Football Betting by Simon Bunch

Football betting’s easy – you just bet on Chelsea! But seriously, if you want to get some sort of money back you’ll need to look a bit deeper into the heart of betting on the beautiful game.

Basic bets include: Match Result, Correct Score, First Goal Scorer and variations thereon (last goal scorer, next goal scorer etc). Backing a centre back to score first/last gets you better odds, but then they don’t do it that often. Here are a few ways to get a bit of value out of football.

Half time/Full time
One bet I always like, though it’s generally at around 25-1 for a reason, is the half time/full time bet. With this, you pick one team to be leading at half time and the other to be winning at the end to be guaranteed decent odds. Now although this doesn’t happen all that often, some teams do tend to play better in one half or the other; witness the Bolton Chelsea game the other week, where everyone knew Chelsea would win in the end, but Bolton often start well and held on for 1-0 till half time. £25 thank you very much.

Scorecast
This is another combination bet through which you can get great odds. This time it combines the first goal scorer and the final score. Generally England to win and Owen to score first is not going to create huge odds, but if you fancy the opposition to get an early goal and England to heed the wake up call and come back and win, now we’re talking.

A couple of seasons ago I took odds of 250-1 on Harry Kewell to score first for Leeds and Chelsea to come back and win the game 3-2. Obviously a long shot, but if you can pick the right first scorer, anything can happen. (£500, thank you very much).

Accumulators
Take Man Utd, Chelsea and Arsenal. Add in Rangers and Celtic, and maybe Sheffield Utd and Reading. If they all win you get decent odds. Not great, but decent. Individually, each will be a poor return, unless you bet big, but together you can win a bit.

Variations on the accumulator
One of the problems with the accumulator is the possibility that your fancied teams end up losing to West Brom, or drawing with Inverness Caley Thistle and the whole bet is blown by that one result. One way of by-passing this is to invest in a Yankee or one of its strangely-named bedfellows – the Canadian, Heinz, Super Heinz and Goliath. Now bear with me – they’re actually very easy.

A Yankee consists of 11 different bets, using 4 results. You pick your four teams and then pay for all the combinations of those four; six doubles, four trebles and one four-match accumulator.

So if you pick 4 teams to win and one doesn’t, you’re still covered. Even if two lose you get something back. All the other names simply involve more results.

Canadian     5

Heinz        6

Super Heinz   7

Goliath       8

With this bet, I tend to attempt to pick out four teams at something like 3-1 or more. Generally away teams for better odds and if two come in you get your money back. Any more and you’re on the up.

Lucky 7 (Possible tips – though don’t blame me if they go wrong!)

1. Teams who have had a midweek European game, particularly an away game, often play badly the weekend after. Don’t necessarily back Man Utd to lose to Wigan, say, but maybe go for the draw (for example).

2. The English Championship is a very open division; even a team at 5-1 away from home is in with a chance (Sheffield Wed at Norwich, for example).

3. Look for bogey teams. Sometimes a team gets into a habit of losing to another team that they really shouldn’t lose to. Man Utd don’t like playing Middlesbrough and Liverpool are not fans of Crystal Palace. These runs don’t always work, and don’t last forever, but belief is a big factor in football. If one team believes it has a hoodoo over another that can be a powerful thing.

4. Derby games. Always back the underdog in a derby. They’re often much more up for it than their more vaunted opponents.

5. Look for combinations. Obviously there are more chances for it to go wrong, but when it goes right the rewards are much bigger.

6. Find a player on a hot streak and keep backing him to score first till it ends. Chelsea’s Frank Lampard is a fine example, as was Charlton’s Darren Bent.

7. Relegation threatened teams can win unbelievable games. In the last seven or eight weeks of the season the bottom five or six teams often beat some of the better teams just because they’re desperate. It's a good time to find some value on individual games, maybe even enough for a Yankee!!

Now the bookies know what they’re doing, so don’t expect to win a fortune, (if it were that easy everyone would be doing it), but there are ways to make betting more enjoyable, and to get some great odds while you’re doing it.