How To Win At Football Betting or Football Trading on Betfair – 5 Step Plan

By Marty •  Updated: 01/18/24 •  12 min read

It’s not a secret! There are clear ways to win at Betfair Football Trading and Football Betting.

In this blog post you will find out the 5 steps to winning at Football Betting or Football Trading on Betfair.

Does that sound good?

Profit graph

Time for some Betfair Football Trading!

So, I think most of you reading this want to start making money at Betfair Football Trading.

The methods below are tried and tested by thousands of Betfair Traders over 10 years!

That’s because I have established these winning principles by watching and training thousands of new Betfair traders over the past decade.

One of the privileges of running a service like Betfair Trading Community is that I get to see the journey of all types of different Betfair traders.

So, I can see what works and what doesn’t. 

All we have to do is try and replicate that. 

You don’t necessarily need to know a lot about sports.

You don’t necessarily need to know a lot about betting or trading to begin with because once you put these practices into place, it becomes automatic!

A lot of people start Betfair trading and they’re kind of just thrown into this world of:

‘I can invest my money to make money on sports, brilliant, but where do I start?

What sort of staking do I use? Where do I go from here?’

Step 1: Decide what ‘Betfair Football Trading Market’ to focus on

So, the first thing you need to start to think about is what market do you want to bet on?

That’s because with Betfair Football Trading there are two main directions you can go in.

You are either going to be betting on who’s going to win:

Betfair Match odds Market

– or –  you are going to be betting on goals. 

Betfair Over/Under Goals odds Market

Do you prefer the idea of investing money in who you think is going to win a match – or –  do you prefer the idea of betting on goals?

Your starting point is to make that fork in the road decision.

So, for example, let’s say you make a decision that you want to bet on goals then it is time for the most important step!

Step 2: Create a Strategy

Every successful Betfair Football Trader I know has a strategy and structure to their betting and trading, without fail!

The easiest way to create a strategy is to use Betfair Trading Software so that you have the right tools for the job. 

The Betfair Trading Community football software is the best place for that. The reason is because Betfair Trading Community focuses on Betfair strategy creation for football and horse racing.

So, Betfair Trading Community Football software will give you all the tools you need to create a Betfair strategy that has a true chance of success. 

Why do we create strategies?

Because, once you create your strategies, you can then start to test the data, which puts you in a very strong position as a Betfair trader.

I’ll give you an example of why, let’s say I have created a strategy looking for over 2.5 goals.

Once the strategy is saved the software will then automatically give me the selections every day, at the click of a button.

Betfair Trading Selections

I don’t even have to do anything else to acquire the selections!

Sure, you could just trade using things like gut feeling instead, or just bet on what you think will happen…but if you do you will be surprised how quickly you lose money.

A losing trader!

How do I know this?

Because, I thought I could do that, I would just bet on my gut feeling!

It only took me about a month to realise I needed Betfair Trading software to help me research selections.

That was because I lost so much money! 

Now, one of the easiest ways to set up a strategy is to ask yourself these questions:

What outcome do I want to happen? And what odds would I need to get on average to make money from that?

So let’s say, I want to bet on teams that score Over 3.5 goals, 50% of the time.

Well, in that case, I want to bet on matches where in their recent history, these teams have had at least four goals, 50% of the time.

So, then that is your first criteria, you would then add it to the software.

Over 3.5 Goals Football Trading Strategy

As you can see in the picture above, we have selected:

So now we have begun to build a strategy! 

But you’re going to need something else to create a potential edge and value bet or trade. 

Because the problem is this, where is your edge?

We need VALUE odds to potentially make a profit! 

For example, I’m not going back to a team that scores over 3.5 50% of the time if the odds are 1.01 to back, right?

Because I’d have to invest £100 to win £1.

And yet this outcome only happens 50% of the time, so that’s not good value.

50% of the time I would make £1 profit, the other 50% of the time I would lose £100. 

So, I would lose a lot of money over time taking those odds, on average after every two bets I would have lost £99!

The Betfair Trading Community Football Trading Software allows you to add an odds filter!  – Directly to your strategy.

So, if I want games where over 3.5 happens 50% of the time, we need to know what 50% is in odds.

Well, here is a handy chart you can use to figure it out! 

Here in the chart below and you can see that 2.0 odds is 50% as a percentage. 

FractionDecimalImplied Probability
1/1001.0199%
1/51.283.30%
1/41.2580%
3/101.376.90%
1/31.3375%
2/51.471.40%
1/21.566.70%
4/71.5763.60%
8/131.6261.90%
4/61.6760%
8/111.7357.90%
4/51.855.60%
10/111.9152.40%
1/1 (evens)250%
11/102.147.60%
6/52.245.50%
11/82.3842.10%
7/52.441.70%
6/42.540%
8/52.638.50%
7/42.7536.40%
9/52.835.70%
2/1333.30%
11/53.231.20%
12/53.429.40%
5/23.528.60%
13/53.627.80%
11/43.7526.70%
3/1425%
16/54.223.80%
10/34.3323.10%
7/24.522.20%
4/1520%
9/25.518.20%
5/1616.70%
11/26.515.40%
6/1714.30%
13/27.513.30%
7/1812.50%
15/28.511.80%
8/1911.10%
9/11010%
10/1119.10%
11/1128.30%
12/1137.70%
13/1147.10%
14/1156.70%
15/1166.20%
16/1175.90%
18/1195.30%
20/1214.80%
25/1263.80%
33/1342.90%
50/1512%
66/1671.50%
100/11011%
1000/110010.10%
Use this chart to always know what odds are in %

So, our break even price is 2.0 if we win 50% of the time (although with the 2% Betfair commission it would be a small loss!).

So, we probably want the over 3.5 goal minimum odds to be 2.10 or above to give us a margin for a potential edge. 

As you can see in the above chart odds of 2.1 are saying the chance is 47%, but we believe the selection actually has a 50%+ chance to win, therefore, we are getting a potential margin of 3%+ in our favour as a value bet!

When Backing (betting on something to win) we want the odds to be too big, bigger than we think they should be.

When Laying (betting on something to lose) we want the odds to be too short, shorter than we think they should be. 

So, in this example I am using 2.10 as my minimum price. 

Here is how to input that info into the strategy: 

Betfair Trading  Strategy Creation Software

As you can see in the picture above, we have selected:

If I win 50% of the time at odds of 2.10 I would win £10 on every two bets using £100 stakes.

Win at 2.10 = £110 

Loss at 2.10 = -£100

Average Profit every two bets £10

However it gets even better!

With minimum odds of 2.10 my average odds will actually be much higher because you will get selections above 2.10 most of the time. Odds like 2.52, 2.83 or 3.0 for example and your lowest odds would never be below 2.10.

That’s a really, really simple example of how you could create a strategy and start to record the results.

Here is the completed strategy criteria:

Betfair Trading Community Software

We then need to name the strategy and save it:

Name for strategy

Once you click save it will show you your selections:

Today's selections

In this case the selection for today would be Chesterfield v Altringham.

We can also see that Criteria 1 (Percentage of over 3.5 goals) is 55% and the last matched odds of over 3.5 goals were 2.16, so therefore we know this selection fits our criteria! 

In theory, we should be getting value.

This is just a hypothesis, an idea, so the next step is to find out if it actually works!

Step 3: Testing Your Strategy

The next step is to then test the selections and it’s really, really simple to do because on the Betfair Trading Community software, all you need to do is click ‘export’ and it will actually export the selections for you. 

Testing a Betfair Strategy

What you would then want to do is open the file and put the selections in a spreadsheet, like this example below where I use a very basic one.

Betfair Football Trading spreadsheet

Then you can record the results to £10 stakes because you want to be able to see the potential profit or loss.

But don’t put any real money on yet because you have not tested it enough.

Why have I given you this warning?

Well, you might find that actually this strategy doesn’t work at all, so at this stage it is not wise to invest money yet.

The next thing to do is work out how much data you will want for your strategy.

How many data points, how many matches or results do you need to have before you can accept that your data is valid and definitely not just chance?

Sheet of Statistics

I spoke to a data scientist about this actually and they said that they want 2000 results before coming to any conclusions about a strategy.

Now 2000 results is a lot but I have had strategies with 1000 results that went downhill unexpectedly, so I really believe in this number.

After you have a decent amount of results, you might find that certain odds ranges and leagues work much better than others, you may want to remove those from your strategy.

However, you don’t want to over-filter your strategy and your original data set, only remove things when the trend is so clear that it makes sense to do so.

So the testing data set you get becomes invaluable, because you have so much of it, it should become your bread and butter!

Whether you’ve won a lot on it, lost a lot on it or you’ve broken even, there will always be ways you can look at improving a strategy with the odds and the leagues.

Step 4: Start Betting or Trading with Small Stakes

A small stakes bet on Betfair Football Trading
Head over to www.betfair.com/exchange to place a bethttps://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/

Now, it’s time to put some money on! 

The reality is that with football betting, you want to start with small stakes.

People often ask me and for straight bets I like to use around 0.5% of my bankroll as the stake.

The reason for that is I want to give myself a lot of bets even if I start with a losing run, so that I’m giving my bankroll a lot of protection.

My experience has taught me that this is a good way to invest money, because you are taking a much lower financial risk.

Don’t let your ego get in your way.

It doesn’t matter if it takes a while to build up a big bankroll.

Don’t just lump money on bets or trades because it nearly always ends in disaster. 

It doesn’t matter how good your strategy is, or how good a trader you are, you will have bad days.

So yes, you will make money in the long run if you’ve got a profitable strategy, but you will also have losing days.

So if you’re using big stakes, especially compared to your bank roll it will likely lead to disaster!

Let’s say you’re using 5% of your £100 bankroll per bet and you’re betting outright and you lose 10 points in one day. 

5% = £5 

£5 x 10 = £50

You’ve lost 50 quid, so you’ve just lost half your bank roll! 

Ryan in another life!

Don’t do it!

Step 5: Increase Your Stakes

Now, if everything goes how you thought it would and after two or three months it’s making money, you can up your stakes relative to your new bankroll.

Say you started with £1000 and you now have £2000 well you can double your initial stakes and still be risking exactly the same % of your bankroll, despite using a higher amount of money to trade with. 

With a £1000 bankroll using a 0.5% stake the amount you would bet would be £5

With a £2000 bankroll using a 0.5% stake the amount you would bet would be £10

Keep your percentages the same but increase the stake because it’s sensible and it protects your money! 

Then it’s time to create a second strategy.

The 5 step process above begins again with that strategy so that’s really all there is to it! 

How do I know this pathway works?

I see it time and time again, I see it with traders on the forum. I’ve seen it in my own football trading and I’ve seen it with countless people.

This pathway works.

That’s because the alternative pathway is where you’re just trading randomly bascially you’re just trading on gut feeling and you’re not using Betfair trading software to help you.

That pathway will fail for 99%+ of Betfair traders, FACT!

You’re not using maths, you’re not using calculations and you’re not doing any research, so you are doomed to lose money.

That doesn’t work. I can tell you that for sure!

statistics are great

If you are a member of the Betfair Trading Community, you will agree with me because you will have seen traders having success following this method, time and time again!

In fact you can check out some testimonials from members here: https://new.betfairtradingcommunity.com/testimonials/

I’m not some genius who just randomly came up with this incredible pathway to becoming a successful Betfair trader.

I’m someone that went through all the pitfalls but I quickly learned I needed Betfair football trading software.

That’s what’s going to make you money in the long run.

I hope you have a great week, but most importantly, of all, as ever, of course, I hope you make some money trading on Betfair.

Marty