Betfair Charts – How to use them to make MONEY

Betfair provides information on how much money is being bet at what odds.

This is presented to you as a chart with a table beside it showing how much money has been matched at each price:

Betfair chart explained

The Chart above shows the price of the horse, Ballistic, over time. This screenshot was taken at about 8.30am for the 12.50pm race at Lingfield.

Below is a piece by piece description of what the chart tells us:

  • At the very top we see the course, date and what sort of race it is (7f Hcap).
  • Next is the horse’s name – Ballistic. This is a drop down menu from which you can get the charts for all the other runners.
  • Below the name is; Total matched on the event (total £ bet on all the horses so far £6,484 – at the OFF this will be about £600,000), Reduction factor (this is like the Rule 4 – it is the % Betfair will deduct if this horse is a non runner 29.17%), Betting summary (how much £ bet on Ballistic so far £1,274), Last price matched (3.9 – can also be seen where blue meets red on the right) and finally Projected BSP(3.39 – is worked out by an algorithm and as you can see it is in the middle of the Trading Range).
  • Then comes the red line chart which shows the price movement (left hand axis).
  • The volume (£s) is the bars at the bottom of the chart. I have highlighted a £175 bet that someone put on this horse soon after the first show. It was a lay bet as the price went from 3.0 to 4.0. So somebody was quick in there at 3.0 laying this horse probably yesterday afternoon (possibly in the know?).
  • There is a box under the chart which when clicked gives the chart as a % chance of winning based on it’s price. This is an inversion of the chart shown and can sometimes be useful.
  • To the right of the chart is the table showing the amounts available to back (in blue) and to lay (in red) at the various prices eg If you wanted to back Ballistic at 3.9 then there is £18 for you to match. If you wanted to bet more then you would get the next best price which is £19 at 3.8. You will see these amounts and prices reflected back on the main betting page.
  • Finally on the far right is the amount matched so far at the different prices (the trading range so far for Ballistic is 3.15 – 4.2 with the majority of the money coming in between 3.45 and 3.8).

What can the chart tell us?

Total matched on the event vs Betting Summary volume

Looking at these two numbers can tell you whether the horse you are looking at is strong or weak in the market.

FOR EXAMPLE:

Horse A’s current price is 2.0 (evens). The total amount bet on the race is £540,000 and the amount bet on Horse A is £350,000. Is Horse A strong or weak in the market?

IT IS STRONG because at 2.0 it could be expected to attract £270,000 of the £540,000.

Equally a horse is weak in a market if it is attracting less than it’s fair share of the money bet.

So using this information we can work out which horses are strongly fancied, which are really not fancied at all and which are just plain weak in the market.

Chart movement vs volume

When looking at the price chart normally prices change relatively slowly. However sometimes you will see a large volume bet come in and the price move sharply in one direction or other.

This tells us that someone is prepared to take significantly worse prices than were on offer to get their bet away. Changes like this should be noted as they are very often caused by people in the know making large bets.

Trading Corridor and Support Levels

Horses tend to trade within a price corridor at any one moment in time. The corridor is set by the amount of money available to back and lay being close to equilibrium. So if a horse is trading in a corridor of say 3.2 to 3.6 it means that backers see value in backing the horse as the price moves towards 3.6 pushing the price down which then means that layers see value in laying as the price moves towards 3.2 which then pushes the price back out.

In this case the Support Levels are 3.2 and 3.6.

Recognising these support levels and seeing a chart where they are relatively stable means that we could make money by SCALPING the market (video available here). This is a process where we back at the upper support level and lay at the lower support level taking the difference as profit.

Breakouts from the trading corridor

Breakouts happen when a horse has been trading within a corridor but then significant money comes to either back or lay the horse. Weakly traded horses have a tendency to drift while strongly traded horses tend to shorten (see paragraph above re strong and weak horses in the market).

However we should use other clues like previous price movements (see paragraph above) to increase our awareness of which way a breakout might go.

When we see a breakout happening there is money to be made because the market will go in the direction of he breakout until another support level is found. It then will be quite volatile around that new support level (see video regarding BREAKOUT TRADING here).

False Favourites

As discussed in an earlier paragraph, it is possible to identify strong and weak horses in the betting by comparing the amount bet on the horse with the total bet and then compare that to it’s price. Not every 4/5 Favourite is the same!

Through our normal preparation (see below) and looking at the charts we can identify false favourites. These have a least the following two criteria:

  1. They are weak in the market
  2. The only reason they are favourite is that they are the best of a bad bunch or have shown the best form to date in a field of unexposed or lightly raced horses.

False favourites often have a habit of drifting close to the off.

Money can be made from false favourites by laying them early on and waiting for the drift. Or laying them and looking to back them at higher odds in running. See the video on FALSE FAVOURITES here.

Do your Prep Work

When looking at a race do your prep work. The night or morning before:

  • Look at the horses and their form (particularly at the course, over the distance and on the going)
  • What about the trainer and jockey – are they in form, do they have a good record at the track,  are they a gambling stable?
  • Then on the flat is there a draw bias and over jumps & the flat does the track have a pace bias ie does it favour front runners or not.

MAKE notes.

Then look at your Newsletter from InsideTraxs to see what our best bets are.

Watch our Youtube videos here:

Betfair charts explained

Betfair charts – How can they make me money? 

Betfair charts – How can they make me MONEY? – PART 2

 

 

 

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