Over/Under Martingale (Football)
Description
This is a classical Martingale staking plan applied to Over/Under x.5 goals markets in football. You lay on the Over x.5 selection in each market (e.g. Over 0.5 goals, Over 1.5 goals, etc.), and as the score increases (or rather, IF it does so), you aim at recovering your loss by transferring it over to the bet in the next market. For example, you start by laying £4 at 1.5 on "Over 0.5 Goals" in the market "Over/Under 0.5 Goals". When the first goal is scored, the first bet loses £2. So you lay £4 + £2 = £6 against "Over 1.5 Goals" in the market "Over/Under 1.5 Goals", then - against "Over 2.5 Goals" and so forth.
You can place bets in advance, i.e. lay on a higher score than the current number of goals, e.g. lay on Over 1.5 when the score is 0:0, then on Over 2.5 when the score is 1:0 and so on. This entails higher prices (and greater risks), but somewhat insures you against late goals in the last minutes of the match when you might not make it in time to place the last, most critical, bet.
The classical triggers cover markets up to "Over/Under 8.5 Goals". There may be less markets in a match (say, up to "Over/Under 4.5 Goals"), the triggers will still work. You must add all of them, starting from "Over/Under 0.5 Goals", because that's where the first bet will be placed.
The triggers will function only if the score for the match is available in the program (BetFair does not provide this information for some football matches, so you will have to skip them).
Check out the similar Goal Lines Martingale plan.
Triggers
Profile name: over-under-martingale
How to run this trigger package:
1. Download and run the above installation file.
2. It contains three files: the trigger file, the Market Locator search template and the program settings. These files will be copied to corresponding folders on your computer (where other triggers and templates are already stored).
3. Run MarketFeeder Pro and choose the right settings profile from the drop-down list:
Here are the constants you can adjust:
| init_bet | Amount of the initial bet |
| min_price | Minimum price of the bet |
| max_price | Maximum price of the bet |
| goal_offset | Number of goals to add to the current score to get the market for laying |
| wait_after_goal | Number of minutes to wait after a goal is scored |
| max_liab | Maximum bet liability, % of bank |
| min_vlm | Minimum matched volume |
Download the classical Over/Under Martingale triggers
Triggers In Action
I will declare at once that I had to work hard on these triggers to start believing in them! The classical version of the file, the one we used to have for years on this site, would lay on Over 0.5 goals, then on Over 1.5 goals, etc. up until Over 8.5 goals (if it ever got to this point).
Guess what? Those triggers sucked! Scratch that, that strategy was inherently impotent. I know, I know, many people warned me, but did I listen? We had these triggers available on our website because... well, because it was and still is one of the most popular football strategies for online betting! So I feel it is my duty to shed some light on the performance of this strategy.
Here are some results I got from laying on each outcome starting from Over 0.5 goals:
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My most painful points were goals scored late into the game (the market remained suspended with no chance to lay a new bet) and high odds of Over x.5 goals at the end of the game. These wiped my bank out in no time!
I did have some green days, such as these:
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But the profits I got on those days were nowhere near the figure that could compensate the horrible losses generated on all other days.
I was puzzled: why is this staking plan so popular then? Could I be missing something?
So I decided to try to tackle my two greatest hurdles and modify the plan a little. The next 7 days of testing reflect the results of my experiment.
Day 1. December 16, 2018
To insure my triggers against late goals, I started laying in one market ahead of the current score. E.g. just as the match started, I would lay on Over 1.5 goals. Then after the first goal was scored, I'd lay on Over 2.5 goals (with my Over 1.5 goals bet still waiting to be settled), and so on.
I have also set a cap on the maximum liability of my bet - no more than 40% of my currently available funds.
In addition to that, I limited the markets where I was willing to pursue the staking plan to a maximum of Over 5.5 goals. Anything beyond that - I'll just accept the loss and quit the match. My Market Locator template did not even bother to add markets 6.5 to 8.5, but you can easily modify it to include those markets.
My settings:
| init_bet | 10 |
| min_price | 1.01 |
| max_price | 100 |
| goal_offset | 1.5 |
| wait_after_goal | 1 |
| max_liab | 40 |
Total P/L: 53.71
ROI: 1.55%
Wins: 62, losses: 107
Day 2. December 17, 2018
My first day looked promising, so I kept all the settings and tried them the next day.
Wow, was I surprised! Obviously, it helped a lot that the triggers were laying ahead of the current score. If you lay against 1.5 goals and, after the first goal, against 2.5 goals, then you end up with double profit if the score stays at 1 - 0 or 0 - 1! And if the score does change to 1 - 1 after all, then you still get profit from laying on Over 2.5 and Over 3.5! That happened to me several times that day.
After checking my statement in the evening, I also noticed that in the Atalanta vs Lazio match, the triggers did not lay on Over 1.5 goals and instead went straight to laying on Over 2.5 goals. Worried, I looked at the trigger logs and saw that the Over 1.5 goals market had been settled soon after the start. It turned out that the first goal was scored at the very first minute.
So the triggers did not have enough time to lay on Over 1.5, but they safely placed a bet in the next available market, Over 2.5 goals. At least I knew I would not incur losses in case a goal was to be scored soon after the start or shortly after the previous goal.
However, I was feeling nervous because on December 17 I did not have any matches with scores over 5 goals. Would I be able to get away so easily the next day?
Total P/L: 406.75
ROI: 53.10%
Wins: 28, losses: 19
Day 3. December 18, 2018
Trying to focus on big games only, I've added a minimum volume condition, which limited my betting to markets with at least £1,000 of matched volume.
My settings (only those that are different from the previous day):
| min_vlm | 1000 |
That day I had a couple of matches with high scores (Aberdeen 5 - 1 Dundee and Porto 4 - 3 Moreirense), however they did not ruin me financially:
Day 4. December 19, 2018
This was more than a promising start and I got "curiouser and curiouser": I felt like a genius with a licence to print money.
Just look at that day's statement.
Total P/L: 481.69
ROI: 32.30%
Wins: 40, losses: 35
Have you spotted it yet? The secret of my seeming success was the ability to place aggressive bets to cover my previous losses. It all looked very good in the La-La Land, but what if the real market lacked the liquidity to match my hundreds of pounds? That's what I set my mind on finding out the next day!
Day 5. December 20, 2018
So what happens if my bet just cannot be matched with the existing market offer? I modified my trigger so as to only fire a bet if there was enough money at the current lay price to match the entire bet!
I also introduced a trigger that logged any situations when my bet could not be placed due to there being too little money in the market:
Seeing that my liabilities could rocket so high, I also limited the maximum price of bet to 20:
| max_price | 20 |
No other changes were made to the triggers, but look at this amazing contrast to the previous day!
Total P/L: -623.81
ROI: -66.80%
Wins: 12, losses: 31
It immediately revealed what I had been suspecting already: that my staking plan relied on the complete and unconditional matching of my bets! Not good, is it? What can be done to improve my actual chances of matching the bets?
Day 6. December 21, 2018
In view of the previous day's revelations, I made a couple of changes to my triggers:
- I reduced my initial bet to just £2;
- I decided to drip-feed my bets rather than place them in one go. Specifically, if there was not enough liquidity at the current lay price, the triggers would lay as much as there was available, and later try again. To make sure that the Test Mode bets are simulated as closely to real bets as possible, I included a condition that only placed the next bet if the total matched money on the corresponding selection has increased by at least the amount of the previously made bet. E.g. if I need to lay £10 on Over 2.5 and only £3 is available, I lay £3 and wait for the next market refresh. If the total matched volume on Over 2.5 has increased from, say, £245 to £250 (a £5 increase), I then lay the next portion of my bet, because £5 is greater than my first portion of £3. And so I keep laying until all of my £10 are matched.
This has played out very well! The bets were sent portion by portion as the market gained more matched volume.
Total P/L: 398.35
ROI: 38.25%
Wins: 51, losses: 44
However, I made a mistake in the trigger that calculated the current loss, and it resulted in bigger stakes than originally intended. I was going to correct that mistake the next day.
Day 7. December 22, 2018
I fixed the bug in the calculation of the current loss, and now the sizes of bets were just enough to earn a fixed amount plus cover any previous losses. As I expected, my profits dropped (with the initial bet being £2), but they were still there!
Total P/L: 37.82
ROI: 13.94%
Wins: 33, losses: 52
So let's look at the big picture.
I give credit to everyone who claims that the Over/Under Martingale plan can ruin you financially. Yes, it can! I outlined its dangers at the beginning of this report, such as late goals and high liabilities.
I tried to eliminate those dangers as much as possible by laying ahead of the score (to generate profit even if two goals are scored in a quick succession) and accepting losses if the liability exceeded the predefined threshold.
I think this plan has a potential for even bigger profits. Luckily, there are hundreds of football games on a typical Saturday evening, so it's easy to test your ideas with MarketFeeder Pro. I'm not 100% sure, but I'd stay away from Asian leagues (I got the feeling that they scored more often than in other countries), but that should be verified against the actual sports statistics.
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Download the trigger installation file above and start testing this strategy right now! Are you not using MarketFeeder Pro yet? Try now!
How and where I test the triggers?
I use our BetVPS service to pre-set the triggers and Market Locator and leave it to run on its own until I check on the results at the end of the day.I occasionally use Time Machine to get a proof of concept or test any tweaks that I want to make to my triggers, on historical markets similar to the ones in which I bet when testing a particular strategy.
I use Test Mode only.
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