The World Cup so far has yielded some really funny results… if one were to bet on the favourites to win then you wouldn’t have been doing so well. What I like about Betfair is that there are so many markets which you can bet on. With markets, I don’t mean necessarily different sports.. what I mean is that within one match, you can put your money on a whole heap of different things. For example, if I take the France and South Africa football match which is happening tomorrow, there are a whole heap of ‘markets’.. see picture:

Besides the bet on who to win.. you can bet on whether there is going to be more than 1 goal (or less), more than 2 goals (or less), who to score next, the score at half time. The list you see above is just half of the bets you can have on just one game.. it really is amazing. One strategy I like to bet is the half time score or whether a particular team is winning at half time. If you put on a bet at around 35 mins for the actual score if it’s either 0-0 or 1-0 (to either) with the market prices being between 1.4 – 1.6, you tend to find that’s a winner!

Tennis is good as a market as there are only two outcomes..  win or lose for a particular player. With football, each team has three outcomes, win, lose or draw. I like using Betfair for tennis markets!

Oh, back to my bets.. I made two bets from yesterday. Correct score at half time for Brazil and Ivory coast and winner for first round tennis match between Anderson v Davydenko. I made a £42.27 profit!

Also, I tend to bet on the most likely outcomes of the football matches but of late, we’ve been getting some odd results which meant that the system that I used suffered a little. However, looks like we’re back on track again with a nice 4 win winning streak in the last couple of days!

I am thinking of writing an ebook, let me know if you’re interested by dropping me a line on alan@makemesomemoney.co.uk

Anyway, here is a screenshot of my wins the last couple of days..

I haven’t been playing with Betfair all too much but this weekend, I thought I would return and play my usual strategy… bet on the favourites (yep, that’s it!). A simple yet effective strategy which has yielded me £185! I know that there are people who trade the sports markets (particularly Horse racing but that involves staring at the markets and that just takes so much time).

Anyway, here’s a screenshot of the bets and my winnings… happy days!

I am extremely excited by the prospect of this as Betfair seems to be much more easier than financial trading. With my limited experience of Betfair and taking small punts, my account has grown quite nicely. I mention Betfair trading and Betfair betting as I believe that I am currently firmly in the latter… I am betting and not trading. Betfair trading is like the next level up from successful Betfair betting.. if I can trade the Betting exchanges then the potential profits could be huge!

Some Betfair trading blogs which have made interesting reading are:

http://adamheathcote.blogspot.com/ – this guy starts off with £5000 in his account and brings home over £1000 a day in profit. This is 20% increase on his account every day.. this is amazing. He is targetting £150k profits for 2009 and he’s 22 years of age!

http://thesportstrader.typepad.co.uk/ – although this hasn’t been updated for a while, this chap, Ray was making very good money.. not sure why he doesn’t write anymore, guess he felt time was better spent making money than writing about it!

http://thebetfairtrader.blogspot.com/ – this guy was was going to pay for his wedding with Betfair profits.. he succeeded! Now his focus is to turn his original pot of £1k to £101k… sounds crazy huh? He is just shy of £50k so far….

If you read these blogs, you can’t help but be skeptical.. how are these people making so much money in such a short space of time and is it really some sort of scam. My limited knowledge and sophisticated betting techniques have yielded 50% of my betting pot… it is certainly easier than trading! I seriously think it is possible once I get the skills to be able to understand these betting exchanges. I’ll let you know how I get on with the course…

Something I did a good few years ago was to turn £100 into £300 using Betfair betting only £5 antes. I was careful and calculated and it was simple and successful strategy. However, I ruined it by then changing my strategy, going for higher risk but higher potential rewards and also losing a lot playing Betfair Poker.

There was also a blog called The Betfair Trader which chronicled one guys aim to pay for his wedding with Betfair profits. Incidently, I am getting married next year also and the wedding budget has scared the living daylights out of me already.. I believe that I can replicated my success the first time round betting with Betfair and sticking to the initial strategy. However, I am going to start off with £500 this time and see how I get on.

Anyway, I started this morning and here are my first days results so far, ok, it’s not much to start with but it is a 3% return on my pot in one day. If I can repeat this result each day (without compounding), taking 30 days (as you can bet everyday, Saturday and Sundays included), I would make £450 which is almost a 100% return on my cash in the month. Ok, that probably isn’t going to be possible in 1 month as I find that I am always short on time to do things but I do expect that I should be able to double my money in 3 months on this initial pot. As my stake grows, I will bet more and hope the reap the profits.