What Makes Cheltenham Markets So Good for Betfair Trading?

[00:00] Now there's a common misconception That, uh, that I'm doing something special And you see some of the big results that I'm banging and you're Well, part of the reason that you get these big results is because the markets

[00:14] And in fact, most of the underlying characteristics that you see within the market are very similar to what you see on a day to day basis. you're doing at Chartnham.

[00:28] And just watch the rest of this video. that are different at Cheltenham.

[00:43] And the big one is the amount of volume that you see within the market. You will see large amounts of money, um, you will also notice that there's a lot of money going through, you know, millions per race.

[00:58] But that actually works to your advantage, I think, because you can actually, You can see the orders coming in and going out, you can see

[01:10] And that's why I like Trading Chatham, because it's, uh, I find it a little bit easier to trade, uh, which is why I get such a high strike rate. on Betfair but also on Betdag.

[01:25] And part of the reason for that is I find the markets much more readable. liquidity, the market tends to move much sharper on lower volumes. will move it quite a bit, but in a big market like Cheltenham, it won't move

[01:42] it much and therefore you get more time to have a look at the market, understand what those orders are doing and be able to act upon them. So, you know, there are things like the first race of the day I always find hard,

[01:58] especially on Cheltenham because there's no sort of oomph running through it. There's no theme, you don't know what jockey or trainer is in form. All of the money's been there for ages, and therefore, you know,

[02:11] If I'm going to get tripped up on one market, it will be the And then subsequently on each day, the first race of each day But once the day gets underway, you tend to find that the market

[02:26] So if you want to avoid a loss, don't trade the first race of the day. You'll probably find all of the other races much, much easier. But also, um, when we are at a big meeting like Cheltenham, the

[02:39] So when that previous race is finished, money arrives in the market And of course, it peaks towards the end, um, or when we get But, you know, that is quite a natural thing to occur.

[02:56] it for much, much longer periods. So, if you're looking for one reason that I produce much bigger results there, it's because the markets are much more readable, um, but also the

[03:08] So, it makes the market and the opportunities, or the chance of finding an opportunity within the market, just that much higher. So yeah, those are the sort of core underlying characteristics as to how

[03:22] Chatham trades a little bit differently from your day to day racing, but let's actually have a look at some of those specific markets and how they trade. this market for you in the background.

[03:36] It's important to understand that when we come across a competitive handicap, So you can see It's quite a narrow range that we're moving And the reason for that is when you get a competitive handicap, um, nobody

[03:51] And that's good because that's how the handicapper set it up in theory. together because they're apportioned weights according to their ability. And the net effect of that is that you tend to find the market gets stuck within

[04:06] an hour range, and at bigger meetings it gets stuck within a tiny range, and at smaller, um, lower quality meetings that range tends to be a little bit bigger, but nonetheless it does tend to stick within that particular range.

[04:19] And one of the problems is, is that the market isn't going to move much And in fact, if you say to me, you know, where are the odds going to go in this

[04:31] I have no idea. is I will go in, I will do a make market, I will offer money to the market.

[04:43] And the reason that I'm doing that is because I'm not expecting the So I scale my trade appropriately. I don't particularly Um, have an opinion on how many ticks it's going to go in one

[04:56] direction or the other, but I do know that If it goes up to the top end of a range opposite At the other end of the range, but it will be within that tight range. So i'll go for a small expected gain and i'll try and do that as frequently as

[05:12] possible Where i'll abandon a trade in a market like this is if it breaks out of that range above or below in which case I know that Uh, there is money going for it and therefore I'll decide to stop at that particular moment or I'll try and

[05:25] hunt for a runner that is staying more typically within its current traded range. but in other markets, that's sort of what tends to happen. You don't tend to get money going for one particular runner.

[05:40] Or another, and therefore you adapt your trading style to take account of that. Um, and if a trend starts to develop in the market, uh, then So yeah, that's the way that these sort of markets trade.

[05:55] or at a lower quality meeting, that's the sort of way that you trade it. stakes and you can do more trades because the market stays open for just that

[06:07] And that's how you would typically trade a market that you see here. you can see that this is at evens, this is That's decimal odds of two.

[06:21] Because the first thing that you'll notice is it has a much wider traded range. And rather than try and sort of narrate you through the nitty gritty actually on screen, it's probably better that I narrate to you just by voice only, and

[06:37] How I will trade it. So because of the shorter price, we're sort of committed to trying to find a direction in this market, and we need to look for clues to that.

[06:50] The money is going to be focused on the front too, because they're at short prices and it's, it's pointless on the rest of the field. And you can also see that on the favourite, we're near a crossover point.

[07:03] But on this particular occasion, the issue that you've got is that it's mid range. At the top of the range, you may catch a breakout.

[07:16] sort of saying, well, it could sort of go in any direction from there. money on the back and the lay side, and where that money has been matched,

[07:30] because that will give you good clues as to where the price is likely to go, So if we look at the favourite here, you can see there's the best part of

[07:42] 55, and 204, and there's just over 30, 000 at 199 and 2, and there's a 3 percent difference in the amount of money matched between 2 and 202.

[07:54] 24, 2. 26. Significantly larger amounts down there, you don't need And there's a 20 percent delta between the, uh, the amount of

[08:06] 24. So those are the sort of things that you're looking at to try and Put You need to have a good idea of where you think the price is going to go.

[08:18] analysis and watching the market for a few minutes will give you an indication as to whether people are willing to back or lay at the current prices. So it enables you to look in much greater depth into the market

[08:35] to understand exactly where the order flow is, what people are And that will give you a clue as to where the direction of this market is headed. at, then you're beginning to start to look for changes in those to give you a clue

[08:52] And if we speed this up, you'll be able to see exactly what changes are taking place So what you see when we're Looking at this high speed video is if you look at

[09:05] the odds at two and the amount of money That's getting matched at that point. 202 So it looks as though it's about to break down and that will necessarily

[09:17] influence the second favorite So you could have backed the favorite Although crossover point Or you could have laid the second favorite here in order to get a decent trade and take advantage of that differential you saw on the favourite.

[09:34] So this is what a typical race at Chuntnam will sort of look like. is the amount of money that is being traded on the second favourite. Despite being at a higher price than the favourite, you can see there's

[09:48] So if one of these two 10, 000 pounds breaks then that could be a significant move underway. So as I've mentioned in this video the markets move in slow motion, it gives

[10:02] Now what you're looking at is at 3. We're looking very closely at the short term traded volume that we

[10:14] You can see there's reasonable amounts of backing going on at 3. 4 on the second favorite. If we look at the favorite, you can see that there is more money coming at 2.

[10:27] favorite appears to be being backed. and you really can't have both being backed at the same time.

[10:39] So if you're looking for a clue as to which is going in which direction, But the most interesting clue that we got on this market was what happened next.

[10:53] gradually getting more and more support. And if we bring our focus to the second favourite again, we can see that there's a slight imbalance here between the amount of money waiting at 3.

[11:07] There's equal amounts and then bang, you can see there was a 4. That's shifted the price up by one tick. It's made an increase on the amount of volume, but that's also spread across 3.

[11:22] 45. This tells us that somebody went in at this particular point in the market 4. And you can see that that has set off a bit of a drift. We're trying to assess what's happening on a short term basis.

[11:39] on this particular race that the favorite is being backed The second So yeah, these are the sort of things that you would do, the sort of things that

[11:52] you'd be looking at when you're trading a market in this particular manner. But yeah, we can see that somebody actively laid the second favorite there. that direction, then we can expect the second favorite to drift.

[12:06] the favorite is being backed anyway. So that lends weight to this particular position within the market. of transpired from here and it's very often a good thing to do to watch higher

[12:24] speed videos because That makes the trend look smoother than if you're looking at it on a very short term basis So yeah, let's have a quick look at what happens to this market on the way to the official off

[13:08] occurs on a frequent basis All you need to do is just have your eyes open in Um, but basically, when we look at the first race of the day,

[13:22] But sometimes a theme will develop. Um, but on this particular day, uh, the first, um, winner of, of, of this particular day, it was a horse trained by Willie Mullins and ridden by Paul Townend.

[13:39] It was Vauban, and as a consequence, when we look at the activity on the next race after that, there was a little bit of backing activity for, um, I think it Uh, the, I'm pretty sure it was.

[13:52] Um, that pulled in the price a little bit, um, simply because of the fact that Mullins Town End had won the first race of the day. And when we get to that particular stage and statement actually went on to win that

[14:08] particular race, then what do you think happened on the third race of the day? If we want to make money by trading, we want to back at a higher price If we think that the price is going to come in, if we think people are going

[14:22] post time, and hedge our position. It didn't require anything amazing to do it. and you would have known the money was going to go for that horse in.

[14:38] You just needed to be able to watch TV. BetAngel can do that for you. If you go onto the forum, um, you can download a little piece of automation that

[14:52] will automatically alert you if there are two um, winning combinations of a jockey or a trainer, um, and it will alert you to the fact that that has just happened so that you can look at the next race, um, and jump on that sort of an opportunity.

[15:07] was likely to happen in the next race. I was going to back the Mullins runner in the third race. There are many different ways of trading the market.

[15:22] you have no trading skill whatsoever, these are the sort of opportunities It's happened more than once.

[15:34] highlighted at other meetings. way to be able to do some Betfair trading and being able to profit regardless of

[15:46] what actually happens in the race itself. of Cheltenham and some of the markets at Cheltenham and what you're likely to see, and more specifically, uh, what my view on how to trade it is.

[16:00] on day to day racing, but of course there's a lot more volume at Cheltenham. And, you know, I do get bigger results at Cheltenham, and I can use bigger stakes,

[16:12] but part of the reason Um, that I tend to get better results of Charnham is because They're slightly slower and less sort of violent, for want of a better And that just gives me that little bit more time to be able

[16:26] to identify exactly what's going on and to be able to act on it. markets, uh, the way that I would approach those particular markets and And of course, now and again, you do get these big moments that occur,

[16:41] like that Mullins Gamble, um, that really do set the markets on fire. absolutely first class opportunity. So yeah, I hope that that video has been useful for you.