Lay the Draw has long been the go-to strategy for people who are new to sports trading. Largely because of its simplicity it’s a huge hit. However, over recent years its popularity has somewhat waned. This is mostly thanks to it being overused by punters in the market eroding value. The thing is, value is really in the eye of the beholder though and what you think is value might be very different from what other traders/bettors think.

Can Lay the Draw (LTD) still be used by people hoping to make a profit in 2020 though? Is it still a valid strategy for making a profit in the football betting/trading markets? Well, over recent weeks there have been a few videos popping up on YouTube about this very subject and we wanted to investigate them to see if they are a) for real or b) just YouTubers trying to put up videos with good SEO for the year 2020 to gain views and c) can the methods used be used by us here at Bet Dynamo to make profit during inplay betting?

What is Lay the Draw?

We better rewind here and speak about what LTD is for people who don’t know. On a Betting Exchange (Betfair, Matchbook etc.) you can back events and lay events, so for example this weekend Newcastle take on Crystal Palace, we can back Over 2.5 goals at 1.80 or Lay Over 2.5 goals at 1.82. When you back something you’re betting that it will happen, when you lay something, you’re betting that it won’t happen.

In the Home/Draw/Away or Win/Draw/Win market you can Lay the Draw and this means you’re betting that the match will not end in a draw, on a traditional sports book you cannot make this bet, but you can bet on Home/Away to win.

One of the videos in particular shows a trader who has two LTD strategies, the first of which involves the full time market and the other the half time market. For the full time market he suggests only entering the market between the 60-70th minute of play and only when a match is level at 0-0 or 1-1 and to avoid matches that are 2-2 because football matches don’t tend to end with five goals or more.

Lay the Draw Criteria

So his first criteria is to wait until 60-70 minutes and only when the match is 0-0, or 1-1. His second criteria is to only make you’re LTD selection once the odds are at 2.0 or below. This is a good idea, since for this to be a profitable strategy we only need to win it 51% of the time, obviously the higher the strike rate the more you’ll profit over the long term. Of course, if you’re not using an Exchange you can just bet on Home/Away instead as the odds will be far better now than at the beginning of the match.

Another criteria is that he wants one team to be better than the other, now this is where it gets subjective. If you have a good team like, say Liverpool, playing a bad team, like say, Watford and it’s 0-0 or 1-1 at 65 minutes and the Draw odds are at 1.98, then the strategy is a go. What about when we have two even teams, like the above example, Newcastle vs Palace, it’s 0-0 at 65 minutes, but both teams are about as good, or bad, as each other? You have two choices.

Firstly, you can leave the match alone and look for another opportunity, or secondly you can look through previous matches played by both sides and look for a few key stats; how many matches have ended 0-0 and how many goals they both tend to score in the second half of matches.

Lay the Half Time Draw

For the First Half strategy the method is a little different; you do a LTD wager in the first half market, as well when the odds hit 2.0 and lower but the criteria for choosing the matches is a little different. Here you need to look at past half time results and make sure you’re only picking teams that have, at the most, only one previous 0-0 half time result.

To Cash Out or Not Cash Out?

What should you do though, if a goal is scored? This will come down to personal choice. If a home favourite scores then you can either cash out for a profit, or remove your stake, or let it ride until full time. If the underdog scores though, would you let it ride, or take the profit? This will be a personal choice.

So, to conclude then Lay the Draw is still very much a useful strategy when it comes to trading/betting on football matches and these methods and criteria can certainly be used to look for matches where there are opportunities.