Betfair 101: Introduction to Trading & Key Terms Explained

Welcome to the very first episode of your ultimate guide to mastering the art of Betfair trading! Whether you're completely new to the world of betting exchanges or looking to solidify your foundational knowledge, this episode is your perfect starting point.

In This Episode, You’ll Discover:

🔹 What is Betfair Trading?
Dive into the fundamentals of Betfair, understanding how it differs from traditional betting, and why trading on the exchange can be a game-changer for your betting strategy.

🔹 Backing vs. Laying Explained:
Learn the core actions of Betfair trading. We break down what it means to back a selection to win and lay a selection to lose, complete with real-world examples to illustrate each concept.

🔹 Essential Terminology Demystified:
Navigate the Betfair landscape with ease by mastering key terms such as liquidity, odds, market depth, trading volumes, and more. We simplify complex jargon to ensure you’re equipped with the language of successful traders.

🔹 Navigating the Betfair Interface:
Get a walkthrough of the Betfair platform’s key features. From understanding the market view to placing your first bet, we guide you through the essential elements you need to get started confidently.

🔹 First Steps to Successful Trading:
Receive practical tips for beginners, including how to manage your bankroll, set realistic goals, and avoid common pitfalls. Start your trading journey on the right foot with our expert advice.

Why Listen to This Episode?

Starting strong is crucial in Betfair trading, and this episode lays the groundwork you need to build a profitable and sustainable trading practice. Whether you're aiming to supplement your income or transition into full-time trading, understanding the basics is essential for your success.

Join the Community:

Become part of a growing community of Betfair enthusiasts and traders. Subscribe to Betfair Trading Communuity on your preferred podcast platform and never miss an episode packed with insights, strategies, and expert interviews designed to elevate your trading game.

📢 Have Questions or Topics You Want Covered?
We’d love to hear from you! Reach out to us on X @betfairtc or email us at info@betfairtradingcommunity.com 

Your feedback helps shape future episodes to better serve your trading needs.

Tune in now and take your first step towards mastering Betfair trading!

Subscribe, rate, and review on platforms like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc to stay updated with our latest episodes. Let’s embark on this trading journey together and unlock your full potential.

Martin is a passionate Betfair trader with 20+ years of experience in the betting exchange industry. Dedicated to helping others achieve trading success, Martin  brings insightful analysis, practical tips, and a wealth of knowledge to every episode.

Transcript

0:00: Hello and welcome to another podcast from Betfair Tradingcommunity.com. 
 0:05: And today we're gonna talk about mastering Betfair trading strategies, and this is gonna be a little mini podcast series. 
 0:12: This podcast is gonna be dedicated to helping you navigate the exciting world of Betfair trading. 
 0:18: I'm your host, if you don't know already, if you don't know me, Martin, and whether you're a beginner, just getting started or a seasoned trader looking to refine your strategies, you're in the right place. 
 0:28: In today's episode, we're gonna dive into the fundamentals of Betfair trading. 
 0:34: We're gonna cover how Betfair works, the difference between backing and laying, and break down some of the essential terminology you will need to get started. 
 0:43: By the end of this episode, I hope that you'll have a solid understanding of the basics, setting the stage for more advanced trading strategies in future episodes. 
 0:53: So first off, what is Betfair trading? 
 0:57: Betfair is a betting exchange that allows you to bet against other people rather than a traditional bookmaker. 
 1:04: This is essentially what Betfair is. 
 1:05: It means that you can both back a selection to win and bet against it, which we call lay, a selection to lose. 
 1:14: This flexibility opens up a range of trading opportunities that aren't available in conventional betting. 
 1:20: And certainly weren't when Betfair was created. 
 1:23: I know that bookmakers have tried to incorporate some of this backing, laying stuff in as much as it can,, but they're not exchanges, and so Betfair is unique, well, and other exchanges are unique in that way compared to bookmakers. 
 1:39: Let's start with backing versus laying, OK? 
 1:43: These are the two primary actions you can take on Betfair. 
 1:46: So when you back a selection, you're betting on that particular outcome to happen. 
 1:53: For example, if you back a football team to win, you're predicting they'll be victorious. 
 1:57: They're gonna win the match. 
 1:59: On the other hand, when you lay a selection, you're betting against it. 
 2:03: So if you lay the same football team, you're predicting they won't win, which includes the possibility of in football, of a draw or a loss. 
 2:12: And this depends on the market. 
 2:14: Obviously, if you lay a tennis player to win, well you can't get a draw, so you're just hoping they lose. 
 2:22: Now, before we dive even deeper, it's really important that as traders we familiarize ourselves with the Betfair interface. 
 2:30: Key areas include the market. 
 2:33: Now this is where you're gonna see all the available selections and their odds. 
 2:38: The back, the lay buttons, where you place your bets, the order book which shows the current back and lay offers. 
 2:46: So the market and you might have heard people talk about the Betfair market or the trading markets. 
 2:52: That is essentially where you place the bet. 
 2:54: It's just the screen that shows you the options. 
 2:56: So let's say you're looking at match odds and you want to look at a match happening today. 
 3:03: Well, if you click on match odds, it will show you the teams playing, it will show you their current odds, it will show you how much, what the odds are to back, the odds to lay, and it also show you if you've had any bets on it already on the side, whether there's anything matched or unmatched, etc. 
 3:20: Understanding how to navigate these elements is crucial for effective trading, so. 
 3:26: Let's start talking a little bit about some of the terminology, because I think a lot of people can get stuck with bet fair trading with the terminology. 
 3:36: They don't quite understand what everything means and there's a lot of common terms, I mean like the first one here, liquidity, that that will come up a lot, and you'll probably hear about it a lot and you'll think. 
 3:46: I don't know what that is. 
 3:47: Well, I'm here to help you. 
 3:48: So, liquidity refers to the amount of money available in the market at any given time. 
 3:55: Higher liquidity means it's easier to place and execute trades without significantly affecting the odds. 
 4:01: So think of this as the more money in the market, the more likely the odds are to be realistically where they should be. 
 4:10: In terms of if you want to place a bet on something and you like the price. 
 4:15: You're going to get the best value there. 
 4:17: , now this doesn't happen with bookmakers because bookmakers give their own odds. 
 4:23: They're not determined by the liquidity of a market. 
 4:27: So what happens there is they basically choose the price they want to lay to give you, because they're always laying, of course, and then it's up to you to decide if you take it. 
 4:36: And that's why with bookmakers, I'll give you an example of of why this doesn't work with bookmakers because. 
 4:43: You know, let's say there is that tennis match. 
 4:45: We've got two outcomes. 
 4:47: And you know, if this is a 50/50 match, both players should be evens or on Betfair decimal odds 2.0 because that's 50%. 
 4:57: However, you go to the bookmaker sites and you'll have a look and they're laying both outcomes at 1.83% or 5 to 6 in old money. 
 5:08: And you're like, how can both outcomes be odds on, you're saying that both has more than 50% chance, but there can only be one winner. 
 5:15: Well, that's how they make their money. 
 5:17: You know, they make their money by giving you poor odds, and if you accept them, well, you're gonna make less money than you would have done backing it evens on Betfair. 
 5:26: So that's what liquidity is and that's why it's advantageous. 
 5:30: Odds, odds are really important, obviously, odds represent the probability of a particular outcome. 
 5:36: In Betfair trading, you'll see two sets of odds. 
 5:39: The ones on the left will be the back odds,, and they're usually blue, and then the ones on the laying side will be pink, and they're usually the lay bets. 
 5:49: OK. 
 5:50: So if you're on the back, you click the blue, if you want a lay you click the pink. 
 5:55: Market depth, Mar depth, another one, you know, another phrase you've probably heard a lot, not one I talk about a ton. 
 6:02: But market depth shows the range of available odds and the volume of money at each level. 
 6:07: It gives you an idea of how much backing and laying is available at various prices. 
 6:13: Now, in Betfair, you'll notice when you're on a marking you're looking at selection, there'll be a little graph button kind of to the left of that selection. 
 6:22: If you click on that, you'll actually be able to see where the money is available and what money has already been matched at what prices. 
 6:31: That's effectively what market depth is. 
 6:34: It's it's looking at the deeper picture rather than what's just strictly on the interface when you're on that match market. 
 6:42: It's not, it's not something that usually matters to a lot of people, but there will be a percentage of you, you know, especially if you've come from, let's say, a stock market trading background who are really interested in market debt, and it's something that you can exploit. 
 6:59: Trading volume. 
 7:01: Now this refers to the total amount of money being traded in a particular market. 
 7:06: High trading volumes can indicate a more active and potentially more profitable market. 
 7:11: , and think about volumes per selection as well. 
 7:15: If you go in at over 2.5 goals market, and both selections are close to evens, 2.0. 
 7:23: But one selection has, you know, 50,000 pounds matched and the other one has like 50 pounds match. 
 7:30: Well, this is telling you the money is coming for this other outcome that's got the most money on, so that's why people are interested in trading volumes. 
 7:39: Commission. 
 7:40: Commission can mean a lot of things in life, but in this particular instance on Betfair, it means a charge that you get charged on your net profits on Betfair. 
 7:50: Now this is normally 2%. 
 7:52: , they, they do have a thing called premium charge, but I think they're actually axing that, it's kind of turning into something else and actually not many people, even less people are going to be charged now, which is really good news. 
 8:04: , so commission is how Betfair makes money, they have to make some money. 
 8:10: So they charge you about 2% per winning trade. 
 8:13: Now per winning trade, they won't charge you on the losing trades, which is really good,. 
 8:20: So that's how they make their money. 
 8:23: But like I say, even when you take commission into account, you're still getting much better odds than bookmakers in general when you're using the Betfair exchange. 
 8:32: OK. 
 8:34: Matched and unmatched bets. 
 8:38: Now this is another really interesting one. 
 8:40: So a match bet is one that has been successfully placed against another user's bets. 
 8:46: And an unmatched bet remains open and awaits a counter bet to complete the trade. 
 8:51: Now, this can happen. 
 8:53: Let's say you want to put 100 pounds on Man United to win tonight, and their odds of 2.0. 
 8:59: He goes to place the bet, but there's only 50 pounds on that price. 
 9:02: So what will happen is if you place the bet, the 50 pounds will get matched straight away and then the 50 pounds, the other 50 pounds will wait in the lay column for someone to lay it at that price of 2.0. 
 9:15: And you might have to wait for that to happen. 
 9:17: A lot of the time it will happen, sometimes it might not, and you'll have a decision to make. 
 9:22: Do you want to take a slightly worse price for that other 50 pounds? 
 9:25: You know, the next option's probably just gonna be 1.99 on a Man United game because it'll be pretty liquid. 
 9:32: So do you want to take one tick less for the other 50 quid, knowing you've had the other 50 quid matched at evens, or do you want to wait and see if it gets matched? 
 9:39: But that's what an unmatched bet is, it's just basically a bet that's been placed that no one's laid. 
 9:44: , and a lot of people will just take the money that's there. 
 9:48: So if you're sitting there and you see that there's money there, you'll just take those odds and you'll take the money. 
 9:53: You don't have to worry too much about unmatched bets. 
 9:56: , it's just something to think about if you, when you do start, especially if you start. 
 10:00: Using higher amounts to trade with. 
 10:03: OK, so let's bring these concepts to life a bit. 
 10:06: I'm gonna walk you through a simple trade example and hopefully this will kind of explain this stuff for anyone who's maybe a little bit confused. 
 10:16: Imagine there's a football match between Norwich and Ipswich, let's go for. 
 10:21: And you believe Norwich will win? 
 10:23: Not likely at the moment, but who knows. 
 10:26: So you decide to back them at odds of 3.0 with a stake of 10 pounds. 
 10:31: Now, 3.0 is 2 to 1 in old money, so people who use the old fractions. 
 10:39: Basically, if you win, so Norwich win, you'll get 30 pounds back, you'll get the 20 pounds profit plus your original 10 pounds back. 
 10:47: And obviously you've made a profit of 20 pounds after subtracting your steak. 
 10:52: But suppose you want to secure profit. 
 10:55: Now this is where the trading comes in, regardless of the match outcome. 
 10:59: You can lay Team A at odds of 3.0. 
 11:04: And with a steak of 10 pounds. 
 11:07: If Team A, so let's say in this case it's still Norwich, so if you've laid Norwich at 3.0 for 10 pounds. 
 11:15: If Norwich win, You'll owe £20. 
 11:18: You'll have to, it would have already been taken anyway, but you'll lose the trade and you will lose 20 pounds. 
 11:26: But if they don't win, you get the 10 pounds from the back bet and you make a profit. 
 11:32: So you make the 10 pounds profit, you don't lose the 20 pounds that you've risked. 
 11:38: And that's how a lay bet works, and that's the reason I think a lot of people like laying on Betfair is that you don't have to pick a winner. 
 11:45: If you're good at picking losers, you might find laying works really well for you. 
 11:49: , I know a few Betfair traders who are really successful now, and that's how they started. 
 11:53: They started because they were terrible at actually picking the trades themselves. 
 11:58: They're very good at picking losers. 
 12:00: And if you are truly terrible at it, you know, people say to me, I'm really, really bad. 
 12:04: Everything I pick is a loser. 
 12:05: I think, well, good, tell me what your selections are then. 
 12:08: Because if you don't want to trade anymore, I'll just lay your selections because clearly you've got something going where you can't pick winners and we can all just make money. 
 12:17: And that's the beauty of bet. 
 12:18: You can now make money by being able to not pick good things because you can just lay them. 
 12:24: And like I say, if you really are that bad mathematically, you'll make money. 
 12:27: , what you might find is that most people aren't as bad as they think they are,, which puts pay to that. 
 12:33: But like I say, if you really are that bad, you will make money. 
 12:37: So Think about a back to lay strategy. 
 12:43: , so back to lay is where let's say an example above, back Norwich at 2.0. 
 12:49: They score an early goal and their odds come into evens. 
 12:54: Now I've got a decision to make. 
 12:55: Do I? 
 12:57: Take my profit here, do I lay in orange so that I can make a profit now that the odds have come in? 
 13:03: A bit like using stocks and shares. 
 13:04: If your share price comes in, you make money. 
 13:07: Well, that's the same on Betfair trading. 
 13:08: If the price you back comes in, you'll be able to take a profit. 
 13:13: Now, nowadays we have very easy things like cash out buttons that make this a very simple process. 
 13:18: , but there, there are other things you can use. 
 13:22: I'll talk a little bit about trading software in a little while that you can use to do this. 
 13:26: , but I know a lot of people just like to use the cash out button now. 
 13:31: But that's a simple way to, you know, if you've got a back to lay strategy and you think, well, Norwich are going to score first here, I'm backing them, and you take a profit if it goes your way,, then you need to decide what you're going to do if it doesn't. 
 13:43: You know, if Ipswich do get that first goal, Norwich's price goes way out to win the match. 
 13:47: What are you going to do in that situation? 
 13:49: , so there's a few tips I want to give you for new beginning traders. 
 13:57: , like I say, this is like more of a beginner's podcast, and I think even if you're a seasoned trader, there will be stuff that you can get from this specifically. 
 14:07: Number one, start small. 
 14:10: So, begin with small stake sizes to minimize risk as you learn the ropes. 
 14:16: Now that should be pretty self-explanatory, but it's amazing how many new traders come to Betfair trading community and then they send me screenshots where they've been betting hundreds of pounds, and I'm like, oh, you experienced trader? 
 14:27: No, I started yesterday. 
 14:30: What are we doing? 
 14:31: Like, come on. 
 14:33: If you start something new, no matter what it is in life, don't just, you know, take massive risk, you do it step by step. 
 14:39: And so start with small stakes. 
 14:41: If you want, just test without using any stakes. 
 14:43: , that's also a possibility. 
 14:46: One thing you should not do is start using large steaks straight away. 
 14:51: Number 2, learn the market. 
 14:53: Spend some time. 
 14:54: Look, I know it's easy in the modern world to get distracted, you know, we've got our phones, we've got TVs, we've got game consoles. 
 15:02: We've got devices galore that we just didn't have. 
 15:06: When I was a kid, the only thing you had was TV. 
 15:09: You had one TV in the living room usually, and your dad or your mum decided what what would go on it. 
 15:16: And that was that, right? 
 15:18: But nowadays, you know, I get up and my kids are playing Nintendo Switch the minute they get up and they're watching Cees and they're on my laptop, you know, and then they might have found my phone. 
 15:29: And it's just like it's crazy, right? 
 15:32: But I know that it's really easy to get distracted, and this is my point. 
 15:38: Go and learn the market you want to trade. 
 15:40: Go and watch the market. 
 15:42: If you want to trade football, go and watch a football match and watch the odds while you're watching the game. 
 15:48: See how it changes, see what changes it. 
 15:50: Start to learn the patterns. 
 15:53: You know, a lot of people who get good at bet fair trading isn't because they had some, you know, magical stroke of wondrous luck. 
 16:00: It's because they worked hard and they bothered to go and watch these things and learn the markets. 
 16:05: A lot of people, I'm always surprised the amount of resistance I've had from traders who just go, I don't want to have to learn anything. 
 16:14: That's not how life works, and actually you will feel all the better for it when you start to know how the markets work. 
 16:21: It's your money you're investing at the end of the day. 
 16:25: You know, it's not my money you're investing when you trade on Betfair. 
 16:28: It's not, it's not your mate's money, is it? 
 16:31: It's your money. 
 16:32: You should learn the markets. 
 16:34: Number 3, use trading tools. 
 16:37: Well, there's a few ones that spring to mind. 
 16:40: Obviously, if you want to do football trading, Betfair trading Community.com is the one for you because that will give you software to create trading strategies, which is ultimately what will unlock your edge and unlock your profit on Betfair, because if you create strategies that are any good, having the ability to create them, save them so that your selections are given to you instantly each day, that's what really separates the, you know, the men from the boys and the. 
 17:08: And the women from the girls, I guess. 
 17:11: But the reality is that you want to use a training tool like Betfair Trading Community for strategy creation. 
 17:17: Then you've also got things like Bet Angel and Geeks Toy which you can use for actually placing the bets,, or a bot, a bot system, which I know BetAngel does, BF Bot Manager does as well. 
 17:30: Again, these are tools you could look at. 
 17:32: Automation might be something you're interested in. 
 17:35: I am gonna talk about that in a future episode of this actually, but right now we're not gonna do that, we're gonna do that in another one. 
 17:43: but there are pros and cons to using automation versus manual trading, and as you know, if you follow me a while, I do a bit of both. 
 17:51: Number 4, keep records. 
 17:54: Keep records of what you're doing, maintain detailed records of your trade, and analyze your performance and identify areas for improvement. 
 18:02: This is really important, self development. 
 18:05: Learn what you're doing right, learn what you're doing wrong, figure out how you can do less of the stuff you're doing wrong and more of the stuff you're doing right. 
 18:13: Again, Betfair trading community has a support system in place. 
 18:17: You can always talk to us, either on the forum or email or anything, and you can talk to other traders if you wish as well. 
 18:25: But if you're struggling to analyze what you're doing, come and ask us because the amount of people that do this, and I'm always pleased when they do, because it's almost to a man or a woman, they improve as a trader after they do this, and because it's really important to work on your self development. 
 18:42: Look, you might not like it, but there's a reason your work sends you on these trading courses all the time. 
 18:49: It's because they want you to develop, they want you to improve your talents. 
 18:53: And the reality is, it's exactly the same on Betfair. 
 18:55: The way you do that, yes, you have to do it yourself, no one's gonna do it for you. 
 19:00: And again, this comes back to, you know, you might think, oh Martin, I don't want to hear about this. 
 19:05: Well, at the end of the day it doesn't benefit me to tell you this in any way. 
 19:09: This is for your benefit. 
 19:11: Keep records, maintain records of what you're doing. 
 19:14: Analyze your performance, you know, are you analyzing it and going, did I trade well today, did I not? 
 19:21: And not beating yourself up if you don't, but figuring out what could I do to just improve on that a bit. 
 19:27: And then number 5, stay disciplined. 
 19:29: And you know I'd love to have this kind of on that Hollywood, the Hollywood, the Las Vegas sign. 
 19:35: Stay disciplined, you know, with all those lights around it because emotional discipline is key. 
 19:41: If you stick to your strategy and avoid impulsive decisions based on short term outcomes, you're much more likely to have success. 
 19:49: The people who don't, people who don't keep their emotions in check, can't keep their disciplines. 
 19:54: That's, they're the kinds of people that, you know, at the end of the day are going to lose money on Betfair, and we don't want to see that. 
 20:00: We never want to see that. 
 20:02: OK, so that wraps up our introduction to Betfair trading and some of the essential terminology. 
 20:08: In the next episode, we're gonna delve into core trading strategies, exploring methods like bat to lay, lay back and scalping. 
 20:17: These strategies will help you start building a solid foundation for your Betfair trading activities. 
 20:24: If you have any questions or topics you'd like us to cover, feel free to reach out. 
 20:30: Either here or on social media channels or send us an email, info at Betfair tradingcommunity.com. 
 20:37: , we're also quite active on YouTube, just Betfair trading Community, our channel's called on YouTube. 
 20:43: And we love hearing from our listeners, you know, I absolutely love it. 
 20:47: So if you do want to talk to us or you need help with anything, then just get back to me. 
 20:51: And like I say, we'll be back with the next episode which is delving into core trading strategies. 
 20:57: , and that is gonna be absolutely crucial because the three main ones back to lay later to back and scalping. 
 21:04: Once you get an understanding of those, and understanding of those for Betfair trading. 
 21:09: You're laughing. 
 21:10: Alright guys, I hope you have a great week. 
 21:11: I hope you've enjoyed the podcast, but most of all, as ever, I hope you make some money trading on Bur.