It’s difficult to believe that it’s 15 years since Betfair was launched, and yet for many of us regular bettors, hard to imagine our daily gambles without it. Early on, it was clear that some people were doing very well with it, all looking for angles and Holy Grails, exploiting the weaknesses of new users, and hoping for regular incomes. One of the first ‘Holy Grail’ systems to emerge was to lay the draw (LTD) in soccer games, and then to trade out for a profit when the odds had changed. I think most users have probably had a go at this. Many sold systems which identified potential games, and some claimed to be making very good livings from it. I certainly purchased two or three systems which were going to make me a pro!
Well, they didn’t, but this wasn’t necessarily the fault of the systems. As the weight of money to lay the draw pre-match piled on, the value of those prices became more concentrated and it started to get harder to make a profit, with the vultures hanging around waiting for the goal to be scored so they could pile in and trade out.
Nevertheless, LTD is still a sound system if the right matches are selected and where liquidity is sufficient. The fact remains, if the favourite goes a goal up in a match, the odds of the draw will be increased enough to trade out for a profit.
After having some success, and then usually losing it all again through the indiscipline of failing to trade out as planned (I know you’ve been there!), coupled with the time dedication necessary, I gradually lost interest. What I did try to do, however, was set up an automated LTD procedure in Bet Angel. The thinking behind this was that it would solve the two issues I had with LTD, the DISCIPLINE issue and the TIME issue. But I couldn’t get Bet Angel to work exactly as I wanted, and I tried a couple of dedicated LTD bots, but there were niggles.
So, along comes another dedicated LTD bot from Winningmore. This time, I believe, we have a bot which does what it says on the tin.
The first thing you have to know is that in order to use the bot you need to understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. You can’t just buy the bot, set it up, select a few matches and hope for the best. You can run it with minimum stakes, but there is no test mode. In reviewing this bot, of course, I will be giving no profit/loss data, because that depends entirely on the match selection criteria. If you have a profitable match selection criteria, then you can use this bot for those profits. The negatives of time and discipline are gone in one fell swoop.
Once the bot is set up on your computer (or can be on a VPS server if you are on your travels) you have to reset it daily so it can load the day’s matches. It is for use in the main wallet of Betfair only. It will not load any matches scheduled after midnight GMT. You then choose your stake (as it is laying there is a tick box for liability if that’s how you want to proceed), the minimum and maximum price you are willing to lay at, the time in seconds before the game starts when you want the bot to start monitoring for your max price. You then decide how much percentage profit you want the bot to be triggered at. This is an important figure which will be based on your experience of how much is a decent enough percentage to take and running a minimal risk that it won’t get matched. You can leave it at that. If, however, you like to get out of an unmatched trade before you risk losing 100% of your stake, you can tell the bot what percentage loss to trade out at. However, even at 100% it won’t take too long for this to move against you and I wouldn’t advise putting anything in this box because you will lose more than you will win in the long run. Rather, you should see your liability (total risk) as your stake, and if you look to get out of this before losing 100%, then you schedule a back bet by checking the allow timer box. You need to add 15 minutes to your timer for second half bets to allow for the interval, so if you want to get out at 65 minutes, you would set it to place the bet at 80 minutes.
Those of you who have been using this strategy for a while will know one of the frustrating times can be when no goals are scored. When this happens, of course, the draw odds can only move against you. The LTD bot has a neat little insurance option to swerve round this possibility, which is to bet on the 0-0 correct score for a percentage of your liability. So if your liability is £40, your stake is £10 and the 0-0 odds are 6.0 and you asked for 100% of your liability, this would be an additional £8 and obviously not worth the extra, but you may think that a £2 insurance for a quarter of your liability is a good ploy. You will need to keep records, of course, to see if this is something worth doing in the long term. But it’s there if you want it.
So – are there any negatives? You aren’t able to have different settings for concurrent games, and I would find this useful as there would be some games I would vary the percentage profit target. I am told by the author that there are plans to introduce this later this year. I would also like to have variable profit targets for different stages of the game. This is because if an early goal goes in, especially to the favourite, you may want a higher profit target than if you have to wait until the second half. I would also like my initial bet to stand when the game goes in play. This is because if I don’t get matched at the price I’m ordering, I still want the bet to run until (n) minutes after kick off.
Nevertheless, the bot works, takes away the stress and indiscipline, and if you have a profitable selection procedure, it will work for you. It does come with suggested selection procedures, plus videos of it working in action.
At £69.97 for an annual licence, I think this is good value, and there may even be a discount offer if you go to the site now. I am happy to recommend the LTD Bot from a source which has been around for quite a while and has many other betting tools available.
You can get Lay The Draw bot here:
