Betting Money Trends – finding value bets in football
What makes you money and what loses you money?
Have you ever considered whether your next bet is worth placing? What if I told you that you are unlikely to make any money when placing a specific bet/trade 100 times during the season? Would you still keep placing those bets knowing that you will most likely be out of pocket?
I’m not intending to question your knowledge, gut feelings or other reasons for your bets. I would like to point your attention to the importance of the odds and explain how you can avoid losing money and maximize profits by finding profitable angles by avoiding or opposing what most punters and traders do. Furthermore, I will present to you a unique tool for quickly finding value bets (poor and good) in football betting & trading.
Records keeping
Most football punters and traders think that they can win their next bet or trade. It’s only the next bet slip that counts and is worth thinking about. Similarly, the past picks are not usually remembered or recorded. Except those occasional, big odds wins – those are immortal and we like to brag about them until the next big win. And there is nothing wrong with that if you only have the occasional fun bet.
The truth is that most people who bet or trade end up losing in the long run. So if you are aspiring to stop losing, you will need to start with determining where and when you lose. This can be done with keeping records of all your past bets and trades. This very first step will enable you to analyze what bets/trades lose and which make you money.
The past records will help you keep track of your performance, but what if you wanted to check past profit/loss figures for all teams’ past performances in a specific market e.g. over 2.5 goals, first-half goals, backing away or laying at home?
Betting Money Trends – Superb tool for finding good and poor value bets & trades
It’s easy to access past football statistics. It’s also easy to find the best statistical matches that finished in a given outcome e.g. over 2.5 goals. Everyone can find the teams with 16 out of their last 20 matches going over 2.5 goals. The one question that not many punters and traders seem to ask is: “Does it make money in the long term?”. Would you make a profit from backing 20 over 2.5 goals bets when winning 16 of them?
It all depends on the odds of those bets of course. But how can you quickly find out the past odds and calculate the profit/loss figures? Would you be able to do so for all the weekend’s games to find the most and least profitable selections? Do you think that this could help you determine whether the bookmakers’ odds on offer are fair odds?
Let’s take Manchester City for instance. At the time of writing this article, they are scoring goals for fun and scored just over 100 goals in the EPL season. The dominating and attacking style of football, exciting to watch players and solid goals record are just a few of the reasons why you would want to back over 2.5 goals in City’s matches. That makes the Citizens one of the first teams on many punters’ bet slips for over 2.5 goals Acca every weekend.
Would you make a profit backing their matches to go over 2.5 goals though?
Betting Money Trends – Stats headers explained
We calculate the betting money trends for 12 different markets including 1X2, under/over goals and both teams to score. See the example from the Over 2.5 Goals Money Trends below:
Let’s go over the table from our over 2.5 goals betting money trends. We can sort the matches by the lowest available odds (the grey column). Let’s pick up the Man City example from above. They are playing relegated Norwich – the top of the list selection with odds of 1.14 for the O2.5 goals market. These trends will quickly give you the following pieces of information:
Backing Over 2.5 goals for 10 points in the home and away teams last 20 league matches resulted in:
- HPL – 11.50 Loss when backing the O2.5 goals in Man City’s matches
- HAO – 1.48 was the average odds for those Over 2.5 goals markets
- HTO – 1.54 is the true odds based on the 13/20 O2.5 goals results (65%)
- APL – 41.30 Loss when backing the O2.5 goals in games featuring Norwich City
- AAO – 1.80 was the average O2.5 goals price in those matches
- ATO – 2.22 is the true odds based on the 9/20 O2.5 goals results (45%)
In short, you would have been losing money when backing all Man City’s and Norwich City’s games to finish over 2.5 goals. It doesn’t mean that this game will not go over 2.5 goals. It only means that the past offered prices were not high enough to make a profit in the long term.
On the other hand, we have Bodo/Glimt vs Molde (2nd top fixture with the lowest odds), which would have generated some profit when backing O2.5 goals in past matches of both of the teams. This is mostly caused by the high success rate of the O2.5 performances of both teams (HTO of 1.25 and ATO of 1.18) and also average odds of over 1.50 for both teams. Although please note the low odds of 1.33 for this fixture as it’s significantly lower than the mentioned averages.
Ideally, you would want to find matches with the current odds higher than the past averages and true odds. Big ish HPL and APL figures from the trends help and you will see some variance across different markets. Don’t necessary discard the picks with the biggest losses in those fields as they can be used for LAYING selections (betting against a given outcome – e.g. laying over 2.5 goals is the same as backing under 2.5 goals).
Is backing short odds tips profitable?
We will try to answer this question with a few more specific examples further on in this article. Let’s consider the Both Teams To Score markets. Have you ever placed a BTTS multiple bet – a few selections on the same slip with accumulated odds and a potentially big win? These are very popular with punters worldwide and loved by the bookies.
If you have, you may recall subconsciously picking matches with lower odds as these looked like they had a better chance of success. But does it really pay off to play them? We sorted the next table by the lowest HAO (Home average odds in the past 20 matches).
The Both Teams To Score markets have quite high bookies’ overrounds (they make between 5-8% on those books – see oddsportal for more markets overrounds) and it’s one of the trickiest markets to profit from in the long run. Backing the low odds fixtures is usually counterproductive and will cost you money.
Value in betting is often misunderstood and there are many different angles for punters and traders to use. The money betting trends work best for league matches under normal cirumstances e.g. teams motivated to win their matches, not resting half of their squads etc.
What about the short odds in other markets?
Back Home & Away Money Trends
Backing outcomes in the 1X2 markets (betting on home, draw or away teams to win) is the simplest way of betting. You choose a team that will win or go for the draw. The outcomes can be chosen at random e.g. (a guess, gut feeling, a dog choosing to eat his dinner from one of the 3 bowls of food – each having a prediction assigned to it). There will be die-hard football fans always backing their beloved teams.
And there are other punters doing their research and analysis to predict the winners. Studying teams forms, standings, reading team news, considering morale and injuries, teams’ circumstances, referees, rest days, weather and the list goes on. You can put a lot of stuff and detail into your modelling to determine the ‘right and wrong prices’. And there is no simple answer to how many factors you should consider and how much is too much. After all, it’s quite easy to get carried away and overanalyze or overcomplicate the whole process.
The Back and Lay Home/Away betting money trends is another interesting proposition for you to consider in your research. It could be used instead of the statistics (stats are part of it anyway). Furthermore, it incorporates historical odds to show the most and least profitable teams to back and lay. With all multiple filters and sorting buttons, you can quickly find the desired data and build your own football betting & trading systems and strategies.
Last 20 Home/Away
The betting money trends for Back Home & Away – Last 20 matches can be used for finding good value and poor value bets. Let me give you some examples.
Backing short odds home favourites
Betting on short odds favourites is something that is being done by most casual and mug punters. You take a few of the biggest, most popular, shortest odds teams and put them on your accumulator. On most weeks you will be unlucky with 1 or 2 matches short of your win. An occasional big win will make you feel like a king. But will you make money in the long term betting like that?
Or you may have a big-money bet a fancied favourite hoping for an easy winner. Backing the very strong home favourite in a big match or betting on the team that you support. You will win those bets more often due to the shorts odds, but will you be making a profit when doing so in the long term – e.g. throughout the season?
You may be able to answer this question if you keep records of your bets. Otherwise, you would have to go through the past matches, results and odds and calculate the profit/loss figures for a given team. Alternatively, you can log in to the Betting Money Trends and see all the P/L figures calculated for all available fixtures.
On top of the list, we have Manchester City with HAO of 1.37. That means that in their last 20 English Premier League matches their win odds were on average around 1.37. Their HPL figure is -16.18 from those last 20 matches, meaning that you would lose £16.18 when backing them for £10 in each of their last 20 EPL matches.
From that list of fixtures on that day, you will notice pretty much all of the short odds home favourites generated losses when backing at the available, short odds. This on its own is good enough to prove that blindly backing the short odds favourites is not profitable. So it’s recommended to check your bets for past P/L performance beforehand as it just may save you some money. Furthermore, if you find some short odds teams that generated big losses when backing, you may find them good for laying (betting against those teams e.g. backing the draw and away win).
Unusual short odds priced teams
It takes time, experience and commitment to learn how to find value and spot usual/unusual prices amongst the books. When you go through a list of fixtures with odds, you will get a rough idea of the averages home, draw and away odds. You will probably know that the average odds for the draw are between 3 and 4, so spotting a match with odds for the draw of around 2.00 may raise your eyebrows. Does that mean that the match is suspicious or fixed? That’s a topic for another article.
Assume that you would like to spot teams that have unusually short win odds. It may take you some time and is not as simple as it seems. It certainly takes some knowledge of teams and experience. On the other hand, you can find it in seconds with the Back Home/Away Betting Money Trends:
That’s how we can quickly identify Portimonense – a team that averaged the win price of above 4. They are suddenly available to back at 1.17 to win their game! So we have our unusual low odds price for a team, now we will need to find out why they are priced so short and whether there is any value bet/trade potential.
First, let’s look at the table. It appears that it was the last game week in Portugal and Aves have already been relegated and frankly not up for the challenge in this league. Portimonense, on the other hand, was in the must-win position to avoid the relegation in case Vitoria Setubal failed to win their final match.
You will often find an explanation for those short odds scenarios. Must win matches (for promotion, championship, relegation battle etc.) are the obvious causes. Other frequent ones are explained by the team news – resting first team players or injuries to key players. There are also matches where one team needs points and the other one with nothing to play for. Those scenarios will explain the short odds but by no means will represent the true chances and will often leave some value bets & trades opportunities.
Let’s think about it for a second. A team that won 6 out of their 33 Primeira Liga matches is now priced to win a match at 1.17. Will Aves field their youth or old-boys team instead? What is their motivation for this game? There are many factors that you could consider here. Portimonense is the second-worst team in that league and based just on that information the 1.17 odds are way too short. There is a reason why they are in the position that they occupy – they were crap. And just because they are priced short it doesn’t mean that they will win or that they will make a profit when backing in the long term.
If you suspect that the odds are too low, it may be worth looking at opposing them by laying Portimonense or backing Aves with some Asian Handicap.
Finding profitable teams to back
The main idea behind the betting money trends is to quickly find the most profitable, historical selections. These trends will point to those long term trends and will highlight a few teams that should be researched further before using as backing selections.
For example, Horsens would have made you a profit of £192.68 when backing them for £10 in each of their last 20 home and away matches. When studying these sorts of trends and odds, you will find that there are two types of selections generating those big profits:
- Low average odds teams with high win rate (low true odds) e.g. AGF, KuPS
- Higher odds teams that have been overperforming (on a good run a form, good season etc.) e.g. Burnley
Of course, the home and away odds for these selections will differ and will be somehow lost in the HAO and AAO (last 20 matches average odds). E.g. home win odds will always be lower than the away win odds for the same team playing home and away the same opponent. However, it’s something that we can look at separately with the Home at Home and Away When Away betting money trends…
Last 20 Home at Home, Away when away
This is where we are going into more detail. Some punters and traders build their football betting & trading strategies around the home team’s home form or away team’s away form. It makes sense to identify strong home and away patterns such as teams winning, not winning, low or high goals scoring matches.
It’s fairly easy to find statistics for home at home and away when away teams. However, you won’t find the betting money trends for that very easily. That’s where our betting money trends come in and offer you those profit/loss figures for 12 different markets.
The trends’ table headers are the same for both types of trends. Let’s have a look at some examples of how you can use the home at home/away when away trends for building your own football systems and strategies.
Back Home System Idea
- Home teams odds between 1.8 and 2.2
- HPL (Home Profit Loss) more than 30
- HAO (Home Average Odds) less than 2.2
- HTO (Home True Odds) less than 2.2
- APL (Away Profit Loss) less than 20
In other words, we are interested in home teams priced at around Even money, with current odds higher than the average and true odds. We also would like the away teams not to be highly profitable when playing away in their past 20 away matches. It may not throw out many selections, but it will quickly identify the teams that have been profitable when backing them at home in their last 20 matches.
Obviously, you can adjust the filters to your criteria ideas e.g. lower or higher odds range, different HPL and APL ranges etc.
Lay Away System Idea
Similarly, we can find some very interesting selections for laying the away teams. Let’s look at the ‘Last 20 Home at home/Away when away’ money trends and sort them by the smallest profit figures of the away teams (APL).
The first team on the list is Watford away to Arsenal with -128.99 units loss (when backing them 10 points to win). We can also see that Watford was available to back in those last 20 away matches on average at 5.93, whilst their true winning odds were closer to 6.67 (they won only 3 out of their last 20 away matches).
On the last day of the season, they played Arsenal away and were priced at 3.50 to win. They had to win this match to boost their chances of avoiding the relegation from the Premier League. Must win doesn’t mean they will win and you must ask yourself a question whether the 3.50 odds represents a value price for a team that won only 3 of their last 20 away EPL matches. That’s without mentioning any other circumstances, e.g. what about Arsenal’s position in the league and their motivation?
Further down, we have another interesting trend – backing Tottenham away in the English Premier League in their last 20 games produced a loss of 123.44 units (to 10 points level stakes). They only won 4 of those matches giving fair odds of 5.00 and were available to back on average at around 3.20. How about the odds of 1.50 against Crystal Palace in the last round of the season? Do you get the idea?
Laying the away teams (betting against them winning) in this case had strong reasoning – backed by the poor Away Profit Loss figures. These are the results of the top 4 from the table above:
It’s also worth mentioning the West Ham vs Aston Villa match with the Villans having similar away money trends to Watford. They were also directly involved in the relegation fight and their victory was priced at 2.63. Knowing that they won only 2 of their last 20 away matches, would you really back them at 2.63? Their APL figures went down after this game to -122.33 as they drew 1-1.
Limitations of the Betting Money Trends
The betting money trends will point out the most and least profitable teams to back and lay for various markets. They are used by professionals for quickly finding value bets. Similarly to the statistics, they only show historical performances and there are never any guarantees that those trends will continue in that way.
Whenever you see a good looking selection (one that generated a healthy profit in the past and is offered at a good price) or see a match with odds that are too good to be true, it’s always worth to dig a bit deeper to find the reasoning behind it. A team or an outcome may be generously priced because of some strange circumstances (e.g. resting key players for a more important match, fielding a youth team, players suffering from an illness etc.). Those betting money trends will not be applicable in those situations as the match will not be considered as played under usual circumstances.
Don’t be afraid to oppose public money and popular mugs bets. At the end of the day, there is only a small, single-digit number percentage of punters & traders who are able to achieve a profit from this game in the long run. Don’t do what most people do or would do in a certain betting or trading situation.
Find your own little angle, something that works for you and come up with a plan for it. As long as you do your research and are not caught by some unwanted pre-match surprises, as long as you can stay disciplined and committed, you should be successful.
