The problems that I encountered there are the same for every Betfair trader of course.
No-one can consistently predict which way the odds will move.
We may get it right for a race or 3 and show a profit in each race, but when the losing races come along, they wipe out all our hard earned profit in one go.
All very frustrating.
I'm sure you've been there - - - I have, several times.
At least I only lose on paper these days when I get involved in predicting odds movements.
Back to the drawing board once again,
Howard.

An advantage of an Each Way Arb, is that it is not essential to make a profit from both the win and place parts of the trade.
For example, the win part of our trade might only break even or maybe make a small loss, whilst the place part of the trade makes a profit that puts the whole trade into profit.

Bookie place odds are decided by the bookie win odds of course.
Betfair Place odds are totally independent from the Win market, so if the lay odds for a place fall some way below a 5th or a quarter of the bookie bet odds, we may be able to make a successful Each Way Arb.
As part of their marketing, bookies often offer a 3rd the odds for a place, and also pay out on extra places.
The bet odds that they offer may take that into consideration, but Each Way Arbing is certainly something worth considering if you haven't looked at it before.
Suitable odds are not as easy to find as for win only Arbs, but opportunities are there if you are prepared to look for them.
Just one or 2 extra bits of profit here and there can help towards a decent profit at the end of the month.
Also, our bookie sees us as a customer who is betting on something other than just win only selections, so by betting Each Way, we may even look like a better customer . . . . . . . if anyone is taking any notice of that kind of thing.

The sheet shows the lay stakes needed to equalize the trade over all 3 possible results - - - if our runner Wins, is Placed, or Unplaced.
A 2nd sheet within the same Excel file, biases the staking to break even if our horse is unplaced.
That gives a bigger profit if our horse wins or is placed.
If our horse is unplaced, our 2 lays recover our losing bet with the bookie, so we lose nothing.

Pro traders use the "Break even" method to make bigger gains in the long term.
I am told that Arbing takes advantage of "Value" odds, so to bias the staking to favour a payout from the bookie should pay better than simply trading for a smaller profit by equalizing the trade for a profit whatever the result.
I have never pretended to be a pro trader.
I have done some Arbing, but nothing serious, so I cannot confirm that trading to Break Even on losers pays better than making a smaller profit whatever the result.
However, I am assured by several pro traders that profiting from winners only when Arbing the win market, and win and place only if Arbing each way, is the way to go.
Good luck if you have a go at Each Way Arbing,
Howard.

If you are unclear about the reasons behind the "Occupy Wall Street" campaign that is sweeping America and is gathering momentum in other countries including the UK., I suggest that you start to watch The Keiser Report on the Russia Today Channel on your television.

If you follow that link, don't let the political description of this television programme put you off in any way.
This is worth watching, even if like me, a few weeks ago, you held no strong political views.
Watch, and get yourself indoctrinated. . . . . . You won't regret it.

I came across the The Keiser Report  whilst surfing my TV channels looking for something worth watching, and have been a regular viewer of it every Tuesday and Thursday since.
This is my favourite television programme at present.
Go to Sky channel 512 or Free View channel 85, Tuesday and Thursday 5:30, 9:30, or 11:00 pm.
Max Keiser, the presenter, may seem a bit "Over the top" at first, but once you get used to his style, the man talks a lot of sense. . . . . unlike those he targets and describes in his television programme.

Watch a programme or 2 and you won't need me to explain here what is going on right in front of your eyes, in your back yard.
The topics are varied, but revolve around the same 3 things, massive fraud, corruption, and war mongering.
Good luck with The Keiser Report,
Howard.

• Make a deposit and we will add a 50% bonus.
• Before a withdrawal can be made, the bonus must be bet 4 times at odds of 2.0 or bigger.
• If the turnover requirements are not met, the bonus will be withheld.

My advice is, don't let turnover requirements put you off trading a bookie sign-up bonus, or any other free bet bonus.
If necessary, we can bet with the bookie and lay the same selection in Betfair for a small loss for quite a large turnover of bookie bets, and still come out at the other end with a profit.
All we need is enough money in the bookie end of our trade to cover a series of small losses.
If we are unlucky and hit a winner with our free bet, we can get that extra money in there very cheaply.

The best way to make a profit from any bonus is to hit losers whilst trading both our deposit and free bet.
However, if we a winner with the free bet part of the offer, we will need to meet the turnover.
To cover that, all we need to do is adjust our staking to favour a win result, slightly more than a lose result.
Then if we are unlucky and hit a winner, we have extra winnings in the bookie account to cover losses from further bet and lay trades whilst we meet the turnover requirements.

Here is an example of a "Normal" free bet trade.
Assuming the the free bet is Stake Not Returned with bookie winnings, it pays best to bet and lay at BIG odds.
To keep the calculations nice and easy for this example, we will assume bet and lay odds of 11.0, which is bet 10/1, Lay 10/1.
So, for a free £10 bet with the bookie, we would normally lay £9.13 for a win or lose profit of £8.68 assuming Betfair commission of 5%.
Win = Bet £10 x 10 = +£100 with the bookie, Lay £9.13 x 10 = -£91.30 liabilities = +£8.70 profit.
Lose = Zero with the bookie as this is a free bet, but a successful lay of £9.13 less 5% commission = +£8.67.

Now if we need to turn over another £30 before we can withdraw, that could almost eliminate our £8.70 profit if we had hit a winner.
To get around that, if we reduce our lay by £1 and lay £8.13 instead of £9.13, we bias our staking to favour a win outcome for £18.68 profit or a lose profit of £7.72 after commission.
Now if we are unlucky and hit a winner, we have £18.68 in our bookie account instead of £8.68.
Meeting turnover now, looks a lot less of a problem.

Here are the maths of that :-
Win = Bet £10 x 10 = +£100 with the bookie, Lay £8.13 x 10 = -£81.30 liabilities = +£18.70 profit.
Lose = Zero with the bookie as this is a free bet, but a successful lay of £8.13 less 5% commission = +£7.72.
If we hit a loser, our insurance of a slightly smaller lay has cost less than £1.

Most of my Excel Hedging spreadsheets have a "Adjust" input that allows us to bias the staking to favour a win or a lose outcome.
This is an example of how that can be used.
Good luck with meeting your bookie turnover,
Howard.

• Bet Over 1.5 goals
• Bet 1-0 and 0-1 in Correct Score.

You can see from that, that we are betting every score with more than one goal (Over 1.5 Goals), plus 1-0 and 0-1.
In short, we are betting everything except 0-0.
If we were to do that in the 2 markets, Under/Over, and Correct Score, commission would be more expensive than if we had simply bet all those scores except 0-0 in Correct Score.
If we use 2 markets and hit the winning score with our bets, the losing bet or bets in our 2nd market are not deducted before commission is taken by Betfair, so betting in 2 markets when we can bet in a single market is not a good idea.

Of course, Betfair provide these extra markets that bunch several scores together, probably for that very reason that it pays them better, and also for our convenience.
It is quicker and easier for us to bet a load of scores in one go rather than muck about placing a lot of small bets, but we pay for the privilege in the form of more commission.

If you ever think of covering all but one or 2 scores, you might consider this :-

• Betting all but one score is the same as laying that single score.

If we bet all but 0-0 and the game ends 0-0, all our bets are losers - - - we have big liabilities.
If we lay 0-0 and the game ends 0-0, we have big liabilities of almost exactly the same as the bet liabilities described above.
So, if you have a strategy in mind that involves betting nearly everything, maybe across more than one market, you might consider a lay or 2 which might do almost exactly the same thing, but could be a lot simpler to set up and could be cheaper in commission.

Example.   These odds are taken from Betfair for tomorrows Manchester United - Chelsea game.
Bet Over 1.5 Goals at odds of 1.32 for £75.76.
Bet 1-0 at 8.8 for £11.36 and 0-1 at 16.0 for £6.25.
Place those bets and if there are any goals, we win £6.63 before commission.
If the game ends 0-0, we lose the total of our stakes = £93.37.
The 0-0 lay odds are 13.5.
Divide £93.37 by 12.5 for the same liability and we can lay 0-0 at odds of 13.5 for a stake of £7.47 with liabilities of £93.37.

If we lay 0-0 at odds of 13.5 for £7.47, we have lay liabilities of exactly the same as our potential bet losses of £93.37.
If the game does not end 0-0, our profit is slightly bigger at £7.47 instead of £6.63 before commission if we had bet all scores except 0-0.
Chuck commission deductions across 2 markets into the Betting equation and laying 0-0 becomes even more attractive.
Apologies if you are familiar with this, but sometimes it pays slightly better to look at things from a different angle.
Good luck with your laying, Howard.

If we attempt these multiples trades 2 things will cock up our trade, Time and Commission.

Time.
If we bet a treble of 3 horses in races just 15 minutes apart, that would give us time to sort out our staking between races, and hopefully avoid problems of a race starting a little later than advertised.
If we are able to take bet odds at the time of placing our treble bet, there would be a minimum of 30 minutes between placing of our treble bet and our 3rd race taking place.
30 minutes or more is a very long time between placing a bet and then placing a lay..
We might get lucky and see our lay odds reduce, but you don't need me to explain how the odds could go against us and leave us with lay odds some way above the bet odds that we took.
Even if we place our bet in Betfair Multiples, we would still need to lay at less than Betfair Starting Price, which from my experience, is not easy to do.

Commission.
As you probably know, working out winnings on a double or a treble simply involves multiplying the decimal odds and stake.
3 winners at evens with a basic stake of £2 is £2 x 2.0 x 2.0 x 2.0 = 8 x £2 = a total return of £16.
We win £2 on the first runner, add our £2 stake to that, and bet £4 on our 2nd runner for another £4 profit.
Add that £4 profit to our £4 bet stake of our 2nd runner and we have  an £8 bet riding onto our 3rd runner.
That gives some idea of how quickly the stakes increase, just at odds of 2.0.

 If we bet a £2 treble and then lay each selection in turn until we hit a loser, unless we select horses at very short odds, our lay stake could easily get quite big.
When we eventually hit a loser, we have commission to pay on our successful lay.
Any profit that we hope to make, could easily be wiped out by our commission payment, unless we have been very fortunate and been able to continually lay at lower odds than our bet odds.

The nice juicy refund method.
About 18 months ago, I used to trade Betfair trebles, usually about once a week, to take advantage of Betfair's "Midweek Mania" refund.
At that time, Betfair offered a different refund each day, Monday to Friday, with one or more of them being a Betfair Multiple bet.
The offer was something like "We at Betfair think that Big Fella, will win the 2:30 at Kempton today.
Place a Betfair Multiple of at least 3 selections that includes Big Fella, and if Big Fella loses, we will refund your Betfair Multiples bet stake.
Maximum refund £10".

Betfair still offer a refund on Betfair Multiples, but these days the offer is a refund if just one of your selections is a loser.
If we bet a treble now, that means that we need to hit 2 winners before we could qualify for a refund on the 3rd runner..
I used to trade Betfair's Midweek Mania refund offer by putting their selected horse as the first runner in my Betfair treble.
I could then trade that runner first in anticipation of it losing, and adjust my lay stake accordingly for guaranteed winnings if it lost.

If it won, I carried on and layed my other 2 runners in turn until I either hit a loser and made a profit, or completed my treble with 3 winners, again for a profit if I managed to get lay odds below Betfair Starting Price, which is used for Betfair Multiple returns
The refund available on the first runner gave some leeway to play with for my remaining 2 runners, as I always reduced my first lay stake in anticipation of the refund.
I hope that makes sense.

For example, suppose we place a £10 bet at evens (odds of 2.0), and expect a £10 refund if we hit a loser, but no refund if our horse wins.
We have bet £10 at odds of 2.0, but in anticipation of the £10 refund, we can afford to lay only £5 for guaranteed profit before commission.
If we hit the winner, we win £10 but have lay liabilities of only £5, so our profit is £5.
If we hit a loser, we have a losing £10 bet, but a successful £5 lay, plus a £10 bet refund, so our profit is £5.
I used to start to lay my Betfair multiple using that method, but with commission built into the lay side of my calculations.
Unfortunately, Betfair have now closed that loophole by making their refund payable only after at least 2 winners.
That example shows how my first lay stake was quite a bit lower than the bet stake on my first runner.
If Betfair's nominated horse lost, that was end of trade.
If it won, my liabilities carried forward onto my 2nd horse were quite a bit smaller than my bet winnings that were carried forward onto the 2nd horse in my treble, so I had some slack to play with on my remaining 2 lays.
Once I hit a loser, that was end of trade and I usually had a nice profit.
I found those trades a bit of a challenge if I hit winners, but well worth doing.

If we were to attempt to bet a Betfair Multiples treble refund now in a similar way, we would need to anticipate our refund on our 3rd runner.
I don't think it would be a good idea to bet our treble and then start to lay our selections one at a time in the hope of hitting 2 winners before we could trade for guaranteed winnings on our 3rd runner.

There is no point of course, in betting a multiple say, with a bookie, and laying the same runners in Betfair Multiples.
Betfair Multiples uses Betfair Starting Prices for the returns, and we all know that bookie bet odds are probably always less than Betfair S.P.
Even if we started our treble with an Arb, with bookie bet odds bigger than Betfair odds at the time, we would be gambling that the Betfair S.P. would be smaller than the bookie odds that we took for our first runner.
If we hit a a winner with that first runner, the rest would be just a gamble that our bet odds would be bigger than our lay odds at Betfair S.P..
It would be far safer just to Arb by betting and laying that single runner.
Unless a nice juicy refund is involved, I wouldn't trade any multiples.
Good luck with your trading, Howard.

Good luck with your trades when you get into a red situation, Howard.

The further you get into a trade, the bigger those problems are likely to be unless of course you are used to Ad-libbing your way through your trades, which I would guess, most of us aren't.
I've watched plenty of on-line demonstrations of trading Betfair football markets, and I would guess that in all of those demos, the stakes were unbalanced.
In every instance that I can remember, and most of those demos have been live trades, the staking seemed to me to be very much guesswork rather than planned, balanced staking.

The video below demonstrates the advantages of balanced stakes against the guesswork of ad-libbing your way through a trade.
The spreadsheets I use in the video are my Be A Bookie spreadsheet for the Dutching and Hedge 3 Bets spreadsheet for laying my bets to Hedge out of the example trade.
Note that those 2 sheets don't include commission in the calculations.
I also use a Dutch and Hedge sheet that I don't sell at present.
If you are interested in a spreadsheet that covers both Dutching and Hedging on the same spreadsheet, E-mail Me and I'll sort you out with a sheet that will combine both Dutching and Hedging.
In my opinion, there is very little advantage in guessing the size of your stakes at any point in a trade.

Copyright notice.  In the video below, Betfair content shown is for demonstration purposes only, and is presented with the kind permission of The Sporting Exchange Limited.  © The Sporting Exchange Limited.
For a bigger view of the video, click the icon with 4 small arrows, bottom right hand corner.

Good luck with your Dutching and Hedging, Howard.

If we change the strategy slightly and bet just within Correct Score, we can eliminate some un-necessary bets by betting just a few of the Losing Team scores and draw scores, rather than covering them all using a lay of the Winning Team in Match Odds.
Then, if goals are scored and we need to bet more scores to keep ahead of what is happening on the pitch, we are slightly better off.
That is only a slight improvement on the original strategy, so unfortunately, nothing much gained there.

For quite a while, I've thought about putting some videos together to demonstrate one or 2 things of interest concerning Betfair trading.
Below, is a demo video concerning trading rising or falling markets.

When we trade odds movements, we need to Bet First if we anticipate a falling market, but Lay First if we anticipate a rising market.
If we are looking to equalize our trade for an equal profit or loss whatever the outcome of our event, this video demonstrates the advantage of a Bet First trade, rather than a Lay First trade.

In this demonstration video I use part my Hedge 3 Bets spreadsheet.
The spreadsheet shows the stakes required to trade for an equal profit or loss whatever the result of our trade.
For a bigger view of the video below, click the icon with 4 small arrows near the bottom right hand corner, just to the right of the word "YouTube"

As always, good luck with your trading, Howard.

The strategy is to step into the game well into the 2nd half or towards the end after 70 minutes or so.
In the Correct Score market, bet the current score, plus other scores 1 or 2 goals up from the current score.
If more goals are scored, bet more scores to keep ahead of what is happening on the pitch.

To cut down on the number of bets required, we lay the Winning Team in Match Odds as insurance against the game ending with a Draw scoreline, or a win for the "Losing Team"
The liabilities of that lay can be very small.
As an example, a £100 lay at odds of 1.09 has liabilities of only -£9, but can cover a lot of scores in Correct Score if we lay one of the teams.

A Match Odds lay of the Winning Team is the equivalent of betting all the draw scores, 1-1, 2-2, 3-3 etc. in Correct Score, plus all the possible scores of the Losing Team.
When we then bet some scores of the Winning Team, we have the equivalent of a lot of Bets of all but a few scores in Correct Score.

A problem with this strategy is that if goals are scored and we need to bet more scores to keep ahead of the game, we can trade into an overall red position . . . .  .a losing trade.

An answer to that could be to reduce the number of bets involved in my Trade The Winning Team strategy,
To achieve that, we could either place all bets in Correct Score, or use an equivalent market that covers just a few Correct Scores rather than the large number of scores that the Match Odds lay covers..
Cut down on a lot of un-necessary bets and we will improve profits and have more to play with if we need to bet more scores.

Also, as part of my re-think of this Trade The Winning Team strategy, I have built a new spreadsheet which includes a Hedging facility.
So, if a goal is scored and the odds move in our favour, we may be able to Bet in Match Odds and Lay in Correct Score to exit our trade and show a profit overall that covers any losing bets that we may have in Correct Score.

That all sounds very nice in theory, but I need to watch the odds in quite a few games and do some trading before I can see a way of improving this Winning Team strategy.
I have a couple of testing buddies lined up for this new sheet who have e-mailed me with some very positive feed-back on the existing method.
If we can add some improvements between us, things could get very interesting.
Good luck with your trades, Howard.

• Bet a score such as 1-1 with a bookie who offers a refund if the game ends 0-0.
• After a goal is scored, we lay 1-1 to profit, providing of course that the 1-1 Lay odds drop below our bookie Bet odds.
• If the game ends 0-0, the bookie refunds our losing bet stake.
  The 0-0 refund is in effect free insurance against the game ending 0-0.

If there is no score, the bookie refunds our bet stake . . . . so in effect, by betting with a bookie who offers a 0-0 refund, we can trade with a free 0-0 insurance bet.
In theory there is nothing wrong with getting a free 0-0 insurance bet.
However, it is cheaper to trade just within Betfair :-

• Bet our 1-1 score in Betfair,
• Place a small bet on 0-0 in Betfair to recover our bet stake if the game ends 0-0 instead of betting with a bookie who offers a 0-0 refund
• After a goal, Lay 1-1 to an overall profit that also recovers our small 0-0 insurance bet.

In the video below, the calculations do not include commission deductions.
I have set the spreadsheet up to see the £3 insurance bet on 0-0 as a losing bet.
The £3 is deducted from the profits shown in the Betfair part of the example shown.
Both examples are trades of 1-1 at the odds available for the Champions League Semi-Final between Real Madrid and Barcelona, April 27th 2011.
The bookie odds quoted are taken from the Bet365 web site as Bet365 offer a refund if football matches end with a score of 0-0.

Copyright notice.  In the video below, Betfair content shown is for demonstration purposes only, and is presented with the kind permission of The Sporting Exchange Limited.  © The Sporting Exchange Limited.
For a bigger view of the videos below, click the icon with 4 small arrows near the bottom right hand corner, just below the " T " in the word "Tube"

Due to the very poor bookie bet odds, these 0-0 bookie refunds may not be your best trading option,
Howard.