Understanding Overs - and Unders

[LuckyInLove]

This is one part that has confused me for many months while MBing, I don't know why I found it so difficult to grasp . So I spent some time today to try and knock this on the head and get to working them out. It is the understanding of overs and unders and which ones are safe to use with middles and those that are unsafe with a hole though which you can lose both bets.

I expect there are many out there who find it simple, but I thought I would write my conclusion for the sake of others like me, that have tended to avoid looking at them when looking for matches and put it in a way that I can always remember which way round they go.

Overs and Unders appear in markets like Total Goals / Total Points etc. and I find are useful to look at if I want some wagers to go through on evens, levelling out a long WR. So for example you could get them like this Over 105.5 pts / Under 105.5 pts. Easily dealt with you can bet one and dutch the other, or even lay it at the exchange. Your bet is safely matched.

But when the points are different, for example when -

Bookie A has an Over 105.5 / Under 105.5 market

and

Bookie B has an Over 104.5 / Under 104.5 market.

If you match the Over 105.5 with an Under 104.5 and the points come to 105 then you will find you have lost both sides. Alternatively if you match the Over 104.5 with the Under 105.5 market then all points are covered, with the lovely chance of a middle happening if the points do come to 105, you will win both sides of the match.
Here are my conclusions, for each type I have put the markets and values that you should compare against each other :-


OVER

• Lay Over - same value or larger (more than)
• Dutch Under - same value or larger (more than)

UNDER

• Lay Under - same value or smaller value (less than)
• Dutch Over - same value or smaller value (less than)

For remembering simply - Over is larger, Under is smaller

I am going in search of middles and grumbles now in my quest for full understanding . If anyone else has any tips in this area then please post them.

[LuckyInLove]

I guess it was just me then
Was this of any use to anyone? If so I will write up my voyage of discovery as I go on. My next target is after a horrific few months of winning at bookies and losing at casinos, which I believe to be just statistics at play is the added pain of losing most of my bonuses through currency exchange rates. Does anyone know of a way to protect against movement, other than shoring up your balances in different Neteller or Moneybooker accounts?

[tom]

Does anyone know of a way to protect against movement, other than shoring up your balances in different Neteller or Moneybooker accounts?

Movement will happen, inevitably, so the only thing you can do is compensate for it. The most basic method is to underlay your bets.

For instance, say you have a €50 SNR. Currently, with £1 = €1.11 that's worth £45.
You could match this off as normal at 8/8 and, if it loses, you're sorted for around £37.63 profit (give or take, depending on commission rate).
If it wins, however, you now have €350 and have paid out £277.34 at the exchange.
If the currency rate is still £1 = €1.11 then your balance is worth £315.31 and you've made £37.97 profit from the bet.
However, if the exchange rate has drifted to £1 = €1.14 your balance is only worth £307.02 and your free bet only netted you £29.68 - still good, but after you've taken into account forex fees, on over £300 your bonus profit could be down into single figures.

So...

Instead of assuming its worth £45, assume it's worth £40.
If it loses, you return around £33.46, so about £4.50 less than you would have done with a straight match. But you've busted out, and you're now in sterling, so its done.
If it wins, you still have your €350 at the bookies, but now you have only paid out £246.54 at the exchange - a whole £30.80 less than with a straight match, meaning your profit from the bet is £30.80 more than if you did a straight match.
If the balance drifts against you to £1 = €1.14, your profit is still £60.48 and, even if you lose a few percent in forex fees, you should still end up with £40+ profit from the bonus.

And, of course, if the exchange rate drifts in your favour, so much the better.

[Andy]

I guess it was just me then

I thought it was good i just couldnt think how to make it better so didnt want to dilute it at all with waffle. I suppose i would say that you are talking about total goals and needing to have bet in the Over 15 and Under 17 say, then 16 wins both, so the Over amount must be lower than the Under. BUT it is different if you have bet on a Spread (handicap, ie amount head start a team has to win). If you have bet on a team +15 and the other team -17 you would LOSE both if it is 16, neither beat the spread. The markets are not always shown as +/- or Over/Under so just make sure you have the middle covered in the market you are betting on.

A tip is to take the three amounts around your bet, say it is a -5.5 spread. Get on live chat and ask them, im going to bet $100 on TeamA -5.5 at odds of -105, if they win by 4 what happens? If they win by 5 what happens? If they win by 6 what happens? Write down the answers on a bit of paper, then go to the other sites live chat and ask them the same questions for that bet, make sure they both had the middle amount as a win. Its not a bad idea to do that until you are 100% certain in your head which bets win and why and can do it without thinking.

[AlTeRnAtEcApSmAn]

I was going to add that it means the over has to be under the under or the under over the over for a middle- but thought it would confuse so I didn't

[munk]

I guess it was just me then
Was this of any use to anyone?

I'm sorry, I did start replying to your post yesterday but it was really just what you said anyway and you said it better than my reply so I didn't reply heh... I did thank you for the post though a few times I think so ... thanks

The kind of thing I was trying to say yesterday was:

I think the thing with any kind of handicap is being able to visualize what happens under different circumstances, like what happens around the 'edges' (ie if it's over 104 vs under 104.5, think what happens if 104 goals are scored).

Also I think of Venn Diagrams and think whether the different 'sets' are intersecting or not... see this is where I decided not to reply because it's hard to describe and maybe not many people know what the hell venn diagrams are lol... basically think about whether the lines you're betting on intersect (in which case you have a middle ie over 104 vs under 104.5) or whether they're just 'touching' (in which case you've covered all bases but no middle, ie over 104.5 vs under 104.5) or whether they're 'disjunct' (in which case you could be screwed if the bit you've not covered gets hit (ie over 104.5 vs under 104).

As always, look at the prices as well, if it looks too good to be true then it probably is - a lot of the time it's easy to look at the last example above (over 104.5 vs under 104 which means you're out of pocket if 104 hits) and think YES I got a middle and it's profitable too!!! The arb won't be massively profitable a lot of the time, it might be 2-3% profitable and you think yes that's great, I got a middle and it's profitable... but when you look again closely it's not a middle at all because if exactly 104 goals are scored, you lose BOTH bets and you're well out of pocket... slim chance of it happening but I definitely wouldn't take that chance.

Does anyone know of a way to protect against movement, other than shoring up your balances in different Neteller or Moneybooker accounts?

You mean currency fluctuations? If so then I'm in same position right now dabbling in US markets/books.

I was at one point considering hedging by investing in some USDGBP index tracker perhaps, but then thought again... I think in the end I figured I would just try and leave a large chunk of money in USD pretty much indefinitely and if/when eventually I do want to get out of the US market, just wait for a good time when the exchange rate is going for me.

[LuckyInLove]

Thanks tomwakefield, I went over what you put there and agree with your method. I got to thinking that there must be a way ultimately to work out your underlaying percentage/amount also to the amount of WR that you are expected to go through - I will add that to my list of todo's Got to put my maths experience somewhere so that will be a good one to tackle.

Andy, Cheers, a good idea to ask the CS. I make it a rule to copy all the rules of a bookie into OneNote when I start them up in chance that I can refer to them later if I need to. As I have only done basic back/lays and dutching so far I haven't really sat back and read through them. One day soon I need to look more closely - before something bites me.

AlTeRnAtEcApSmAn, actually right, a more poetic version to remember.

munk, my approach was a little more one-dimensional than a Venn, I found myself going through each one checking the scores just to make sure they came out
I thought the same as you with the hedging - looked around on bookies and youtube to see if it can be done as a neat way of bagging the financial trading bonuses. So far ended up being more confused than ever - but that's no problem, the answer is out there. I just think if you are going to go through a potentially long WR or have a large balance hanging around in another currency then with all this credit crunch and fluctuation in rates then I want to ensure against large swings.

Thanks for all your thoughts and experience...

[tom]

Thanks tomwakefield, I went over what you put there and agree with your method. I got to thinking that there must be a way ultimately to work out your underlaying percentage/amount also to the amount of WR that you are expected to go through - I will add that to my list of todo's Got to put my maths experience somewhere so that will be a good one to tackle.

With currency compensation, it's a bit difficult to do it accurately, as you don't know whether the rates will be when you want to withdraw. I just do a rough 5% or so, but being very conservative with what I estimate I might get back.

When underlaying with WRs, the amount to underlay for small WRs are fairly easy to calculate. For instance, the Bet24 offer (deposit £60, £30 bonus, £120 WR).

Bet24
First bet of £90 (2.5/2.5, 5% comm) returns 96.94% of back stake. If it wins, you have another £30 to bet, which you can reasonably expect to get the same return with. This represents a further loss of (£30 * 3.06%) 92p which you will lose, should your bet win. If your matcher allows, put this in your spreadsheet for the first £90 bet, and this will even up the returns over the entire WR.

e.g.
£90 @ 2.5/2.5, 5% commission, £91.46 lay

If it wins: you're down £2.19
If it loses: you're down £3.11 and bust out

£30 @ 2.5/2.5, 5% commission, £30.61 lay

Either way: you're down £0.92 with the WR completed.

So, overall, if the first bet wins, you're down £2.19 on that bet, and £0.92on the second bet for an overall loss of £3.11, which matches what you lost if you bust out on the first bet.

Couple of final points:

With WRs, I aim for a better return should I have to complete the full WR. This compensates for the extra work I have to do finding and placing the bets.

I don't use the above method exactly, as its impractical for large WRs. I aim to break even at the bookies if the bet isn't an arb, and weight all my profit in favour of a win at the bookies if the bet is an arb (so winning at the bookies gives the greatest returns).