There is nothing new about moving markets. It’s something that’s done by many people a lot of the time, but in terms of sports betting it’s probably most commonly known to take place on Betfair by traders.
When trading on a horse they may need the market to move in a particular direction in order to complete their trade. If it looks like it may not or is going to take longer than they want then they put a large sum of money on the other side of the market to force it to move in the direction they want. As soon as they bet they wanted to get placed is taken, they remove their large sum of money and the market moves back.
Doing this is also known as market manipulation and, for new traders, determining when a market move is real or manipulated can be one of the harder areas to learn.
The only problem with this technique is that you need large sums of money to do it. Moving a horse at the front of the market can take a significant bankroll. But…
…at the higher end of the market the opposite is true!
I was meeting a well known trader last week and we got to chatting about market manipulation, and it’s this that brought it back to me.
You see I don’t really trade. I used to, but I make far larger profits with less effort betting. However the risk level associated is much higher than with trading. When I was a trader I was actually happy to trade my entire bankroll every time I went into the market. That’s not something I’d recommend you do when starting out, but if you’re comfortable with your trading it’s certainly something that’s possible.
Anyway. The outsiders on Betfair get very little money matched on them. And, this means that you can move their markets with as little as a couple of hundred pounds!
What that means for us is that we can move these markets and make guaranteed trades on them without requiring a huge bankroll.
You need to have an understanding of how to trade. If you don’t know how to trade then you can get my three part course by entering your details below:
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What you are looking to do is very simple. You want to open your trade on higher odds runners where there is disparity between the back and lay price. This means that there is more than a one tick gap between them. Tick sizes on Betfair differ depending on the odds and the chart below shows you what a tick is at different odds ranges.
Don’t forget we are looking at higher odds ranges. So between odds of 21 and 30 a tick is 1. e.g. 21, 22, 23 etc…
If we have a back price of 25 and a lay price of 29 then there is a difference of more than one tick between the odds, and this is what you are looking for. Now you can open your trade on the right side of the market for the current movement and put your closing trade bet in place.
For example, we open our trade with a lay bet of £5 at odds of 25. We want to take odds of 23 to close our trade and so we place our closing back bet at odds of 23. Now we just need to wait for the odds to drop in order for our closing bet to be matched.
But, what if we manipulated the market to force the odds down to 23?
Then on the back side of the market, a few ticks lower than 23, you place a lay bet of £100 or £200 bet. Now you don’t want this bet to be matched. What you are wanting is for the weight of money on the back side of the market to force the odds down until your bet at odds of 23 has been matched. As soon as it has you cancel your bet for £200 further down.
There is a word of warning to using this strategy… you need to be quick!
If you’re not using very fast software then don’t even attempt this. In fact I would suggest that you get used to trading the market normally before attempting to manipulate it. But by focusing only on manipulating the selections at higher odds you can make market manipulated trades with a lot more easer and a much lower bankroll than you would need at the front of the market.
as always Michael very interesting but a little too complicated for me
Thanks Ray
Place a back bet lower than 23 and it will be matched instantly if the price is 25 to back.
Hi Paul, I’m very sorry I missed this when the article was posted. You are right, I was thinking about market sides and writing bet types. I have corrected this now.
“Then on the back side of the market, a few ticks lower than 23, you place a £100 or £200 bet. ” Do you mean lay a few ticks lower than 23? Like Paul says if you back it will match it won’t it?
So if you wanted to lay £200 on odds of 21 to move the market, your liability would be £4,000?
Hi Dave, I apologise for missing your comment when you first posted it. You are right, there was a mistake as Paul also pointed out which has been corrected now. I was thinking about market sides and wrote bet types.
Your liability would be £4000 and you do need to have around £5000 or more in your account to use this approach, which is why it is primarily used by the bigger traders. At the short end of the market you would need more to move it. However you also should never be losing any of it as it’s a quick in and out to manipulate the market to the odds you need.
Yes, the article is confusing, since it appears to say you place 2 lay bets, one to close out your back bet and a much larger one a couple of ticks lower to move the market.
This is not intuitive to me because:
A. On seeing a large lay bet, I would expect the odds to rise in the scenario where the potential layer got impatient to be filled. Thus I thought that Weight of Money meant if there was much more to be layed than to be backed the odds would tend to rise and vice versa.
B. I have seen countless trading videos with comments saying that ‘Weight of Money’ trading no longer works.
Hi Ian, thank you for alerting me to Dave and Paul’s comments, I seem to have missed them previously.You are right, I was thinking about market sides as I was writing and put down the bet type instead as a mistake. I’ve adjusted this now so it’s clearer.
You are right on A but we are not using the normal WOM principles. What happens when there isn’t enough money and a large sum comes in at unavailable odds it doesn’t move the opposite way but towards those odds as people try to get matched. If you placed it significantly lower than currently available you are right, you wouldn’t get matched.
WOM still exists and works very well. All markets are based on weight of money, they have to be as a fundamental law of markets is that if there is more money on one side than the other then the market moves to even itself out. However, using a WOM indicator such as 1.30 is no longer effective as it’s a basic reading that doesn’t tell you enough about the market and where money is sitting in it to make an informed decision. However, all you need to trade effectively to this day is good trading software with a ladder, a simple process
of understanding the market and practice.