In today’s article we want to have a look at a market that is often overlooked by bettors, the Over/Under 1.5 Goals market. At first glance the odds on offer, particularly for ‘big games’ don’t seem very appealing. Just a quick look ahead to some upcoming Premier League games sees the odds for Over 1.5 goals ranging from 1.18 to 1.38. With Unders from 2.8 up to 5.4. Let’s examine this market and see if it can be exploited for value.

Let’s begin by speaking about what Value is first though as we need to be clear on our definitions. In a previous Bet Dynamo article, you can read here we said that value is making a bet when the odds on offer are better than what they should be. In the previous article we said “let’s say you can buy bread in your local shop down at the corner for £1, but at the supermarket half a mile away it’s 0.75p. There are only two good arguments for buying the more expensive bread. Number 1, you’re too lazy to go to the cheaper shop and No. 2, you want to keep a local business operating. Number 2 is honorable and fair play to you, every town needs independent traders, however, we’re talking about bookies here who turn profits of millions and millions of pounds, many of them running their businesses from tax havens.”

Value in the Over/Under 1.5 Goals Markets

In betting terms this means that when you see some odds that are ‘higher’ than they should be then you should take that bet because over the long-term you will earn some bank. Now this is the genius of the Bet Dynamo Insights Page. Let’s use an upcoming match as an example, a game at random from today’s matches sees El Geish taking on Al Masry. We can see from the stats that for both teams when playing Home/Away games, Over 1.5 goals has landed in over 85% of their games, 86.67% and 87.50% respectively:

This gives us a combined percentage of 87% which when converted to decimal odds of 1.15. At the time of writing the best odds for Over 1.5 goals in this match is 1.29. So we’re getting around 11% difference in this meaning we’re getting some great value. Will the bet win? Time will tell.

Finding Value in the Over/Under 1.5 Goals Markets Another possible way to exploit this value in the betting market is to do some drip betting. Before a game kicks off you take the stake you want to invest into a game, let’s make things easy here and go with £10. We split this into three or four stakes. For this article, let’s make it four, so four times £2.50 and now comes the interesting bit. You watch the first 10-15 minutes of the match and there have been a few shots on goal, one team has been dominating and there are been a couple of corners too. In our example match above the opening odds of 1.29 at kick off are now up at around 1.45. We put in our first order of £2.50 at odds of 1.55.

As the match progresses we add the rest of our stake in the market at differing prices. Usually, 1.75, 2.10 and 2.50. If a goal is scored before we can enter the rest of our stakes then we’ve won and we move onto the next match. If we get to enter all of the stakes then all we have to do is wait for a goal and we can either cash out for a profit or hedge the bet, meaning we have a free bet and if a second goal is scored then we’re all some decent profit.

Now, these types of bets are best done on an Exchange, but they can also be done with traditional sportsbooks by doing the best inplay. With Exchanges like Betfair, Matchbook, etc. it’s a little easier as you can just put in your desired price and leave it in the market until the your price is met, by doing it inplay with a normal bookie then you have to wait until the price is displayed before making your bet.

Value in the Over/Under 1.5 Goals Markets As you can see then there are a few ways to extrapolate and exploit value from the Over/Under 1.5 Goals market. Indeed, there are other possibilities like Laying, or Backing Against Overs, i.e. betting on Under 1.5 goals if the price has no value and you can also make some Acca bets. Although you must be aware that the more bets you add into an Acca the more value can be eroded. One more possibility we’ve written about previously is available here; System Bets.