Considering only one favourite lost during the 40 first-phase matches in the 2003 Rugby World Cup, only a fool would back against them doing the same once again?

Looking at the pool match handicaps, only four matches look difficult to call on paper. That means almost 90% of the group matches the favourites should have little problems winning.

When looking at my notes of the last world cup just 50% of the favourites covered the handicap. However, a staggering 70% (28 matches) the price on the favourite lengthened during the first 30 minutes.

Although stats are great, the different schedule of this world cup compared with the one in Australia will paint a completely different picture. The tournament schedule is doing no favours for the smaller playing nations as TV rights demand the big nations to play at the weekends.

This has resulted in some teams only having a 4-day gap between games, now I am no rugby player, but that is not long enough to recover.

Before we can blindly oppose all the favourites on the handicap markets, we need to work out our exit strategy when things don’t go our way. Remember 30% of the matches in the last world cup the price on the favourites covering the handicap shortened in the first 30 minutes.

This will happen again in this tournament and we need to decide the point to get out. My recommendation is that you have a maximum of 33% liability of your opening stake.

Example

Lets assume the handicap line is 1.9 each of two our maximum exit point on the favourite would be 1.4 giving a 33% loss on all outcomes. Based on the stats of the last world cup we would have lost our entire opening stake four times. (12 x 33%)

Lets assume our opening stake was £100 our maximum liability is going to be around the £30 - £35, remember when trading you are never risking all your stake. This means you could trade effectively using a £100 opening stake with a trading bank of just £200.

4 x £100 = £400 is going to be our overall liability.

In order to cover this liability we need to be making an average of 14% profit on all outcomes from the other 28 matches. The price of the favourite would need to lengthen to around 2.2 to achieve the minimum target profit.

When to take a profit when trading will largely decide on your personal profile. My advice would be if the price of the favourite exceeds 3.0 on Betfair let the your position ride, with a profit cut off point of 2.5 as your exit point and your stake should be 70% or £70 in every hundred.

This will mean that you will gain a 30% profit on the outsider and the minimum target profit of 15% on the favourite coming back and covering the handicap.

My estimation is that at least 4 matches in the group stages the favourite will not come close in covering the handicap and you will be able to let your opening stake ride the full 80 minutes.

Based on this estimation it’s almost certain that you will be able to make a profit from blindly opposing the favourites in the handicap markets.

Get our Rugby World Cup 2007 Trading Tips