Perils and profits on the betting exchanges

William Hill
William Hill

Ever since the betting exchanges first came into existence around eight or so years ago, professional gamblers have flocked to this method of betting like moths to a light. There is a tremendous scope for anyone who is highly knowledgeable in sport to be able to bet profitably using this particular betting vehicle.

However this does not mean that there is easy money to be made. The days when easy money could be made on the betting exchanges have disappeared and they are a haven now for professionals, bookmakers and traders. In fact it is the traders who account for a large percentage of the overall liquidity these days and is why they are tolerated by these organisations!

I have operated on the betting exchanges for some years now in between my poker playing and it has certainly got tougher to play successfully. The feature that made betting exchanges so attractive years ago is now the same feature that is making it tough to earn something.

This feature is the “pooling” nature of the money unlike in poker where the money comes from individual sources. This pooling of money means that you cannot get direct access to unskilled money in the same way that you can with poker. You can play poker online and just by taking a little care with your table and game selection then you can nearly always get access to games that have weaker players in them.

The better poker player you are, the more flexibility that you have with regards your choice of beatable games. But with betting exchanges then you have little option but to lock horns with large numbers of professionals and that makes for one tough environment in which to try and earn a profit.

However it can almost certainly be done but you must be prepared to do certain things in order to be able to win more often. The first one is that you really need to focus on the goal of making a profit on the exchanges over and above anything else. This usually involves specialising in a certain area almost in the same way that you should do with poker.

Specialising in say lower league football or other markets that are not analysed to death may get you the edge over your competition and allow you to have a lead. There are inherent problems with focusing on popular markets, because of the fact that they are so mainstream then this means that the professionals are concentrating on them too and this also means that the prices in these areas will be very accurate indeed and value will be difficult to find.

Betting exchanges are actually modelled on the major financial stock markets and they operate in almost exactly the same way. What this means is that similar market forces tend to move prices either upwards or downwards in both of these areas. There are many financial and electronic day traders whose sole methodology is to trade around news and what that news will mean for certain stocks and shares.

This is a technique that can be transferred to the betting exchanges as news will also have an effect on certain prices for sporting events as well. If you are in the right place at the right time and have access to an up to the minute sports news service, then you can certainly earn profit on the betting exchanges simply sitting there and waiting for news to come through and then acting on that news before anyone else.

This is a boring job but if you ever desire to bet profitably out of any form of gambling then you are going to have to come to terms with one very important aspect. This is that gambling for a living in whatever capacity if it is being done properly should be boring. If it isn’t then you are probably doing something wrong and this will probably mean that you are committing the biggest of all gambling sins, seeing too much action.

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