Tricks of the Traders

	I can do the research, maybe even better than the market-maker, and get myself an advantage

Punters have never had it so good. Back in the day, betting was all flatcaps and gee-gees, fixed odds and nipping down the local bookies to get on before you missed the value. These days, you can bet around the clock on just about anything you could conceivably fancy a flutter on – and it’s all just a couple of mouse clicks or a phone call away. Do you want to bet during matches, lock in a profit by trading in and out of positions like some City slicker or ride the spreads rollercoaster like an adrenaline junkie? No problem. Yet too many punters make like Luddites and turn up their noses at the giddy array of different gambling options at the modern bettor’s disposal.

Many have a particular problem with spread betting, where the openended nature can mean large and often unpredictable wins or losses. Fear of losing your shirt – hell, your whole wardrobe – is understandable.

Even those who aren’t complete strangers to the spreads can still find this method intimidating and difficult to grasp. So are punters being too timid and missing out on great opportunities to make a profit? Who better to ask than some of spreads firm Sporting Index’s top punters. We collared them combining business with pleasure – quaffing free booze while catching the midweek Premiership action at Sporting’s offices…

InsideEdge: Why do you spread bet?

Graham Triefus: Gearing and adrenaline, mainly. It means I can have an interest in a race while not caring who goes past the post first.

Tim Treadwell: That’s where the adrenaline comes in. It’s not win lose or draw, but win how much? Lose how much?

GT: If you go into an event held by a spread-betting firm – a World Cup football match, say – and one hosted by a fixed-odds firm, the atmosphere and the intensity and enjoyment level in the spread betting is at another level.

Chris Jones: And people will be cheering on different things in the match, not just one of the two teams. Every pass by a player may be making one group a fortune on a player index, while the next table want an England win, or just goals, or bookings.

TT: That variety is the key for me. Take the England versus Portugal quarter-final last year, when Sol Campbell scored in the 90th minute. I watched it in a club where most people had a punt, but I had to explain that I’d bought Campbell’s goal minutes at 4. I taught them how it worked and when he scored in the 90th minute, the whole room went ballistic because I’d won big. Every time during the match that Campbell went up for a free kick or corner, every guy in the place was cheering: they had something more than a result to support and be interested in.

CJ: Wasn’t that goal disallowed?

TT: Yes, thanks for reminding me. Dream result, 86 minutes profit, a few quick laps of the town cheering, only to discover the Swiss ref has blown his whistle.

GT: I’ve got two friends who sell total goal minutes in the Premiership every Saturday. They have a theory based on stats that it’s a long-term winner, but when they’re watching one game, every other score has a financial bearing on them.

TT: So Jeff Stelling is the arbiter of their pleasure?

IE: So give an example of a market you trade on seriously.

TT: I bet a lot on a goalscorer’s minutes in football. I watch a lot of the MK Dons and noticed that their big forward, Macleod, scores late in games. I checked it out on the websites and found this was a consistent part his game, so I started buying his minutes on the spreads. The risk is an injury or being subbed, but I’ve made good money buying him. The thing is, it’s lower-division football, and most people will trade on Premiership games or European football. This means that the market maker won’t have spent the same amount of time on, for example, MK Dons or Swansea or Scunthorpe that I have.

GT: I used to do a lot on winning distances for the horses, but not so much now. I got fed up with horses being slowed up to win by a yard when they had jumped the last 15 lengths ahead.

IE Sell distances, then, and use the information that way.

TT: The problem is you don’t know when it’s going to happen. One jockey rides out, another slows up and so on. It would mean guessing.

CJ: Like a 50/50 coin-toss – and that’s what we’re trying to avoid. We’re trying to find a market where we think we’re better than the person fixing the odds.

GT: I like the player markets. I do them on the defensive players in NFL matches. They’re isolated sections of the game, but you can bet solely on them. I love that aspect of it because I can do the research – maybe even better than the market-maker, who has maybe 20 markets to price up – and get myself an advantage. The choice of markets like that is vital to spread betting, as it gives us so many different parts of a sport to be interested in. And with the rise of the internet the punters can now do the homework the bookies used to do. If you bet on American football, NFL.com is superb.

IE: What do the spread-betting firms get wrong?

GT: The spreads on some markets, such as cricket runs, can be very wide. Say a player’s quote is 40-45 or 40-44 then the spread is 10% or over, and the width of the spread remains even when the quote is low like in the 20s.

TT: They can be steep on markets, which can make them non-tradeable.

CJ: I agree. We punters want best value. I know Sporting needs to make money, but sometimes the spread is prohibitive. [A Sporting Index representative has since promised an overhaul of cricket markets before the coming season.]

IE Do the spreads make you more passionate about your betting?

TT: Maybe, yes. It’s not a bet with a fixed win. The more right you are, the more you win, so the excitement is intensified. Also, a fixed bet is just win or lose. You can be partially right with a spread bet and still win money.

CT: And that comes back to why spread betting is so much fun. Get it right and your win isn’t limited: you get rewarded for being correct. I love being right and winning more, and sitting there with a good position enjoying the added profit every minute, or length, or goal.

GT: Same here. I could bet to win a tenner here or lose a tenner there, but I’m not going to get rich or go broke quick that way. That just doesn’t have the excitement – and we must remember that there’s a lot of ego and opinions involved. I prefer backing my opinions with the thought of winning big if I’m right.

IE You honestly believe you can get a real edge on the traders?

CJ: The information to which we now have access has levelled the playing field between us and them.

GT: Exactly. Whereas before we were almost betting blind, now we can see the statistics, do the homework and try to specialise in a market to win money. That’s why the more markets the spread firms offer on an event, the more chance a punter has of winning money.

TT: Only if they do the work and the research. The opportunities are there, but the effort still needs to go in. I reckon most punters lose money because they don’t do the work.

CJ: But that’s the fun, isn’t it? Doing the work. Researching a spread bet, doing the numbers and isolating a market where you think the firm is wrong and then making good money out of it is so much more satisfying than just winning a straight-up, fixed-odds bet. It’s that feeling of being smarter and being proved to be smarter – ego, basically – but with a bigger profit because of it.