Trading on Betfair: How to win money betting on knockout football

Some of the most popular secondary markets on football are the Over/Under goal markets - these markets get matched bet volume of approximately 25% of the Match Odds market.

The benefit of these markets for football punters is that you do not need to understand who scores first, just that a goal will or won't be scored. Even better, certain strategies can continue to work even when your initial judgement is incorrect. You can improve these further using statistics freely available on Betfair's website.

Of course, to make money when trading, you need to back at a higher price than you then lay at. If we back Under 2.5 Goals before the match starts an interesting thing starts to happen as soon as the match gets underway. If there are no goals, the price on Under 2.5 Goals starts to 'come in', or get smaller.

You can see below that, using Bet Angel's Football profiling tool, if we back under 2.5 goals before the match started; we could cash out shortly after the start for a profit. The reason this is happening is because the chance of the match ending with less that 2.5 goals is getting more likely as time passes so the odds have to reflect that.

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Of course this works well unless there is a goal before you can Cash Out, by either team. If that occurs, what happens to the market? A loss? Well, not necessarily. When a goal is scored in this market, the odds adjust to reflect the fact that a goal has been scored and the chance of under 2.5 goals occurring in the game is less likely.

However, it only gets reset to a higher level, it doesn't necessarily push your position into a loss. From that point it immediately starts working back into your favour again. You can see this on the next image.

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In this scenario we have said that the first goal will occur just before half time. If we had backed before the start of the match this goal wouldn't be a problem as you can see we are still well below the price we initially backed at.

The market started at 1.865/6 and the goal only sent the market back out to 1.574/7, so we are still in profit. We have also added a second goal 10 minutes later. You can see that initially this would mean we will lose money, as we backed at 1.865/6 but can only trade out at 2.8615/8. But 15 minutes later we are back in profit again, and this is a really favourable characteristic of this market, because even if a goal occurs, it doesn't necessarily mean you will lose money. If you are in a losing position then the market starts moving you can get back to profit straight away.

The best approach to trading under 2.5 goals is to find low scoring matches and then assess how the actually match is turning out when it is in-play.

Knockout matches in the Champions & Europa league matches, as with other similar competitions, require that teams get through the next round by winning over two matches, home and away. If the aggregate scores are the same, then away goals count as being worth extra.

Thanks to the Away goals rule, there is a strong incentive for teams not to concede at home in the first leg. If you can avoid conceding a goal then this will put you in with a better chance in the away leg. Sneak a win and the pressure will be on your opponents when you visit their ground.

To confirm this week looked at the 'round of 16' results since 2008 and found that the first leg produced, on average, just under 2.50 goals. The return leg, just over three. Obviously this will vary from one match to another, but it's obvious that a competitive match will be much tighter than an uncompetitive one.

When the match turns in play you can take things up a level by trying to understand what is happening in the match itself. If there are a large number of shots then you may want to exit your trade early to minimise losses. If there are few shots then you can continue your trade without too many problems. I have outlined this strategy in a video for you which you can view below. You can use statistics displayed on Betfair's website as an aid for this strategy.

If you are looking for a much deeper insight into a football match then you should look no further than Bet Angel. As we've seen, Bet Angel contains a specialist tool, Soccer Mystic, that allows you to experiment with all the possible scenarios that could occur in the match and project them forward to see how they will impact your bet, trade or Cash Out value.

Check out this video for more;

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