Any tips for when the odds go crazy?

We’ve tried doing the in play bets at half time as it seems the movement slows down then?

Half time is safest as there is no danger of a sudden goal to blast you out of the water. I find Betfair has a lot more liquidity during play than smarkets.

If you must bet during play then you need to do away with the calculator and just have the bookie and exchange up side by side and watch for a near match and hit the buttons as soon as you see it. I prefer the unders / overs market as they sometimes get quite close and if you are feeling brave you can lay first and wait a minute for the back odds to catch up. Could cause murders if a goal goes in during that minute of course. I usually bet when its 0-0 and use >3.5 goals because it gives you a bit of wriggle room if something does go wrong.

If you really want a scary ride, try laying greyhounds 2 minutes before the race!

If the lay odds move after back bet is put on.....I normally put something on rather than calculate new amount to lay as they could drift more.

If it is say a £25 bet in-play, I would just lay £25 and then calculate the extra I would need to lay or add to back bet.

I found a good match on the golf last night - I guess that is one of the slowest moving lol!

I think golf is a good shout, if difficult to get into.
Nowhere as popular as footie, so the bookies probably have fewer traders pricing up an often huge field, where almost anything can happen.

If you use Smarkets as an exchange they will automatically calculate the new lay figure for you IF the odds have moved in your favour. IF the odds move the other way the bet will be there waiting to be taken juast as in Betfair.

When you are new though the key advice is wait until Half-Time

philaterly said:

Great tips, thanks to all. I have been waiting until HT for the footie in-plays. I certainly didnt know about smarkets and although I try split screen on the laptop to put back and lay odds on the same screen, I hadnt thought about using my tablet for the calculator.
I'm still learning the ropes with racing but have had some success on extra place races. Sometimes good matches can be found early and others only in the last 5 minutes when it gets a bit hairy!
I wondered if anyone had ever produced a table with selected back & lay odds for maybe £5 or £10 stakes. I started to build one but stopped when I realised it ran into many many pages!

Click to expand...

Yeh i think such a table would logistically be too big to use effectively or quickly.

As you can see the reason we need calculators is the complexity.

However, there are a couple of rules of thumb you can use if the odds are moving quickly and are currently in your favour. For Smarkets if you add 20p per £10 bet this will cover your exposure (so you aren't losing money at least) and for Betfair add 50p i.e £10.20 and £10.50 respectively. Now this is not 100% accurate as it is really £10.204 and £10.526, but it gets you covered and you have time to recalculate. After a while you get to remember, so I use £20.41 when laying a £20 bet on Smarkets rather than £20.40

On Smarkets because it does the recalculation (if the odds are going in your favour) for you I will just lay the bet as the calculations I've already done and let it work out how that changes (you will notice the lay stake has increased). This works for back bets as well - as long as the odds are in your favour (the stake taken decreases).

Smarkets keeps the liability/return the same and adjusts the stake accordingly, whereas Betfair keeps the stake the same and reduces the liability (or increases the return)