Probably the oldest football trading method
on the internet is LAYING the DRAW. I make
no apologies for bringing it up once again.
Wherever you go on the internet and mention
football trading LAYING the DRAW will rear
hits head in one form or another. Lay before
the start, lay at half-time, lay after 60 or
70 minutes, there are more variations than
days in the month. However there is one aspect
that I have not seen in print yet and which I am going to delve into. I have
not yet seen any strategy which takes into account the odds on offer, Either
before the match starts or at half-time. As I’m not too interested in odds
offered at half-time for 1 – 2 – X. I’ll stick with odds offered at kick-off
for qualifying games. Laying the draw before the game starts can involve the
possible loss of large stakes. Coming into the fray at half-time or later is
more sensible. Plus stakes will be a lot lower.
The odds on offer at the start of a match can give a good indication as to
which way the game should progress. They should do, although this is not always
the case.
I am sure that these early prices can give a us a lead if we use them carefully.
As the home team is supposed to have a half goals advantage, (a figure arrived
at by a person very much smarter than I), we can assume that the home team is the
one to lead the way. Can we use this to our advantage? I do believe so.
The main point I look for is that the match must still be level at half-time.
The actual score doesn’t really concern us, although it may pay to look at
certain games ending 0 – 0. This is just a small interesting sideline.
My first stats refer to the Premiership last season.
The odds on offer at the beginning of the match should reflect the expected
outcome after 90 minutes. However I’ve been looking at the possibility of them
giving some indication of the chances of a draw or otherwise when the game is all
square at half-time. Unfortunately there is no quick way to collate these figures,
so a lot of midnight oil needed to be burned.
I’ve split the odds offered into 11 sets, between 1.00 and 11.00.
Starting at the beginning we have the odds from 1.00 to 1.99. In total there where
47 games where the home side started within this range. 13 of these games finished
as draws. No good to us. 6 of them ended as 0 – 0 draws.
Moving up a touch we go to 2.00 to 2.99.There were 54 such matches of which 23 were
draws and of these 13 were scoreless.
The next group was 3.00 to 3.99. matches here were very sparse. just 9 all season.
5 of these were drawn and just 1 was 0 – 0.
The higher the odds on offer the fewer the number of matches met the criteria. 4.00
to 4.99, came up with 8 matches of which only 2 were draws with one being scoreless.
5.00 to 5.99, gave 7 games with 2 draws which were both scoreless.
6.00 to 6.99, 6 games, 3 draws, 2 scoreless.
7.00 to 7.99, 3 games with 1 scoreless draw.
8.00 to 8.99, 1 games which was scoreless.
9.00 to 9.99, Just 2 winning games.
10.00 to 10.99, One winning game only and
11.00 to 11.99, One game that was drawn.
I know stats are often meaningless unless you have them in front of you.
However if it means making money, it’s worth giving it a go.
Altogether I found a total of 143 matches that were level at half-time.
51 of these were still level after 90 minutes.
27 of the drawn games ended 0 – 0.
Lumping together all games from 4.00 to infinity showed 33 matches, 10 were still
level at full-time and 7 of these ended 0 – 0.
From the figures in front of me I would discard anything in the 3.00 to 3.99 band,
for starters. There does seem to be a lot to ponder over. A good filter to cut down
the number of potential bets, for a start. As ever, head-to-head is always a good
point to start at. Plus, of course, good recent form.
