For me, Lay The Draw (LTD) is one of the best football trades around and has been popular with football traders for a long time.
But what do you look for in a lay the draw trade?
When you have a Saturday coupon with 100 games on it, where do you start?
Selection after all is key and if you don’t get this right on a consistent basis, you will inevitably start to lose money, which we obviously don’t want.
Since I have been football trading, my Full Match LTD strike rate has been somewhere in the region of 75%, which is well enough to give you an excellent long term profit.
Selection is everything and below are the key things I personally look for when making my daily lay the draw selections.
Draw price of around 5.0 or less – I usually go for matches that have a draw price of around 5.0 or less, but ideally around 4.0 if possible.
You also want to make sure that 0-0 in the correct score market is 14.0 or above. If it is too low, it will indicate that the market is not expecting too many goals in the game. The market could be wrong of course, but it is a good broad indicator.
I basically use two types of LTD trades. The first is one is LTD1 where you have a short price favourite, for example 1.6 to win. With this kind of trade you are looking for the favourite to score first to secure an instant profit. If the underdog scores first you may have a small loss and then can either trade out or if it is early in the game wait for the favourite to come back or hope the underdog scores again for a small profit.
The other type of LTD trade is LTD2 (which I use in about 95% of my trades) when both teams have a good recent record of scoring and conceding goals, ideally a high percentage of games with over 2.5 goals. What you are looking for in this type of LTD trade is for one of the teams to go two goals up at which point you can trade out for a nice profit.
A low number of draws for each team (Ideally 2 or less for each team in the last 10 games) – Ideally, I don’t want teams that draw a lot unless of course they have a lot of 2-2 or 3-3 draws. I wan’t plenty of goals or at least a good number of games with over 2.5 goals for each team.
A good history of goals between both teams – This is another thing you need to look for. Although teams may be on form and scoring goals, some games can historically be cagey such as derby games. Do your research and try to avoid these games.
Teams that both score and concede goals – It’s no good selecting games where teams both score goals, but both have tight solid defences. We want goals after all! So a poor defence is important.
Over 80% of games for each team ending with at least 2 goals – I like to see a high number of games with at least two goals. Ideally over 80% for EACH team.
Very few 0-0 bore draws – Once again we want goals not bore draws. I only allow one bore draw max for each team in the last 10 games.
Teams that predominantly score in the first half (rather than scoring the majority in the second half)
So ideally I want to see as many first half goals as possible. I don’t want teams that score all their goals in the last 30 mins. For me, that’s a second half LTD trade, not a full match LTD, which is what this post is referring too.
A high percentage of first goals for both teams scored in the first half – Like the one above, I want to see the first goal in each teams matches (scored or conceded) to occur mostly in the first half.
Goal difference in previous match results – What I want to see is a good percentage of games that have a two or more goal difference, i.e. 2-0, 3-1, 3-0 etc. When I trade full match LTD, I want to see teams go two goals up ideally so I can take a nice profit. The bigger the goal difference in the match the bigger the profit.
Choose the best leagues – I generally try to stick to the major leagues, which include the English Premier League and Championship, Serie A, French 1, Spanish Primera League, Scottish Premier, Dutch etc. I also like the Scandinavian leagues such as the Swedish, Danish and Norwegian leagues and the U.S MLS. Also NEVER choose cup games, ONLY league games in the major professional leagues.
In Play Stats
There is one more thing I wanted to touch on and that’s the in-play stats as provided by Betfair.
Personally I pay close attention to these as they quite often determine at what point I will trade out.
For example. If I am in a trade and a team is 1-0 up and my profit is just a couple of quid and I can see that the opposing team are strong in the match and are racking up the goal attempts and corners etc, I may choose to trade out rather than wait for them to score and go in at half time 1-1. If this happens I then have to make a decision to trade out for a loss or wait for another goal in the second half and potentially increase my losses.
So as you see, by analysing the in-play stats, you can get a real insight into the probability of the the score going 1-1 or if it is more likely to go 2-0. There are no guarantees, but it definitely helps the vast majority of games.
There you go. My full match LTD selection criteria in a single post.
Any questions after reading this?
Feel free to email me using my contacts page. You may also sign-up to my newsletter and receive regular selections and results.
If you visit the main page you can see my latest lay the draw selections.
Have a good one.