After giving his ideas a bit of thought, I came up with a pretty safe way of trading the first 20 minutes of football match.
The Betfair football strategy that I came up with wasn't really what he was looking for in the first place, but at least it is something new for both of us.
I developed a strategy for the Betfair Correct Score market.
The games to trade are those in which the 2 teams are evenly matched in Match Odds.
This strategy is a simple bet and lay of 2 scores in Betfair's Correct Score market.
Bet the 2 scores before the Kick Off.
If there is no goal in the first 20 minutes we can lay both scores to break even or thereabouts.
If a goal goes in, a lay produces a profit in most of the selected games.
Profits are small, but hopefully will outweigh any losses in the long term.
I'll be trading this First 20 Minutes strategy on paper for a while to see if it pays over a number of games.

While I'm doing that, I'll be working on my customer's basic strategy.
He pointed out a massive change in odds which I must admit I hadn't taken much notice of before.
I am hoping to use this change in odds maybe as an insurance hedge to cover a separate main bet in another Betfair football market.
Betfair football markets are always very tight, so this may be successful, maybe not.
I'll keep you informed of any further developments.
As always, good luck with your trading.  I hope you have a very prosperous 2010,
Howard.

I've built a spreadsheet to trade these offers.
The aim of the strategy is to bet one of the teams with the bookie but profit whatever the result.
I use the potential refund if our chosen team lose to eliminate the loss if the game ends in a draw, and also show a profit if either of the teams win.
These are the 3 possible outcomes :-

• We hit the winner and there is no refund.
• The game ends in a draw with no refund.
• The team that we have not bet on wins so there is a refund.

I have used a Dutching strategy for some of the staking, but the odds on offer at Bet24 were so poor this week that there was no guaranteed profit on all 3 outcomes.
The difference in bookie bet odds on Bet24 and Betfair lay odds was enormous.
Bet24 may be making a very generouis off er with their refunds, but the odds they are offering may well be way out of line when compared with other bookmaker's odds.
This is another that one is still on the drawing board.
Good luck with your trading, Howard.

This is the strategy that I was using :-
Bet in the bookies chosen market and lay the same selection on Betfair  - - - - - for a loss due to the difference in the odds.
In Befair's Sending Off market, Lay Red card = Yes.
Alternatively, Bet Red card = No.
In many games, either of those 2 trades will show a profit on 3 of the possible 4 outcomes, dependant on the odds available.
These are the 4 possible outcomes :-

• Our bookie bet loses and there is no red card.
• Our bookie bet wins and there is no red card.
• Our bookie bet loses and there is a red card.
• Our bookie bet wins and there is a red card.

Choose the right games, and we would expect a profit from all results except the last one - - - - our bet wins and there is a red card.
For best results, we need to hit a loser with the bookie, then if there is a red card or not makes little difference to our trade.
If we hit a loser with the bookie, we either have a successful lay of Red Card = Yes or a refund if a red card is shown.
OR we have a winning Bet of Red Card = No, or a refund if a red card is shown.
We would have a successful Lay or Winning Bet, or a refund that would cover our Lay or Bet if there was a red card.
Unfortunately, in the games that I paper traded, the most favourable odds to trade for the bookie bet and Betfair lay were usually the most strongly fancied of the 2 teams, which wouldn't really be the best way to start these trades.
I always paper trade new strategies, and in this case, it has shown that this isn't worth pursuing any further.
Good luck with your trading, Howard.

Unlike the free play on Jackpot Joy, I never even got my nose in front with these 2 casinos.
The first problem I encountered was a max stake limit of £32, whereas the Jackpot Joy limit was £50.
However, I am sure that didn't make too much difference to the outcome in both casinos.
I used a £5 unit stake on Golden Tiger and quickly found that I couldn't use my staking plan as I would have liked due to the £32 limit.
On Casino Action, I dropped my unit stake to £1 to make my staking plan work better, but the result was the same - a BIG loss.
Also, I changed my strategy for Casino Action.

As you know, even money chances such as Red & Black, Odd & Even, and Top half of the numbers & Bottom Half don't usually come along alternately, but at some point come in bunches.
Using a £5 unit stake on Golden Tiger, I staked to profit from both Red & Black coming in bunches, not just one of them.
The £32 limit soon put my staking plan into trouble as I soon hit the maximum stake of £32 and couldn't increase and decrease above £32.
On the 2nd casino, Casino Action, I dropped my unit stake to £1 and decided to play 2 staking plans at once, again looking for things coming along in bunches rather than alternately.
I hoped that one would make a profit that would help to get me over the other losing, but before I started I knew that both could lose at the same time.
I played Red & Black, plus Odd & Even numbers using 2 separate staking plans at the same time.
Odd and even won for me, showing a profit 4 times in 30 spins, but Red & Black only showed a profit once in those 30 spins and put me well into the red despite my winnings on Odd & Even.
A third tactic that I tried on the first casino, was to stake both Black & Red to win, but only stake the difference between the 2 separate staking plans.
Doing that reduces the stakes, but the problem with staking 2 opposing outcomes is that in the long term, we need Black & Red to come up a pretty even number of times.
If one dominates, the staking plan will produce a loss.
You guessed it.  That didn't work either.
Red won 10 times for me in 21 spins, whilst black only won once.
There were 15 Reds, 6 Blacks and no Green in 21 spins.
21 spins is of course a very small number of spins, but the £32 stake limit was enough to kill off my staking plan.

Strangely, all of these strategies worked in the Free Play area of Jackpot Joy, not just in one session of play, but every time that I tried them in several sessions.
As described in my previous post, I played several sessions in the Jackpot Joy free play area, and came out winning every time, quite spectacularly to start with before I started experimenting with different strategies.
I tried all these strategies more than once in there.
I wouldn't like to suggest that anything today wasn't quite as it should have been, but it does make you think.

I may just have suffered from a combination of the £32 stake limit, and poor play on my part.
The whole exercise cost nothing but some of my time.
It was very entertaining not just today, but over about a week of testing as well, and has certainly taught me never to even think about playing roulette for my own cash.
Nothing has changed on that front for me, although I did think that I was onto something when I thought I had figured out how to play to take advantage of the same colour or numbers coming in bunches.
After all, it worked every time in Jackpot Joy and won me over 500 credits in 58 minutes at one point, staking for bunches of Red & Black rather than an even number of each..
Below is another screenshot showing my current Free Play balance on Jackpot Joy.  25880 minus the previous total 25836 = 44 profit since my previous post.
I wonder what would happen if I played using my own money in there ?

It's not back to the roulette drawing board, but it is back to the trading drawing board.
The main thing is that I'm no worse off today than I was yesterday.
Good luck with your trading, and make sure you keep well clear of roulette.  Free Play might be ok, but never play with Real Money,
Howard.

I've known for a very long time how to make a profit from roulette (in theory), but I've never before had the opportunity to use a big enough bank to give it a try.
Now that these casinos are offering very large free banks, I have decided to go ahead and see what happens.
I can play for an hour, and if I lose it costs me nothing, but if I win, I get to keep up to £100 of any profit I show.
There is a minimum requirement of 20 spins which is no problem at all.

In preparation, I have been playing in the Free Play section of the Jackpot Joy web site.
There is a maximum stake in there of £50 on the roulette table.
I've been staking using a basic £5 stake and building up my speed to maximise my 1 hour of free trading.
If things go according to plan, I don't expect to have to play for an hour to make the £100 profit.
So far, I've played 4 different sessions on Jackpot Joy and won every time.
My best performance was a profit of £525 in 2 consecutive sessions with a combined time of 58 minutes.
A longer session today took quite a bit more time for a profit of £165.
You might not believe those figures, but I can assure you that they are true.
Below is a screenshot of my Free Play credit in the roulette area of JackPot Joy.

If you open an account with Jackpot Joy and go to your Free Play area, you will see what the starting amount is.
I didn't make a note of my starting credits, but I know they were 25050 on Nov 25th 4 days ago.
That's a profit of 786 in 4 days, and I haven't played hours and hours of roulette to make that gain.

Starting this week I'll be playing on these web sites that offer big banks to new players :-
Pheonician Casino,  Golden Tiger casino,  and Casino Action.
I'm pretty sure that 2 of those are under the same ownership or connected in some way.
No doubt there will be other casinos with similar offers, and there are of course lots of casinos to choose from.
I haven't even started looking yet.
Win or lose, I'll let you know on here how I get on.
Good luck with your trading, Howard.

My spreadsheet produces guaranteed winnings for all 3 of those scenarios, but my method doesn't produce the same profit for all 3.
The main thing is that there is no loss if my reasoning is correct.
If the bookies named conditions happen, winnings are very good from the refund.
There is an ok profit from a second outcome, and a very small profit on the third.
These Refund offers are mainly available at weekends or maybe mid-week on big sporting events, so testing could take some time in order to hit all 3 conditions several times to test the calculations with my cash.
Also, a problem will be my interpretation of the bookie's wording of their offer.
I have worked to a pretty standard offer for my calculations, not the Red Card example used below, so if I see that particular offer with a bookie, that is the offer that I will trade.
Bookies who had various football Refund offers 2 weeks ago were SportingBet, PartyBets, BetWay, BetChronice and BGBet.
There may have been others.
BoyleSport also had a horse racing refund on 2nd placed horses.
That type of horse racing offer is quite common but I haven't had a serious look at those yet.
I looked at Forecast markets on Betfair in relation to these some time ago, but only briefly.
Another interesting offer is bookies who offer to pay out on 5 placed horses in big races.
There might be something there as a lay in a Betfair place market would probably only show liabilities on 4 places.
No doubt there will be losses due to the odds differences between the bookie and Betfair, but if we don't look at these offers, we won't find anything.
Taking a look and trying to work something out doesn't cost anything.
Good luck with your trading, Howard.

• Our bet wins so there is no refund.
• Our bet loses, so there is a refund.

An example might be that we place a bet in the bookie's 1 X 2 football market and if our bet loses, the bookie will give us a refund.
If we simply place a bet in this market and hope that our selection wins, we would either win or break even.
This spreadsheet guarantees winnings whatever the outcome.

I have built a spreadsheet for both types of refund offer.
The Definite refund sheet shows guaranteed winnings whatever the outcome of our event.
So far, my Conditional refund spreadsheet shows guaranteed winnings on 2 of the outcomes, but a loss on the third.
I'll have to give this bit a more thought.
Good luck with your trading, Howard.

I had a look at quite a few other bookies and there were several different refunds available.
I'll be looking at those during the next week or two.
Who knows ?  There might be some more free cash available there if I can apply a similar strategy to those offers as well..
Good luck with your trading, Howard.

• "Place a bet on the Correct Score and if the game ends 0-0 we will refund all losing bets in this market"
• OR  "If Johnny Hotshot scores at any time, we'll refund all losing bets in our First Goal scorer market".

There is some free cash here providing the events happen that the bookie describes, but unless these things happen, we can't get our hands on it.
To make these a trading proposition, we need to bet with the bookie of course, but then we need to stake as if these things will happen in our game.
If we bet with the bookie and lay the same selection on Betfair for an equal profit or loss, we will make a small loss due to the poor odds that bookies always offer in football markets.
That gets us into a trading position.
We then use that opening trade plus the free bet offer to complete the whole trade for guaranteed winnings - - - if we can work something out so that it doesn't matter whether the game ends 0-0 or if Johnny Hotshot doesn't even get a kick of the ball.

We need to make enough guaranteed winnings to recover that loss from our initial bet and lay and then show a profit on top of that.
The spreadsheet I built some time ago achieves that, but profits are hardly worth the effort, and there are losses in some games.
However, I came across an idea yesterday that may help to get around those problems and make this a worthwhile trade.
I'll be rummaging around some bookie web sites this weekend looking to see what is on offer, and then working on this for a while.
Good luck with your trading, Howard.

Good luck with your trading, Howard.

First up was a video demo showing how to make a risk free £15 from a £5 deposit on a game of Bingo.
Spot on that was, so £15 up straight away.
Next a video on Roulette (which I must admit was from the previous month's recommendations) showed how to make a risk free £19 playing just 6 spins in an on-line casino.
Spot on again.  Profit now £34.
After that, a recommendation of a free bet with a new bookie generated a risk free £17.88, which was a bit disappointing as I hit a winner and had to make an extra trade before I could make my withdrawal.  That reduced my profit.
Profit now £51.88.   Way above the monthly membership fee already.
These excellent videos are NOT removed, as others are added, in fact additional videos are added to existing ones showing updates of the strategies to cover changes that casinos and bookies make.
In this way, everything from past months is still available for new members who sign up.  Wonderful stuff !

Even though I am a contributor to this web site (I supply a bunch of spreadsheets free for members, plus other stuff), I never tire of rummaging around this new web site.
There is plenty of new content added every month, mostly with video demos to make things absolutely clear.
In addition to that, everyone is very helpful - contributors and members alike.
This month there was a new video (plus a calculator) describing how to tackle Arbitrage, and what the problems can be - what to watch out for.
After watching the video, I decided to give Arbing a go for small stakes to see what happened, but before doing that, I went into the Live Chat Room to ask the regular Arbers where I should start.
They recommended 3 bookies in particular, but I decided to use just 2 of them, and deposited £20 with each of them.
I used the members "ArbFinder" tool to find suitable trades.
Profit from my 4 x £10 Arbs was £2.83. . . . a respectable 7.07% profit on my turnover.
Profit now £54.71.

Today, I've started to use another tool on there that is designed for trading bookies free bets.
This has of course become a very well known way of trading for good profits with zero risk.
I sell a spreadsheet for these trades, but decided to use the on-line tool in the members area as if finds very closely matched odds with obscure bookmakers, so I could easily choose a bookie with a good offer with bet odds very close to Betfair lay odds before I signed up with the bookie to trade my deposit.
I will be getting a free £30 bet tomorrow, so trading that out should put me well on my way to my monthly profit target of £100 that I have set myself, using only the resources of this new web site.
For a description of this website that is a community for serious Betfair traders, follow this link.
When you get there, make sure you "Mouse Over" the picture on there and them click the arrow to the left in order to view the demo video of the members area of the new site.
It's well worth a look, and by the look of my few trades, well worth signing up as well.
Good luck with your trading, Howard.

I am now looking at applying the same insurance principle to Under 2.5 Goals.
The aim is to exit the market whilst the score remains 0-0, but an insurance stake reduces losses to an acceptable level if an early goal is scored, or 2 quick goals are scored before we trade out.
That insurance can enable us to exit with a profit in most games (depending on our staking) if the first goal doesn't come too early in the game.
A goal towards Half Time can be good news for this Under 2.5 Goals strategy.
I'll keep you informed of my Under 2.5 Goals progress.
Good luck with your trading, Howard

Under 1.5 Goals with insurance, is best suited to games in which the 2 teams are evenly matched in Betfair's Match Odds market.
Good luck with your trading, Howard..