E SPACIOS PROTEGIDOS POR LA NORMATIVA MUNICIPAL

You’ve all heard the cliché “It’s a game of 2 halves”, well now you can exploit this fact for profit!

Start betting in the 2nd half of certain matches! Treat the 2nd half as a match in and of itself.

The first half, therefore, becomes the launch pad for your betting decisions.

Let me explain what I mean by way of 2 very good examples. Cast your mind back to the 15th August 2011, and a match between Manchester City and Swansea City...

Manchester City are rightly clear favourites, but let’s see what the score is at half-time: 0-0

This is a big surprise. Now if your research had told you that Manchester City are likely winners, and there are likely to be goals in this match too – and if you had confidence in that research, why not enter the betting markets at half- time? (And to be fair, if you had been watching this match you’d have found the difference in class between the two teams glaringly obvious.)

The benefits are clear.

If you fancied Manchester City to win, you would be getting better odds at half-time in in-play markets such as those at

www.bet365.com and on betting exchanges like www.bet- fair.com. Why are the odds on Manchester City bigger than they were pre match? Quite simply because in-play markets react to occurrences (or in this case, non-occurrences). Further, there are a multitude of other markets that will be offering bigger odds (than pre match). Such markets in- clude the over/under 2.5 goals markets, and for layers, how about laying the 0-0 at odds far better than pre match? (lay- ers like to see low odds, backers like to see high odds.) The ideal scoreline to exploit at half-time is the 0-0 but as you will see with other examples later in the article, we can be flexible.

Let’s look at a few examples of 2nd half betting.

EXAMPLE 1

8:00 FT Braga 3 : 2 Gil Vicente MC

Nuno Gomes 61’ Helder Barbosa 72’

89’ Claudio

Nuno Gomes 90’

In this Portuguese league match, Braga are 1.52 favourites against newly-promoted Gil Vicente. Braga scored 2 goals against the bottom 6 sides at home last season. Gil Vicente conceded 2 goals against Braga and 3 against Porto (2 sides in the top 3 last season, with Braga 4th last season).

The 0-0 at half-time was therefore a shock... and, inevitably, in the second half the goals arrived.

lay the draw.

Goals markets – back over 1.5 goals, over 2.5 goals. Correct score market – lay 0-0.

EXAMPLE 2 19:00 FT Elfsborg 1 : 3 Gais h2h 49’ Jesper Floren 54’ Eric Bassombeng 65’ Wanderson Do Carmo Niklas Hult 73’

Elfsborg are 1.33 at home. It is 0-0 at half-time. My conclu- sions for this match are repeated here verbatim:

“CONCLUSION/NOTES/STANDOUT STATS – standout 90% overs stats for Elfsborg and they are likely to score 2 mini- mum at home. similarly, Gais have only failed to score in three matches this season. Ergo over 2.5 goals in the bag already? Gais are one of those nightmare trading teams – why? They are so fecking inconsistent!!”

And the goals flowed in during the 2nd half albeit not for the team I expected. Still, a goals bet at half-time, at value odds, would have been successful.

EXAMPLE 3

13:30 FT Dundee United 0 : 1 Rangers MC

61’ Kyle Lafferty

In this match, Rangers were priced at 1.59 away from home against a team they had scored 4-3-4-2 goals against in their last 4 head to heads. My conclusions:

CONCLUSION/NOTES/STANDOUT STATS – good defen-

sive record for Rangers so early and an emphatic Celtic win already makes this 1.59 of some appeal. Expect early tight exchanges here and the prospect of a concerted period of 0-0 before a most likely Rangers first goal.

The match was 0-0 at half-time. And Dundee United had a man sent off. Lay Dundee United at half-time. Back Rangers to win the 2nd half.

Here’s another half-time score line we can exploit, in this example there is a general tendency for one of the teams to be a strong market leader. However, the half-time result does not quite reflect the apparent dominance suggested by the odds:

EXAMPLE 4

20:45 FT Derry City 2 : 2 Drogheda

4’ Brian Gannon

38’ Gavin Brennan

Gareth McGlynn 74’ Robert Duggan (og) 88’

Background – Derry are 1.14 favourites to win this match. Extremely strong favourites. However, this is not reflected in the half-time scoreline which sees outsiders Drogheda 0-2 up away from home. Now is the time to back a come- back by the 1.14 favourites.

What can we do?

Back Derry at odds much better than the pre-match odds of 1.14 (we would have lost on this occasion as Derry did

not win the match but would have backed a very short odds team at far greater odds).

Lay Drogheda in the match odds at 0-2 at odds much lower than were available pre match.

Lay 0-2 scoreline in the Correct Score Market.

Bottom line

Turn your football betting into 2nd half betting. Here are the advantages:

• The odds in all markets will offer greater value (using in-play facilities at bookmakers such as www.bet365. com and www.betfair.com) because the expected result has not materialised.

• Backers can back their original fancies at better odds. • Layers can lay markets at lower odds (and remember

betting exchange layers want low odds when they lay). • There will be greater urgency in the 2nd half for a fan-

cied team to redress the balance. Half-time team talks can work wonders (ask Benitez in THAT Champions League Final).

So which matches do you choose?

Quite simply, let the bookmakers do the work for you. Focus on matches where one team’s odds indicate they are the hot favourites. I normally focus on matches where one team is 1.6 odds or over.

And wait until half-time.

consider using in-play bookmakers or betting exchanges like Betfair, and utilise the value odds available for both backers and layers.

I hope you found something here to whet your appetite. Do let me know which one (or ones!) you decide to try out – I look forward to hearing about your successes.

And don’t forget to check out the accompanying videos for each of these articles. They can help you implement the strategies immediately.

You can access the videos here: