The half/time full/time betting market on football matches are pretty popular. It is a market that can come in handy in terms of finding extra value for your efforts when you are looking at a lopsided game. For example if there is a heavy favourite for particular match and there’s not much meat on the bone in backing them to win outright, you can find extended value in the half time/ full-time market.
This does give you plenty of options for your soccer betting and first of all let’s run through a few example of when it would be a good time to consider the market.
This is essentially two bets in one. You need the half time result to be correct as well as the separate full time result.
A likely draw
There are some games where you get a strong feeling that they could be ending in a draw. Say a cagey top-of-the-table clash is happening or the home team in a fixture has a bit of a penchant of low-scoring tight games. A way to approach this could be looking at the home team to be leading at half time and then the full-time result being a draw. Why? Well the impetus is generally on the home team to do more of the attacking, but if they have fallen into a habit of drawing matches, then you can piece that together to look at value.
You are of course doubling your risk because you need two outcomes to happen. When you are looking at this option, unless really exceptional circumstances you are going to be looking around the 16/1 odds mark for a Home Team/Draw half time/full time outcome. That’s just a ballpark rule of thumb so the attraction of big odds is there if you can find the right trending teams in the right fixture.
One-sided games
The half time/full time bet option is utilized more when there is a lopsided game. If you have a very strong home side who are at an odds-on price on home soil then there isn’t great appeal in the price. You would have to stump up a hefty wager to get any substantial returns. For example, we looked at a real Brentford v Sheffield Wednesday Championship fixture from August 2018 and Brentford were 4/7 odds-on favourites on home soil to take the win. If you staked £10 on that, that would be £10 risked to win £5.71 profit.
However, because the Bees were such heavy favourites to win the fixture then would have the option of backing a Brentford/Brentford half time/ full-time wager at 11/8 odds. Which immediately looks more appealing even though the risk is a little bit higher because you need the Bees to win both halves of the fixture. But if you weigh up their favouritism and look to see just how strong they have been on home soil, then it could be a viable option.
Search for Consistency
One of the major statistics that you can look at when you are digging around for value in the half time/full-time market is half time results. This is pretty easy to find but something that can get overlooked because of 90-minute results. Go and look at the full stats on a football league and you will be able to see a trend in first-half performances of team. Looking back at the 2017/18 Premier League table, Manchester City were winning at half time in 24 of their 38 matches which is a huge trend.
That means that they would have been pretty reliable in terms of backing for a half time/ full-time success, especially on home soil. At the other end of the table Swansea, who ended up getting relegated were winning at half time just five times all season, but on the reverse side of that, they were losing at half time in a whopping 18 of their 38 fixtures which could be used to back their opponent in any match to have been winning at halftime.
You can also pick out teams who were more likely to be drawing at half time than anything else. Newcastle, Brighton and Huddersfield for example ended up being level at half time in half of all their fixtures during that 2017/18 Premier League season. Of course this is the kind of information that you are going to have to extrapolate from during the course of the season and that all comes down to trends. The search for that first half consistency (in whatever outcome) must go on.
Half/Time Full/Time Plus
There’s an extra step that you could take a look at. Remember that will all betting everything at the end of the day should boil down to your bankroll management. With that in mind, an extra strategy you could put towards the half time/full time market is backing more than one outcome. What do we mean by this?
Well, let’s assume that we are considering a strong home team and we’ll just go back to the Brentford example from above. We are expecting them to win the game over 90 minutes and that’s the important thing with this strategy. They are a strong home side, running in good form and they are taking on a side who haven’t been producing any positive results of note.
But there is no such thing as a dead-cert of course and because the odds in half time/full time bets are pretty generous, then you can use that to your advantage. Let’s say you were going to stake £10 at 11/8 odds on a Brentford/Brentford half time/full time win.
£10 @ 11/8 = £13.75 profit
You could split that stake over two beats, both the Brentford/Brentford option and the Draw/Brentford option, the latter of which is at 3/1 odds. So here would be a scenario.
£6 @ 11/6 = £9.62 profit on Brentford/Brentford
£3 @ 3/1 = £9.00 profit on Draw/Brentford
Now if the first option wins you would you still have £6.52 profit in your profit (as you take out the stake of the losing bet). If the second wager comes up then you would still be in profit somewhat at £3.00 up. It’s not as big of a return naturally but that is because you have been paying a premium for that extra insurance on Brentford coming out with a win.
You can of course play with the balance stakes to your own liking and assess your risk and reward. Of course those aren’t the only two outcomes that could turn up in the match (half time/full time) but given the balance of strength between the two sides, they are the most likely ones.
We’ve said it before though and we will say it many times again. Always stick within your bankroll and never risk more than you can afford to lose. Bankroll management is such an important part of sports betting.
