Bookmakers
05 Make profits from someone else's research 
/ Betfair Education / 29 January 2008 / Leave a comment
There are thousands of licensed bookmakers around the world - how many of them do you honestly think do all the hard work themselves? Realistically, very few.
Most bookies have an area of expertise, as there simply aren't enough hours in the day for them to price up every market for every match in every league around the world by themselves.
Do some homework - work out which bookmaker is good at certain events, for example the less popular football leagues. You could spend months working out who the best judge is on the English Premiership, but the matches are so popular and the exchange markets so tight, that it is very hard to make it pay as a 'trader'. The smaller and less popular the market, the more time you have to prepare.
Let's take a look at something more obscure as an example - the English Football Conference. After a few weeks following which bookmakers take an opinion on a match (by offering best price rather than being 'vanilla' or the same as everyone else), and now you are prepared to follow them by offering the same figures or slightly better than their prices on Betfair. The best part? You can set your risk amount to as much or as little as you like.
After a few weeks' research you notice that XYZBookie.com have had great opinions recently. You decide you want to lay any team they have best odds for.
So from their market of Aldershot v Halifax, you see that they are best price around on the home side at 1.80, with conservative prices of 3.30 the draw, 3.80 for Halifax - a market of 112%. Unless you are first to price the market up on the exchange, you will have to improve on those prices to jump to the front of the queue and get matched.
