What is scalping?

By Will Webb

Scalping is short term trading. In this case, trading of sports bets. A unique opportunity exists to trade sports bets due to the advent of sports betting exchanges.

A ‘scalper’ looks to make lots of small profits, which in time add up. This method of trading needs lots of people involved in the market. This produces volatility in the price of bets and is great for sports arbitrage betting. An arbitrage sports bet is where you are guaranteed to win no mater the outcome.

Where can we find lots of participants in a betting exchange with lots of money entering the market? Betfair is the answer. More specifically UK horse racing is the best venue for this type of sports arbitrage betting. Before every UK horse race you have a surge of money entering the market and volatility in the price of bets exchanged.

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Assuming you understand the principles of the Betfair betting exchange, the concept is simple. You lay price must be higher than the back price and vice versa. This guarantees a profit no mater the outcome. The profit is equal to the difference or spread between the back and lay price. Trading software freely available for the Betfair sports exchange can display the live price for exchange members backing and laying bets. This enables the ‘scalper’ to dip into the market and snatch small profits.

Let’s look at the basics of scalping and how to scalp.

Scalping on Betfair basics

You can scalp any betting market. However, you must have enough people participating in the market or enough liquidity. The UK horse racing market on Betfair lends its self to scalping because of the amount of participants and volume of money entering the market.

Premier league football is another example of a good betting market. Lots of participants, large amounts of money coming in, and periods during matches where you get volatility in prices. You may want to check the odds for goal bets in a football match where one team has gone one goal up, and you have 10 minutes to go before half time. This results in lots of movement in prices and an opportunity to profit.

When we talk about scalping on UK horse racing we talk about pre race scalping rather than ‘in play’ scalping. The pre race markets is not susceptible to out side events like in play markets, reducing the risk.

Scalping a pre race market involves popping in an out of the market taking quick small profits. These are called scratch trades. With the pre race market there is no danger that the price is going to shoot off in one direction, for example, a rider falls of the horse.

To be successful you expect to take profits and loses of about the same size. The frequency of profits should outweigh your losses. You don’t want the losses to get out of hand other wise you are on an up hill struggle to regain them. The worst thing you can do is hang onto a bet because it’s losing and let it play out as the race commences. This is not the way and is simply gambling.

There are guides to scalping on Betfair available online with directions to which betting software to use to get you of to a great start.

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