# Arbitrage opportunities in football betting



## Duke of Marmalade (30 May 2017)

Moved from another thread 

BTW I am not convinced that there are arbitrage opportunities in football betting.  Maybe what you are observing is as follows.  Let's say a team is 2/1 on to win. The bookie will mark that up as, say, 9/4 on i.e. a mark-up of 3.8%.  Now if we do a Treble of such events we will get accumulated odds of 2/1 against.  But this represents an accumulation of 3 mark-ups of 3.8%. If the bookie was happy to get only 3.8% on the Treble she would lay it at 9/4 against.


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## Fella (30 May 2017)

Duke of Marmalade said:


> BTW I am not convinced that there are arbitrage opportunities in football betting.  Maybe what you are observing is as follows.  Let's say a team is 2/1 on to win. The bookie will mark that up as, say, 9/4 on i.e. a mark-up of 3.8%.  Now if we do a Treble of such events we will get accumulated odds of 2/1 against.  But this represents an accumulation of 3 mark-ups of 3.8%. If the bookie was happy to get only 3.8% on the Treble she would lay it at 9/4 against.



Betfair is a 100% book there is no house edge , you pay commission on your winnings of up to 5% ( for professional who bet a lot like myself it's as low as 1%)
I'd guesstimate I've made over 500k on +EV bets over the last 6/7 years.
Betfair put up accumulator bets which are available to back or lay , these markets are seeded by punters who can back bets at bookies shop or online at inflated prices ( specials) . Thanks to sites like MOney saving expert in U.K. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people taking bets at bookmakers and guides showing them how to lock in money by using arbitrage , the punters are laying the bets they get at inflated prices to lock in maybe 1€ per 10€ stakes and doing multiple shops to take home 10€ a day , people on mse are happy with this. On the other side there are professionals like myself backing these bets at inflated prices also .

So a typical example would be , paddy power puts up a 3 team special at 2/1
, real odds are evens , max bet may be 5 or 10€ or 20€ , I offer to back it off people on Betfair at 6/4 they are happy I am happy and because of guides etc I can get 20k if I want on a evens shot at 6/4. 

The 3 teams are playing at same time which is why the risk free people can't lock on max amount and have to lay at inflated prices


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## Duke of Marmalade (30 May 2017)

Wow!!  Anybody who is on 1% commission at Betfair is certainly a professional.  If your winnings are as you say, well fair play to you; are you not afraid in spreading the gospel that folk like me will cramp your scene?

So let me understand it.  PP gives a special but to limited stakes.  Yes I know the scenario - I sometimes take up these specials myself but don't bother laying them off on Betfair.  (Cheltenham is wonderful for specials).  

Then many, many, people take up the special and many of these lay it off on Betfair (because of this guides thing) to close on a certain €1.  Thus there is artificial demand to sell/lay the special which then increases its price.  

A couple of questions occur to me.  Does Betfair always have a bet which precisely mirrors the special?  Why do other professionals like yourself not produce a natural counter to the artificial selling pressure and hence bring the price back to near fair?


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## Fella (30 May 2017)

That's basically it Duke, you have a good grasp of it .

 In relation to your questions, firstly it's not always Paddy Power , it could be any number of bookies. So what I do/did is watch the bookies for specials that I see enough edge on . I then contact Betfair and ask them to put up that accumulator on Betfair (Betfair will put up any market if you ask them). I will seed the market on Betfair so if its an example like above a bookie offering 2/1 on a evens shot , what I will do is put 5000 up at 2.50/2.52/2.54/2.56/2.58 . 

I then go on advantage gambling / money saving / stoozing /profit accumalator/ arbitrage type forums or facebook groups and post that this bet is available to lock in a guaranteed profit and link them the markets at Betfair + bookmakers. 
I show people how much to stake to allow for commission to lock in a guaranteed profit. 

What normally happens is i'll end up with about 15-20k matched at about 2.54 average, it depends how quick other professionals get involved , the professionals will never drive the price down to fair value because the better the arbitrage becomes the more the 10 pound punters talk about it now been worth 2 pound a shop and the more people will get involved multi shop / open gnome accounts etc to get on , so market forces mean the accumulators are always higher than fair value. I wouldn't want be risking 15-20k but I know early money is usually matched at highest prices so I then lay back off my money into the markets or offer a portion of my bet to other professionals I know.

I'm not afraid of sharing Duke because I've basically semi retired now , I worked intensely for the last 7/8 years and have lost interest don't need money any more and want to enjoy other things.

There are calculators online showing ideal staking size so as not to go broke , you input the odds you are getting and the odds it should be and it will give you the ideal stake, I ran my own verison of kelly criterion  http://www.albionresearch.com/kelly/ it wasn't as agressive as full Kelly. But stake sizing depending on odds is one of the most important factors imo.


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## Duke of Marmalade (31 May 2017)

_Fella_ presuming you are not trolling me that is some story.  Basically you are recruiting lots of people to get you a large piece of a special, and paying them a commission in the form of the difference between your odds and theirs.  Did you dream this up yourself?

Still you had to do a little bit of marketing to recruit your agents.  Surely I can now piggyback off your (or like minded) professionals by getting in quick and accepting slightly worse odds.


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## Fella (31 May 2017)

Why would I be trolling you ?
It's not like one day I just dreamt this up and it came to happen the next weekend, it evolved slowly over time.

I didn't recruit anyone , in fact years ago I used to be able to get bets on in bookmakers shops and the offers where just so much better back then , the limits higher and you could make a great income with much less work. When advantage gambling became mainstream thanks to sites like MSE showing step by step guides on arbitrage and how to lock in money on other types of ew thieving etc , well life became much harder for me . I was against it becoming mainstream.

Profit accumulator a Facebook group basically killed betting altogether , anyone who took any bets at all that had been shared about there was closed or limited by bookmakers , all my accounts have been closed or heavily limited and new accounts I openned in friends or families name were closed in quick time compared to years ago.

Betfair had accumulators markets up before and often there was not a lot of money been matched it was just a case of me or someone else asking them to put the teams up that the bookies offered and then letting others know they are there.

Of course if you are willing to accept the risk you can piggy back and get involved yourself , many people aren't mentally able to do it though , bad bank roll management and thinking they know more than the market are the two main reasons I would say most people even when shown can't do it successfully.

I've asked some shrewd people would they take 6/5 on a 4/5 shot and they say definitely , then I say United and city both to win this weekend is true odds of 1.8 your getting 2.2 , the reaction is usually eh who are United playing ? Or is aguero in or out ? I try to explain to them you need to forget about the teams and players but they can't or other people might say "I don't know anything about football or I don't gamble " or they will over stake saying that will definitely win . It's very hard to teach people to just worry about the maths and EV and long term you will be up .

This angle (if you'd like to call it that ) wouldn't represent the whole of a professional gamblers play , I just used it as an easy example in the other thread to show Brendan that if he wanted to take them kind of bets they are available, I can't emphasis enough that the psychological part of it is huge , you will have really bad runs just because you generate value it doesn't mean you will finish up in the short term and you could have big down swings and be tempted to bet more or less than the calculators advises . Variance is cruel. The more value you can generate the more you can do to smooth out your variance instead of waiting for once a week for football bets , id have other angles during the week to create value based on similar principles. I don't do this much at all as I've basically retired from it but happy to share that much .


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## Duke of Marmalade (31 May 2017)

_Fella_ I didn't mean "recruit" in the normal sense of having signed up agents, that's the problem with these blogs.  But as I understand it, you spot a good "special", yes they certainly exist, but you are limited to €25 per person.  So you go on line and persuade many people to effectively take the special for you.  Rather they take their €25 special but you lay it off on Betfair at lesser odds than they got but still better odds than reality.  Sorry, I didn't mean anything derogatory in the "recruit" comment.  I am mightily impressed by your initiative.

The Kelly method seems to be no more than applying a logarithmic utility function to prevent you betting everything on a good thing, which I think is Brendan's philosophy, which I will now address in the mainstream thread.


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## Fella (31 May 2017)

Yeah you basically get it. Kelly method shows optimal staking size it takes the value into consideration , chance of going bust etc , its too aggressive for most gamblers, as I say I ran my own version of Kelly , I used Kelly calculator then divided that stake by a multiple . 

http://imgur.com/a/i0Nlf That is the last accumulator I did , all that profit was not mine I don't want to say much more about why that is all not mine but there are certain things that I don't want to discuss on a public forum. I think i've gone as far now as I should. If someone is keen to go down this road they are already armed with a lot more knowledge than I was.


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## Duke of Marmalade (31 May 2017)

Fabulous, unbelievable. You're my hero. You should write a book.


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## Dan Murray (31 May 2017)

Fair play, Fella - some really fabulous insights....

I'm not sure if I actually ever said this before but....._thanks for sharing!_

[Of course, if I follow Brendan's advice, I should now be lobbing €10,000 on the next such opportunity. I wonder if Brendan will similarly invest or whether he, too, will wonder whether Aguero is in or out? ]


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## Dunston (7 Jan 2018)

Hi Fella, just came across this and signed up to post. First of all, thanks a lot for sharing and it's a very interesting angle.

I have a few reservations though and hopefully you can shed some light. My main issue would be the unenhanced price quoted by the likes of paddypower for these specials could hardly be taken as a fair or true price. For example, today's treble of west ham/spurs/arsenal was enhanced from 9/4 to 7/2. Now, backing the treble at 3/1 on betfair is a +EV bet when taking 9/4 as a fair price, but of course that price is not fair. We have to look at the betfair exchange prices of the single match markets and multiply them to get the actual fair price. For today's example, that fair price was 3/1 which shows that while the 7/2 special is still good value, the 3/1 available to back on the betfair treble market is not a value bet. There was a lot of money traded at 3.9 and 3.8 on today's treble before the event which shows that this strategy was in use, but backing bets at 3.9 and 3.8 were actually -EV bets when taking 3/1 as the fair price. You say the professionals will never drive the accumulator price down to fair value because the better the arbitrage is, the more the lemmings will get on by locking in 2 pounds instead of 1. This doesn't make sense to me. The lemmings are laying the bet so the lower the price is, the better the arbitrage is for them. Keeping the price higher and above fair value is not going to attract any more of them?

This is only one example but I've seen many more where the unenhanced price quoted in the specials is nonsense. Is it a case that you have to sit out most of the specials and wait til one eventually comes along that really is value?

Also, getting the commission down under 2% would be a massive help. How has this been possible without being promoted to the premium commission charges of 20%, if your profits are in the hundreds of thousands?

Appreciate any feedback from yourself or anyone else who's had a go since you posted.


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## Dan Murray (8 Jan 2018)

Very interesting observations, Dunston - it will be very interesting to see Fella's response.


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## TheBigShort (10 Jan 2018)

I have tried dozens of strategies on the betfair exchanges with limited success, ultimately ending in failure. I stick to the more traditional method now - I back the team that I think will win. Lay teams I think will not win
As it transpires, I am quite successsful at it (close call with M City last night) without making any life changing gains, yet.
My system is slow, methodical and I avoid betting on animals (although I thoroughly enjoy horse racing). 
I stick to sports I know something about, soccer, GAA, darts and mens tennis (only masters series and above). Admittedly im hurting after the darts this year, but prem lge is around the corner so hoping to pare back the losses.


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## ant dee (10 Jan 2018)

TheBigShort said:


> I have tried dozens of strategies on the betfair exchanges with limited success, ultimately ending in failure. I stick to the more traditional method now - I back the team that I think will win. Lay teams I think will not win
> As it transpires, I am quite successsful at it (close call with M City last night) without making any life changing gains, yet.
> My system is slow, methodical and I avoid betting on animals (although I thoroughly enjoy horse racing).
> I stick to sports I know something about, soccer, GAA, darts and mens tennis (only masters series and above). Admittedly im hurting after the darts this year, but prem lge is around the corner so hoping to pare back the losses.


a typical mug


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## TheBigShort (10 Jan 2018)

ant dee said:


> a typical mug



Only if you are losing over the long-term. My Eng Premier Lge is up 250% since August, La Liga 65%. GAA 55%, tennis was more or less evs, darts -110%. 

If you want I can PM you selected bets and you can follow results yourself?


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## TheBigShort (10 Jan 2018)

I should add, my own little strategy is obviously pittance compared to _Fella's _anecdotes above. But in talking betting strategies I think its good to hear from as many as possible.
With _Fella _ strategies you will need deep pockets and lots of time.
I do it for the buzz of calling an outcome correctly, the profit is mere token.


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## elacsaplau (13 Jan 2018)

Hi Dunston,

I agree with your analysis - hopefully, Fella will explain what we are both missing here.


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