Point & Unit Stake Advice

Last week, I posted quite a lengthy article about managing your spread bank, and I thought that this week to follow on from that, we needed to clarify how the points betting system works in spread betting.

What we will do is relate it to the Weekend Live markets we have been successful with over the last two weekends with Sporting Index.

Most tipsters will recommend bets based on a points system, and it is all perfectly straightforward in fixed odds betting, where you would set your single point level at say, £10, and stake £20 for a 2 point bet, or £5 for a 0.5 point bet and so on.

To take the most extreme examples from our Weekend Live markets, Total Goals and Total Goal Minutes, it is clear that betting on a 1 point, or £10 stake on each of them would produce vastly different liabilities. In fact, Sporting Index would refuse the TGM’s bet at that level, unless you were a big player.

The Total Goals buy price for the 7 featured matches on Saturday which we tipped up was 20.35 goals, which if bought at £10 would have incurred a maximum liability of 10 x 20.35 if no goals were scored.

Had Sporting had a lapse and allowed you to place a £10 on TGM’s at 1010 and no goals were scored, you would have been stopped out at 200 times stake, so £2000. Clearly, this is an extreme example, and in the event the 7 games gleaned 26 goals and a TGM’s total of 1395, so a good profit was made on each bet.

Hopefully, what this demonstrates is that while you need to have a points structure to your spread betting, it must be based on the market type, size and volatility.

For a low spread, low volatility bet like Total Goals, you would expect to place your bets at the level of your full point stake. Let’s use £10 as our point size for a low volatility spread.

If you look at a Total Goals price, either in a group of matches, or an individual game, you will see that the TGM’s price is roughly 50 times the TG’s price. So, if a match is spreading at 2.6-2.8 goals, you would expect to find the TGM’s price to be 130-140, and give or take a point or two, this is what you will always see.

Therefore, our TGM’s full point stake needs to be one-fiftieth of our Total Goals stake, so create a bet of similar liability, so a 20p stake would be the mark.

The other markets we like are the Aggregate Time of 1st Home/Away goal, both of which have been successful for us in the last two weekends. In our example of a 7 match group, the price for this market is likely to be somewhere between 300-400 depending on the strength or otherwise of the teams.

This market is a medium volatility market, and with a price of around 40% of the TGM’s figure in general, we should be staking at 40p as a full point, but as it has less of a variance I think a unit stake of 50p is sensible. I often advise a 0.5pt stake on one or other of the home/away markets, so 25p for these.

Bookings is a difficult one due to it’s volatility. There is an argument, and a strong one at that, that our unit stake on these markets should be lower than the 50p I am suggesting, but this comparative stake level has worked well for me over a long period.

The Corners market is the only other one we would be likely to enter on our Weekend Live bets, and my recommended unit stake for this would be £2.50.

Please let me know your comments regarding this or any other spread betting issues you  might have. I’m really keen to get some dialogue moving on the Forum, although I know it’s early days for the new spread betting area.

To summarise then, these are the full point stakes I suggest for the Weekend Live spreads which I’ve been recommending for the last week or two;

Total Goals - £10

Total Goal Minutes - £0.20

Aggregate 1st Home/Away Goal - £0.50

Bookings - £0.50

Corners - £2.50

I hope this helps you on your way to a better understanding of all things spread betting, so that you can sample the excitement and enjoyment that I experience with my spread trades.

Click on these links to open spread betting accounts with Sporting Index, Extrabet or Spreadex and claim a total of £600 in free bets.