Odds on Betting: Calculating How to Scalp a Profit
Anyone that’s ever entered Betfair’s exchange market and taken a look at the odds will know that nothing ever stands still in the sports betting world. Within the blink of an eye the stats can change and while this can play havoc with your forward planning – i.e. if you’re trying to use our bet calculator to work out you winnings – it’s great for making money through arbitrage betting.
Despite sounding somewhat exotic, the process of arbitrage betting basically involves taking advantage of differences in opinion between bookmakers and changes in odds across the market. If done correctly, this style of betting can actually make you a guaranteed profit. However, that “if” is a big one because if you don’t use the right tactics you can lose a lot of money.
Fortunately, technology is on hand to help and thanks to Betfair’s collection of third-party betting apps, you can track changes and place bets with a single click of your mouse. This process of using apps to ante-up and take advantages of small differences in betting lines is known as scalping.
For example, in the ten minutes before a horse racing event, the price of the favourite will often undergo a number of changes. In this situation, you may find odds of 3.2 on the favourite with one trader. After taking this bet (backing it to win), the idea is to lay that horse (bet on it not to win) at a shorter price – in this case you would lay at odds of 3.0. Going through this process should take just a few seconds if you use one of Betfair’s apps and guarantee you a small profit regardless of whether the favourite wins or loses.
Of course, to understand the differences between prices you’ll need to play around with our betting calculator to see how certain odds stack up and compare with each other. However, once you’ve done that, you can use these apps to improve your sports betting EV and make a lot incremental profits in a short amount of time.
Although scalping profits won’t be for everyone, but if you’re a fan of online betting then it can be a way to make stack of cash with just a few minutes of action.
