First Betfair trades for the Bank Holiday – Tennis Matches
Hi All,
I woke up at 6am (my usual wake up time) and remembered that
a) I didn’t need to go to work because of the Bank Holiday
b) the Financial Markets aren’t worth trading today
so, I went back to sleep and woke up at around 9 ish.. a nice lie in.
However, you can bet on the sports markets using Betfair over the holidays and make money. I have been playing around with the Race Horse markets of late but the first one didn’t start until 2pm today so I thought I’d look around to see what else was available and I think I’ve found some really interesting markets in the tennis markets.
Firstly I noticed that the trends and movement can be huge… look at this chart
If you laid this at around 5 and then hedged it at 40 and then greened it up, you’d have a huge amount of money regardless of who won. As an example of what this could look like (but not the hedging bit as this is just a hypothetical mock up):
You can see if you managed to lay at 5 for £20 and then back the same amount for odds of 40, then you can see that there’s a £700 profit there with no risk to your money. Of course, most professional Betfair traders would hedge this price so that he or she secures a profit regardless of who wins. The idea is to lay at the lowest price you can get and back it at the highest price.
However, you only see these sort of movements when the matches are ‘in play’ which means that you’re entries into the market are delayed by 5 seconds and can’t be injected into the markets instantaneously with a click of the mouse. However, you’re looking for more long term (few minutes rather than seconds). It’s like comparing swing trading and scalping.
I’ve found that when the tennis match is near it’s end and that the players are rather evenly matched is when you get the most excitment.. each shot of the ball seems to affect the price. The idea is to see where you feel the prices is going to range between… then you lay at the low end of the range and back at the top end. The prices can jump up 10 ticks up or down rather rapidly so ensure that you’re staking plan reflects this. Remember that your orders into the market are delayed by 5 seconds so that’s a total of 10 seconds where you have no control.. you will not be able to react to these markets immediately so you need to ensure that you have a gameplan in mind already.
My next post will show my first tennis Betfair trade for today…
