The Grand National in April each year is something of a British obsession, with huge amounts being staked on the race between now and the race day on April 11th. This spells a big opportunity for techies utilizing the best apps as the market is virtually limitless.
Betting: Which are the best apps to use and how should you use them?
Well, firstly, try out different ones and maybe use the forthcoming 2015 Cheltenham Gold Cup as a test-bed as this is also a huge gambling race in the country.
One of the easiest and quickest to use apps out there is the Skybet app for Android. This enables techies to gamble easily on other sports than racing, but also enables analysis of racing form quickly and easily.
Most major bookmakers have similar apps and deals, although these vary constantly. However, the more sophisticated techie punter tends to prefer to choose from one of the different Betfair apps available. Betfair is a tech site first and foremost and is simply an exchange of buyers and sellers (the latter accepting or “laying” bets) which means there’s no traditional bookmaker involvement.
The apps vary enormously in their level of sophistication and analysis – along with the data input and parameters required from users. So, it’s a matter of trialling (preferably for free and all the apps have a free trial) different ones to see which works best for you.
The good news is that you don’t have to know much about horse racing to make a profit betting on it. If you make use of the trading apps, you can make your money by trading on the change in odds on the biggest betting exchange in the world. While the majority of people having a bet on the Grand National will be backing the horse they want to win, you can make your profit through the ever changing odds during the ante-post period and right up until race day.
The key difference with betting exchanges compared with bookmaker sites is that users can both place and lay (accept other people’s) bets. For example, if you don’t see any value in someone else’s selection, you can choose to lay (accept) the bet. And if can’t find the odds you’re looking for, you can input a price and see if another user will accept your bet.
If you’re going to try your hand at bet trading, you need to leave sentiment behind. You are aiming to make money by studying and predicting the movement of the odds on a betting exchange. It’s similar in principle to a stock market trader dealing in the movement on prices of commodities, foreign exchange and companies.
Anyone can trade bets, you don’t have to be a pro, but it’s the technology in the many different trading apps that really makes it possible. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to keep track of different markets – they move too quickly and there are too many to monitor without getting the software to do the monitoring for you. The trading apps such as Geeks Toy, Betting Assistant and Traderline are just three examples of trading apps that make it possible to trade on multiple betting markets at once.
Some of the apps have particular tools for a certain sport – such as football or horse racing – and others are more generalized. Traderline includes horse racing tools to give you a better experience when trading on the racing markets, but also gives you access to head to head stats when you want to look at past form. For football, there are in-play stats which provide live data about games that are taking place in real time.
Traderline has Dutching and Bookmaking tools so that you can place a number of bets simultaneously. There’s also the benefit of one-click betting, which mean your trades will be among the fastest placed on the exchange. Geeks Toy is another app that has a specific focus on horse racing and its unique in-play interface has been designed to cope well with the fast-moving horse racing markets.
Most trading apps feature a ladder interface and this allows the user to view the data in a different way to the standard or grid interface. The ladder view allows traders to see the full market depth, with all the values associated with a price (amounts available, volume already traded, etc). It gives a short-term history of the market which helps a user predict the direction of the market. With a default stake set, you can then place orders immediately, clicking on either the blue or pink cell (to back or lay) adjacent to the price you want to enter the market at. To cancel, you just click on the stake and it will be removed. The speed with which you can place orders means you can place a high number of trades in almost no time, giving you a real advantage over other users. For beginner bet traders, there are educational videos to guide you through using betting apps.
Some apps also give you the option of graphical representations of when selections have been matched, or where you are in the queue. The best idea is to try different trading apps to see which one you like using the best, and which works for the particular betting system you have in mind. Most of the trading apps are available in a free trial before you need to commit to paying a subscription. One of the best features about the apps is that you can use them in simulation mode – where the bets you place are virtual but use the live data. So it’s a no-risk way of trialling new betting systems.
It’s worth getting in some trials on bet trading in plenty of time before the Grand National betting begins in earnest – and this can be weeks before the race day. That way, with the help of a betting app, you’ll be able to make profits on other people’s bets – the majority of which will be based on different factors as varied as knowledge of the horse and trainer through to the fact that a punter likes the name of the horse. With a betting trading app, you have the potential to build bags of profit by trading multiple bets on an event that most people will only have one bet on. And without the tech in the design of these betting apps, it simply wouldn’t be possible to keep track of so many bets at once.
By philcampbell and Paolo Camera