Betfair Official Blog

Pacman to the point

The concept of betting value and finding your niche market

Jamie "The Pacman" Pacheco looks at what is value in football betting, specialising on a particular market and losing Damien Duff

A few weeks ago I was out in town with a female friend. Having insisted we watch a Premiership match in a nearby pub, I agreed to accompany her on a shopping trip at a big department store as compensation. I hate shopping as much as the next guy, in particular the crowds, the claustrophobic fitting rooms and the queues and find the whole experience thoroughly unpleasant. Out of sheer boredom I had a browse in the suit department and came across a suit in a decent colour (black), in a suitable material (wool) and in my size (mind your own business). Best of all the suit was reduced from the princely sum of £250 to just £110. I bought it.

This is a straightforward example of buying a commodity which I perceived to be value for money. Betting on football is very similar to this concept. It's no different to deciding that Chelsea should be a [2.3] shot at home to Arsenal and being able to lay them at [1.8]. I'm "buying" something for a shorter price than I perceive it to be worth. On a similar note, if my mate who in the New Year decides he wants to get fit (before eventually returning to his diet of Carling, KFC and Sky Plus) offers me £100 for my bicycle (that does little else in life other than block my hall) and I consider it's real value to be £50 then once again I'm getting value for money. This is similar to backing Barcelona at odds of [6] when in my head I make them a [4.5] shot. Of course it's not quite that simple because "value" is a subjective question and you can't assume that you're always right about what is value but in essence it's about having a bet at a more favourable price than it should be, whether you're backing or laying it. Anyone who takes gambling seriously bets only when they feel there is value.

The more high profile a football match the less value you are likely to find because everyone who bets on it knows all the factors: head-to-head records, current form, team news, pitch and weather conditions etc. Following this rationale, you are unlikely to find much value in a World Cup match or Champions League match. That's not to say you can't win, it just means that when you win you aren't wining as much as you could if you looked elsewhere.

Gary Boswell (who writes a Non-League column on this site) has specialized on betting on Non-League football over the years. People who price up NLF markets on Betfair (or anywhere else for that matter) will know the basic stats such as league position, head-to-head record, whether the team has a money-spinning FA Cup match at the weekend and may rest players etc but they don't know as much as Gary. He will read match reports telling him whether a team's last result was a fair reflection of their performance, information about the players that isn't readily available and any other factors that may influence the result. He is therefore in a better position to decide what is value than most, including, crucially, those who put their prices up.

I'm not necessarily trying to put anyone off betting on Premiership football, just suggesting that if you specialize on a slightly obscure league you're better positioned to win on the long run because you may have knowledge of the league that others might not have. It may also be an idea to try and specialize just on a specific market. The "Total Goals Guys" (also writing on this site) just focus on the total goals market, though they have the disadvantage of only betting on matches involving teams who play in Europe's top leagues.

A few years ago a friend of mine who liked playing the total corners market discovered an anomaly. Blackburn played Damien Duff and Keith Gillespie on the wings and based their whole game plan around giving these two the ball and asking them to get to the byline and crossing it into the box. As a result of this, they won an abnormal number of corners in relation to the rest of Premiership teams and he bought their team corners on the spreads every week. Despite their corner count being consistently higher than average (and indeed higher than their team corners quote), the market-makers refused to accept that they were an anomaly and never changed the spread over the course of the year. He netted a big profit and took his wife on holiday to Barbados. At the end of the season Damien Duff left for Chelsea and the dream was over. To this day he still laments never again being able to find "another Blackburn."