Vitoria Guimeraes vs Sporting Braga September 20th, 2011. Previous posts have explained draw swing trading on Premiership football matches using Betfair. The Let’s Compare Bets guinea pig trader has access to European stats so decided to trade the game. Trading Guimeraes and Braga produced a profit and this post describes what happened. For advice on how to follow this method read the original football draw swing trading post.

Both teams went into the match with similar odds. Guimeraes had the home team advantage. Sporting Braga’s previous performances where much better than Guimeraes.

Guimeraes scored towards the end of the first half. This was great because the odds swung nicely producing a potential profit of £6. Trouble was the odds reduced very quickly reducing the value to £3.5 and eventually between £0 – £1.5. Guimeraes had the home team advantage but where not the favourites. The odds reduced because the market expected Braga to equalise.

A profit could have been taken as soon as the goal was scored. Unfortunately the free version of Bet Trader, which our trader was using, doesn’t allow orders to sit in the market. This is where a corresponding back bet is placed in advance at a level where the trader thinks the odds will jump to if a goal is scored. This ensures the bet is at the front of the market to ensure it is taken up straight away. If it doesn’t get matched immediately the odds a likely to fall back before the bet can be filled. Some bet trader software calculates what the corresponding back bet needs to be and allows the trader to place the bet early on. Alternatively the corresponding back bet can be placed manually if the trader wants to do it that way. There are various back lay calculator available for free online.

Back to the game. During the second half Guimeraes came back quite strongly which caused the trade to go into a small loss. This was the danger zone. If Guimeraes scored with less than a third of the game to run the bet would have gone into a bad loss. To hedge the risk of getting a loss if Guimeraes scored our trader decided to place a small back bet on a correct score of 1 – 1. Luckily Guimeraes didn’t scored and the trade went into a six pounds profit with a little over a quarter of the game left to run. This profit was bagged there and then to protect against any risk of Guimeraes scoring during the final part of the game.

It was necessary to protect the trade in this game because it was a local derby. This made it difficult to predict which team was more likely to win. The situation would have been different if either Brage or Guimeraes had gone two goals up. The bet could have run it’s course or closed out for a smaller profit if the other teams scored, making it 2 – 1.

So what happended in the 83rd minute? The answer is exactly what our trader wanted to protect against. Braga scored! If the bet was left to run this would have produced a large loss. To conclude, hedging the trade and taking a profit as early as possible was the right thing to do. What’s more the 1 – 1 correct score bet doubled the profit.  Get tennis trading strategies.