How To Become A Successful Sports Arbitrage Trader

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Traditional sports arbitrage techniques rely upon covering all outcomes of an event with bets within the same market.

These trades are relatively simple in terms of discovery and calculation and are covered in virtually every basic article or book on sports arbitrage.

Their relative simplicity makes these types of trades easily visible; any situation where all outcomes are covered and the prices convert to a summed percentage less than 100% will yield an arbitrage.

Cross-Market Trading Strategies use mathematical models to generate risk-free trades between different sports-betting markets.

This allows for a significantly greater range of more complex trades which are all but invisible to the vast majority of traders.

The bets within these trades have different properties to the norm and this means that arbitrage conditions no longer rely upon the simple rule that the sum of the prices should convert to a percentage less than 100%.

This is a brief guide about Advanced Cross Market Trading Strategies

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INTRODUCTION

How To Become A Successful Sports Arbitrage Trader

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SIMPLE EXAMPLES

Perhaps the easiest way to understand this is to consider the simple cross-market trading opportunities available in Tennis. Here, two inter-related markets on a particular match will be the Match Winner and Set Betting markets.

An arbitrage trade between these two markets would cover the outcome of one player winning by placing a bet in the Match Winner market, whilst covering the outcome of the other player winning by placing two or more bets in the Set Betting market. The latter bets effectively synthesise the Match Bet on Player 2.

Another simple application of this method is to find instances where the winner of a specific match or game will, de facto, be the winner of the tournament or series. For example, on the last day of Wimbledon in any year, a Match Bet on either player in the final can be offset by a Tournament Winner bet on the opponent.

Taking this one step further, after the quarter-finals of the tournament, you can construct a two-stage trade whose initial components are a combination of bets from the two semi-final match-bet markets and the overall tournament winner market.

On a much more advanced level, the Match Bet, Asian and European handicap markets in soccer provide hundreds of ways to synthesise bets.

The same is true for the Total Goals markets and their Asian Handicaps.

It’s with these techniques that your trading will rise to a new level: the traditional rules, which limit the average trader, are lifted to set you free.

How To Become A Successful Sports Arbitrage Trader

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COMPLEX EXAMPLE

The most common cross market arbitrage trades occur in soccer, where bookmakers & betting exchanges offer a very wide range of Asian handicap, European Handicap and Double-Chance bets as well as standard match bets.

Many cross-market sports arbitrage trades use bets whose properties include refunds under certain conditions, whilst other bets in the trade payout as winners. This obviously results in significantly higher profits than standard sports arbitrage trades.

Here's an example using a soccer match from the Italy Serie A:

The trade combines a (+2) Asian Handicap bet on Sampdoria with (-1.5) and (-2.5) Asian Handicap bets on Livorno

Bookie 1 Sampdoria (+2) 1.30

Bookie 2 Livorno (-1.5) 4.20

Bookie 3 Livorno (-2.5) 8.00

The first thing to notice is that to any conventional sports arbitrage trader, these prices would not indicate that an arb exists. Convert the prices into percentages and they sum to over 113%

However, this is an arb. Here's why...

Sampdoria (+2) pays out fully if Sampdoria wins, draws or loses by 1 goal. It's refunded completely if they lose by exactly 2 goals

Livorno (-1.5) pays out fully if Livorno wins by more than 1 goal

Livorno (-2.5) pays out fully if Livorno wins by more than 2 goals

How To Become A Successful Sports Arbitrage Trader

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THE PAYOUTS

There are a number of ways in which a trader can apportion his stakes on this trade: for an equal profit irrespective of the match’s outcome or with a bias towards any two or any single outcome. The first method is conservative, the others remain risk-free but can result in significantly lower or higher profits which will depend on the quality of the trader’s judgement.

1. Equal profit irrespective of outcome

Sampdoria (+2): €84 | Livorno (-1.5): €6 | Livorno (-2.5): €10.50

MATCH OUTCOME

SAMPDORIA (+2)

LIVORNO (-1.5)

LIVORNO (-2.5)

TOTALPAYOUT

SAMPDORIA WINS

€109.20 0 0 €109.20

DRAW €109.20 0 0 €109.20

LIVORNO WINS BY1 GOAL

€109.2 0 0 €109.20

LIVORNO WINS BY2 GOALS

€84.00 €25.20 0 €109.20

LIVORNO WINS BY

MORE THAN2 GOALS

0 €25.20 €84.00 €109.20

Your total investment in the trade is 100.50 and you willreceive a payout of 109.20 irrespective of the result.

That's a risk-free profit of about 8%

How To Become A Successful Sports Arbitrage Trader

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THE PAYOUTS

2. Bias in favour of Livorno (-1.5)

The stakes would be apportioned as follow

Sampdoria (+2): €77 | Livorno (-1.5): €22 | Livorno (-2.5): €1

MATCH OUTCOME

SAMPDORIA (+2)

LIVORNO (-1.5)

LIVORNO (-2.5)

TOTALPAYOUT

SAMPDORIA WINS

$100.10 0 0 $100.10

DRAW $100.10 0 0 $100.10

LIVORNO WINS BY1 GOAL

$100.100 0

$100.10

LIVORNO WINS BY2 GOALS

$77.00 $92.400

$169.40

LIVORNO WINS BY

MORE THAN2 GOALS

0 $92.40 $8$100.10

Your total investment in the trade is 100. All possible outcomes are covered without any risk and you will receive a payout of 169.40

if the result is Livorno wins by 2 goals.

That's a risk-free profit of almost 70%

How To Become A Successful Sports Arbitrage Trader

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THE PAYOUTS

There are a total of 7 ways to bias your stakes in this and all 3-way cross market sports arbitrage trades:

1. No Bias

2. Bias towards Bet 1

3. Bias towards Bet 2

4. Bias towards Bet 3

5. Bias towards Bet 1 & Bet 2

6. Bias towards Bet 1 & Bet 3

7. Bias towards Bet 2 & Bet 3

How To Become A Successful Sports Arbitrage Trader

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HOW DO I GET STARTED?

This guide has given you a glimpse of what is possible with cross market sports arbitrage. There are over 350 different ways to combine Asian handicap, European Handicap, Double-Chance and Match bets as well as Under/Over bets and specific formulae are required to recognise them and calculate the appropriate stakes.

The automated service within the TraderZone is capable of finding all of these types of trades and its calculator makes it simple to understand and execute them.

However, if you would prefer to deepen your understanding of these trades before committing yourself in any trades, click here

How To Become A Successful Sports Arbitrage Trader

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ABOUT SPORTS ARBITRAGE WORLD

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What this means for you is that you get software which works and is updated with new features regularly.

It also means that you have access to a professional support team dedicated to helping you succeed with your sports arbitrage trading.

Our latest innovation is the TraderZone sports arbitrage trading platform. This is already the most advanced tool of its kind in this industry and it’s gathering rave reviews. However, we’re far from finished…

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