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Man of Mystery

I opened my Betfair account on 22nd April 2003. I was one of the first subscribers to BetTrader and was a founding partner of JuiceStorm.com on 17th February 2007.

The JuiceStorm team built TradeHost for profitable automated trading and betting on Betfair in the UK, IE, AU and US horse racing markets. TradeHost Lite started in 2013 and is free forever.

Latest posts by Man of Mystery (see all)

• The Value of Trading is More Than Money - November 23, 2024
• In Trading Some Say Patience Is A Virtue. But Is It Really? - November 23, 2024
• Matchbook And Betfair Risk/Reward Ratios - November 23, 2024

Wouldn’t it be great if you could have an idea when the price of the favourite may move down? Well, I am going to give you another pointer towards a successful tactic which may help you garner a long term profit from Betfair.

Now, before I’m shot down by minds far greater than mine let me state right from the start that course and distance form for trading Betfair price action in the last 5 to 10 minutes before the off is ONLY useful at certain courses.

There are also differences for flat-turf, all-weather or national hunt.

I’m not going to bore you with the detail – we’re traders not horse racing form experts – but the courses where it proves significant are below.

Kempton, Dundalk, Lingfield, Carlisle, Ayr, Navan, Chester and Naas are good for starters.

However, the most reliable for trading are Newbury, Chepstow, Bangor, Warwick, Perth and Aintree.

Now, back in the day, if you’d blindly backed course and distance winners at all the courses above you would have come out well ahead. Today? I don’t know and I don’t really care. I very rarely gamble since Betfair arrived. What I can tell you is that there is a lot of mug money that piles on to horses that are course and distance winners at the venues above.

The money that flows in to Betfair, more often than not, will provide multiple opportunities for 1 tick short scalps. Set BetTrader up with a 1 tick offset and fire away.

I better confirm what a short scalp is. It does NOT relate to a timeframe. It simply means you are backing with a view that the price will go down and trading out lower.

If you want to get a little more ambitious then here’s another idea. Use a variety of stakes and scale in to EVERY trade. Start small. Say £5. Have the BetTrader default stake buttons set to £5, £10, £20, £50, £100 etc. Let’s break another myth. It works really well when combined with course and distance tactics. Add to losing trades. Do NOT scratch. Price mostly returns. Why? Because of the number of people blindly backing course and distance winners. Simple, huh?

Single entry tactics when trading on Betfair can prove successful. But, particularly for new traders, it makes sense to scale in to trades. Scratch if you must elsewhere. But not when you’re considering trading course and distance winners.

Finally, for this week, I ONLY trade the favourite using these tactics. If the course and distance winner is NOT the jolly then don’t trade the market. There’ll be another one along soon.

In addition to course AND distance winners you could also consider short scalps on high volume course or distance winners. There is less interest from mug money but nevertheless it widens the opportunity for trading. But maybe limit trading to just 5 minutes before the off if you choose to get involved at  all?

The strategy and tactics that I mentioned above are another two trading tools that I use in BFBotManager. You don’t have the full picture yet but that actually concludes this series of articles on trading on Betfair based on a strategy that my bot has run on for many years.