exception of maybe Robinho. The hype surrounding England since their highly successful qualifying campaign has increased but yet England’s second string players have been distinctly ordinary in the past. To me this was clearly a defeat waiting to happen for England and I managed to get 11/10 on Brazil which I thought was excellent value.

But this just underlines how hyped teams can lead to prices being driven to unrealistic levels. Brazil ended up winning this game 1-0 but they hit the post and missed a penalty and the score could and should have been greater.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson