Following the launch of Pro X Trading I have been busy this week with one to one mentoring sessions. The feedback I have been given is very positive and the level of understanding of the Betfair platform is good. During a session one member asked for my opinion of a well-known soccer trading method, having not digested the method fully it would be wrong to reveal the strategy on here today.

This strategy is not cheap to buy; I could not believe my ears when the fundamental of the method was revealed to me. I was very shocked; to me it’s committing trading suicide.

My member also revealed he had lost money, quite a lot in short space of time with no explanation for vendor if this was just a blip or bad run. The reason he had lost money using this method was that the system was spanning a too large price range, the variable liabilities makes it difficult to assess the strike rate required to make a long-term profit.

Knowing Your Maximum Loss Point

When I look to paper trade and develop a new trading strategy, my starting point is to work out the maximum risk (what I am prepared to lose) if the market goes against me. By knowing you loss point will give you a benchmark to measure the success or failure of the strategy.

In this example (I don’t know if it makes a profit) we will look at laying all football teams who’s price is 1.30 or below at the beginning of the game (home or away). This to be done regardless of form or status of the teams involved.

It would be my estimation that is the favourite scores first in the match the price is likely to fall to around 1.12 – 1.13, this would represent a 15% loss on all outcomes on your opening stake.

£1000 @ 1.30 - £300 liability – Back at 1.13 with £1150 to gain back £150 (overall loss around £150).

This gives you a good point to work out what price point the team would have to rise to make a similar profit to the potential loss. In this case, the price would have rise to 1.54 to make a 15% profit on all outcomes.

Having never traded the method, I don’t know the point in the match that the favourite would hit this price point, but I feel it would be quite close to half-time.

We now have two points to measure the strike rate, if the split was 50/50 between the teams scoring first and the match being 0-0 at half-time you will make a profit from this method, I will explain why.

We still have to factor the outsider scoring first and the price of the favourite would rise significantly. My estimation is that you would make between 26-30% profit if a goal was scored by outsider in the first 20 minutes, up to about 40% profit on all outcomes as the match approaches half time.

In summary

I couldn’t tell you the success of this method, but I hope you get an insight into the thought process you can put behind your trading strategies. Working down from each price point over a course of season you will be able to find the structured pattern or price points when key moments in the match happens.