Trading is simply the skill of predicting the movement of the odds on a selection, placing a Back and Lay bet at differing odds and when the prediction is correct you can lock in a guaranteed profit if you should so wish or have a "free" bet on the horse traded.

When we developed Bet-IE's Trading function we wanted to help make it easier for a complete beginner to get a feel for the price movements on Betfair. So we developed the Bet Prompt feature and we also decided to introduce the "Learning Mode". These two features mean even a user who has never used Betfair before can let Bet-IE teach them when a likely price movement is about to occur and they can use the Learning mode to have Bet-IE keep track of their profit/loss without the need to place cash on their trades. So hopefully new traders can get all the small mistakes made (which everyone has to make) without causing damage to your Betting Bank.

Trading is quite an easy concept to understand, you are basically after a position in the market that puts your Lay odds lower than your Back odds. Its that simple, now comes the harder part, you have to predict which way the odds will move and then find the best way to get yourself in the correct position to take advantage of the movement. We do this in one of two ways you can either Lay the odds first and then Back the odds(if we think the Back odds will drift) or Back the odds first and then Lay the odds(if we think the Lay odds will shorten) you start by using the smaller amount of money (the smaller set of bars on the money meters) to get the first bet locked in price and if your reading of the market is correct then you complete the trade by entering a request for the opposite side of the trade, either way you are only interested in predicting a movement of price not the outcome of an event. Get the price movement correct and you can lock in a profit on the horse or event you are trading on.

So how do we determine which way the market will move? Well we have a few ways to help guide us we have the money meters that are available clicking F1 on the Bet-IE interface, we can also use the current money available as a guide to a price movement becoming close to occuring, also the history feature of Bet-IE can help identify trends, this tracks the last refreshed prices to indicate which way the odds are moving. It is the flow of money on the horse that moves the odds one way or another so let's demonstrate this for you in basic terms by showing you an example using the Learning Mode.

fig.1

Notice here that Josh you Are is clearly indicated by the Money Meters as about to move in odds, we can see clearly that money is building on the Back side of the trade and we have an indication to start the Trade with a Lay. (fig.1) So the trade is opened at 2.32 for £100 and I select to use AutoHedge to automatically equalise my profits across all competitors.

After a couple of minutes monitoring this horse I decide to close the trade because the Lay bars are starting to build which would make me think a reverse of the odds is likely to occur. Notice we have the history tracking the price movements to confirm the direction of the trend (on the trading window the two outer columns) the current price is at the top of the column. I decide to Back for odds of 2.76 so we can see from the runners list our position using the AutoHedge feature we make a profit of £15.95 for trades of £100.

I hope this little article has shown you the potential fun you can have with the Bet-IE Trading function. More importantly just learn to read the Money Meters it makes your like so much easier. Coupled with the simple point and click it really is easy to use and more importantly profitable.