Losing Home Favourites – great opportunities to lay the away underdogs

Lay Away Underdog Strategy

Laying away underdogs when they take a lead is one of the simplest in-play trading strategies. It’s usually done on betting exchanges such as Betfair or BetDaq and means betting against the winning team not to win. In other words, you win when the leading underdog draws or loses. It can also be successfully used with any in-play bookmaker offering Asian Handicaps and Double Chance markets.

Reasoning

Most punters bet on favourites to win and they will often find the home favourites as their strongest selections. It’s often down to the teams home form and/or so-called home advantage that exists in football. Nevertheless, the home team doesn’t win all the time and if your fancied selection finds itself trailing at some point during the game, you may want to make the most of it and back them not to lose this game by laying the away underdog team.

Betting/Trading Process

The entry point

Lay Luton after they take the lead in the second half:

Lay @ 2.76 for £50 stake (To win £50) – Risking £88 if Luton hold on and win this game.

Please note that the profit figures show £49 due to Betfair’s 2% commission.

Follow Through

There are a few options after placing this bet/trade:

Positive scenarios – the favourite equalizes:

1. Let the bet run until the end of the match for the full profit
2. Hedge the trade to secure an equal profit across all outcomes (cash-out option)
3. Trade for a free bet – risk-free money when the favourite doesn’t lose

Negative scenarios – the underdog holds on to the lead or scores another goal:

1. Let the bet run until the end of the match (occasionally the favourite will rescue a point deep into injury time)
2. Hedge the trade for an equal loss – take a smaller loss (so-called cutting your losses and moving on)

Tips from the PROs:

1. Whatever options you choose, try to be consistent with your choice and apply it to every game. If you start following different scenarios for different matches, you will find yourself frustrated at times and blaming yourself for making bad choices (e.g. should have let it run, could have won more etc.)

2. It’s very tempting to chase losing trades/bets e.g. when the dog goes 2-0 up. Will you lay them again at a lower price? You need to establish some rules beforehand and execute them obediently. Otherwise you will find yourself losing your discipline and letting emotions damage your trading/betting bank.

Examples:

Cash-Out (Hedge)

Free Bet

How to find the best qualifiers for this method?

This strategy itself is quite simple and you can use it with any bookie by backing the double chance Home/Draw or live Asian Handicaps lines at better margins (for more experienced players). However, it will depend on your quality of selections to make laying the underdog profitable in the long run.

How do we go about this?

Finding the right picks for the lay away underdog strategy consists of looking up teams’ form, table positions, motivation, teams news etc. We also like to get a good idea of the course of the game so far e.g.:

• has the underdog been on the back foot and scored a lucky goal against the run of play?
• is the favourite team having a bad day and can’t find their rhythm to create chances and get into the shooting opportunities?

It can be a daunting task to monitor many matches at once and that’s why we have developed and programmed a special in-play alerts notifications system to scan all live football matches and look for games meeting our strict selection criteria to lay away underdogs. Once a match is found, we receive a private telegram notification with the details and the match is added to our records for quick decision making…

The LiveBuilder – Home Losing Favourites

All matches are recorded in the LiveBuilder where we can access plenty of information about the match to make a quick, well-informed decision about the trade. See the example below:

Decision Making

This match was on our radars before it started. We knew the circumstances of both teams (Leeds top of the Championship, Luton deep in the relegation struggle). A quick glance at the in-play stats in the 60th minute – courtesy of the LiveBuilder. Leeds had:

1. Twice as many attacks as Luton (102 to 43)
2. More than double the dangerous attacks
3. 13 shots ( 5 of them on target)
4. Over 70% of ball possession
5. Already 13 corners!

The dominance chart (green bars) was suggesting that Leeds was on the attack most of the game whilst Luton was limited to a few counter-attacks and managed to get a goal against the run of play.

There is also the Last 10 minutes intensity index for both teams H:76 – means that Leeds have been really going for it in the last 10 minutes and been throwing everything at Luton in order to equalize.

The alert arrived in the 54th minute and the odds for Luton were above 2.50 (B365 odds, lower than Betfair’s Lay odds). In the case of this match, these stats and information were enough to enter the trade that was presented above and it proved to be a good selection (a winning one too!).

For all matches arriving in the alerts, we have quick standings, teams form and goals scoring & conceding times trends available on a click.

Other angles

Goals Times

In another alert, Sevilla was still losing at home to Valladolid (0-1) in the 70th minute. Laying Valladolid or backing another goal around the 75th minute is often done at odds around 2.00 (even money shot). This match was also a winner but there was a very strong trend and reason for laying Valladolid (lay away underdog):

Valladolid’s last 15 minutes of this season’s LaLiga campaign saw almost half of their conceded goals! This fact was also true in this case as they conceded a penalty just after the 80th minute and they lost their lead.

Final Thoughts

Laying the away leading underdogs is one of the easiest in-play betting/trading systems. Yet it can be very rewarding when applied correctly and with good quality selections. Our selections process has been automated and requires a minimum amount of time to make a quick, well-informed decision and making the whole process of trading/betting very rewarding. There are a few other interesting angles that could be explored more to find good quality selections providing laying opportunities at good value odds. These will definitely be explored and researched more in the future. In the meantime, you can take full advantage of our work and start using the LiveBuilder yourself to make progress in your betting/trading journey.