Top Traders on Betfair

Top traders using advanced strategies can achieve a situation where they'll win around 90% of the time on each and every race.

Traders often trade more than one horse in a race thus increasing profits.

When you consider there are races every 10-15 minutes or so every afternoon throughout the year, you can instantly see the potential and why trading is huge business on betting exchanges.

Racing is ideal for trading because with so many runners, the odds will continually move in the build-up to the race.

These odds moves can be substantial or tiny, but with the popularity of UK racing ensuring the markets remain efficient with the 'Back' market at close to 100%, one thing you can be certain of is that the market will not remain static on Betfair.

On-course bookmaker markets may not move at all, but with so many more increments available to trade on Betfair, this ensures even the least interesting horse race can be profitable to Betfair traders.

Of course you can trade any sports event, not just horse racing.

The only prerequisite is that you know and understand how and why the odds move.

To fail to do so would mean facing a loss-making situation for sure.

Each event, and the time at which you get involved and why, radically changes the way you approach each market.

Trading programmes and the API

Rather than just using the traditional Betfair website to bet on a race, which is designed to be all things to all customers, a lot of people are using specially designed software to place bets and monitor positions of markets on the betting exchange.

Using this sort of software allows exchange users to monitor the market closely and see exactly where money is coming for a horse and quickly take advantage of that fact.

The software will also actively monitor and manage your open bets for you making the chances of a successful series of bets much more likely.

Some software vendors offer very comprehensive software but also offer scaled-down versions so you can get your feet wet or at worst at least see and understand the concept.

Trading just the movement in odds on a race may seem strange to those who have done much to understand the form and structure of a race.

However it's this sort of opportunity that presents many people with the chance to finally develop an edge in the market and a level of consistent winnings that has evaded traditional punters for some time.

Although growing steadily, in comparison to the volume traded by city hedge funds for example, this type of activity is still virgin territory as many have yet to understand its full potential.

Certainly if you understand the structure of a race as a traditional punter and you learn how to trade the results could be very good indeed.

Just looking at price graphs on an exchange can confirm if the odds are coming in or going out.

The original versions of these articles were written in 2005 by Peter Webb, founder of BetAngel, specialist trading software for Betfair. Visit BetAngel for a wide range of demonstration clips and for more information about their products.

BetAngel is a third-party Licensed Software Vendor of Betfair. BetAngel produce and support their own products. To make use of any of these software applications you must enter into an agreement with the individual vendors - separate from Betfair. Find off-the-shelf applications, historical data, results and more at the Betfair Solutions Directory.