Black & White

Very few games tonight, made a bad judgement on Liverpool's game. The game started as predicted so I thought there will be not many goals and went for unders 2,5. The ideas was to stay the first 10-15 minutes and the to green up for 10-15 % on my stake. But not to be! What a awful defending from Benfica.....was a lucky escape as I leveraged after the goal and escaped without any loses. I tend not to trade on unders any more but sometimes I just feel there will be not many goals and slip in that dangerous trade called unders. Hope not any more! So after that felt that tonight was not good time for trading so stayed still for the rest of the game.

Have not withdrawal yet, have four days off now for Eastern and tend to read lots of educational books about investing/punting/trading.

I have found something very interesting which I have never tried from the site below.

http://www.bfguide.com/Football_Betting_Tips.html

A market which I've consistently made money from in the past is the bookings odds markets on live premiership matches. The market is based on 2 points for a yellow card and 5 points for a red card. It offers three possible outcomes:

5 points and under

6-8 points

9 points and above

The selection I always looked to lay was the 5 points and under. In other words, I'm always looking for matches where there will be at least three bookings in order to win the bet. As this market is generally only available for live matches you have to be very selective, and for that reason I usually only found one or two solid opportunities per week. However, I'm constantly amazed at how low the prices are for this selection, as I think the price available is often a lot more generous than it's true probability. The average price you can lay this selection at varies, but my selections are usually around 3.5-4.5. On that basis if you use the same stake every bet (I generally staked £150 for each match), then on average you need to have a 75% success rate to make this system profitable. This may sound high, but if you do your homework then it's remarkably easy to achieve this, and again make a nice little income. My record was seventeen successive winning lays stretching over about three months.

Look at any premiership match nowadays, and you'll see that very few matches have less than three bookings. This is because referees are now extremely fussy and just the smallest of mistimed tackles often results in a booking. Also, there is a lot of diving and simulation in our game at the moment, which is now finally being clamped down on with an instant booking in most cases. The prices offered on Betfair, in my opinion, don't reflect this and are still very generous.

Those matches that do finish with less than three bookings are often very easy to predict either because they have a soft referee in charge, or they're between two mid-table sides with nothing much to play for, or two well-disciplined sides with excellent disciplinary records, such as Chelsea or Liverpool (two teams I like to avoid).

Two essential tools for identifying suitable matches are the fair play league table and the referee league table. These are good starting points for identifying ill-disciplined teams and card-happy refs, but I like to analyse the two team selections as well. Most of my bets are therefore placed close to the kick-off when the two line-ups are announced. Ideally I want to find matches involving tough combative central midfielders who like to get stuck in, tricky wingers who can draw fouls, and no-nonsense central defenders. Two of my favourite teams who meet this criteria are Blackburn and Everton. Both have no-nonsense managers in Mark Hughes and David Moyes at the time of writing, and boast several hard-working, determined, tough-tackling players in their team.

There are a few other teams, such as Arsenal and Bolton, who rarely let me down either, but it's important to take each match on it's merit. For example, Blackburn v Everton may look like a banker bet, but if, let's say, it's near the end of the season and both teams are comfortably in mid-table with nothing to play for, then neither side will be as committed. Therefore the odds of getting at least three bookings are seriously reduced. In my experience relegation scraps often produce a lot of bookings, because both teams are so desperate for a positive result and fully commit to tackles, often mistiming them.

In my experience the matches to avoid are those matches hyped up by the media that have a history of bad blood and aggression from previous encounters. This attracts a lot of casual punters who don't normally bet on this market, who subsequently over-inflate the price to something silly like 7 or 8 or even higher.

To conclude, the ideal match to lay under 5 points would obviously be one refereed by one of the strictest refs and between two teams with a poor disciplinary record. It is important, however, to also look at the two line-ups and make sure that all the notoriously tough players are playing, and both teams should have something to play for, so they're fully committed.

Happy Punting everyone!