When you’re new to football betting it can be a bit overwhelming when searching for solid inplay strategies. We know only too well that there are literally 1000s and 1000s of websites selling you snakeoil and what many claim to be winning strategies are anything but yet people still get lured in by flashy websites. It’s like this, if something seems to be too good to be true then in all likelihood then it is. Back in a previous job one of our writers used to review tipping services for a third-party website and over his five years doing it he says only a handful of tipsters would have been worth the subscription fee.

Indeed what most of these advertised ‘winning strategies’ are nothing more than dressed up Martingale systems and as you can see from the article image you’ve probably already guessed, or already know about the so-called ‘system’.

The Martingale System

Where did Martingale come from? Well, John Martindale was a casino owner in the 18th century and he was a bit of a scoundrel. Well, more than actually. He would swan around the casino tables rubbing his greedy hands at the losses of his clients, no different than any other casino owner or bookmaker then, and when he’d see a client he knew had deep pockets was losing he’d regale him with a story about a man who was on a long losing streak at the roulette table but by doubling his stake when the chancing of winning were 50-50 then eventually he could recoup his losses and start again.

Fair enough, it’s a logical system isn’t it? You lose a bet, you double the next one, so long as the odds are at least Evens, or 1/1 or 2.0 depending on your preferred system of writing odds. The system became a hit with less seasoned gamblers and more recreational punters and it was here to stay. Indeed there are still plenty of videos uploaded to YouTube on a daily basis with people claiming that the Martingale system is worthwhile or with a few tweets can become a winning system. In reality though, it simply cannot.

If you were to stake £10 and win in your first bet at odds of 2.0 then you pocket an extra tenner. You start again and bet £10 on the same bet, this time you lose. To get back to zero you bet £20 on the next spin of the wheel. You lose again. Now you’re betting £40. You lose again. The next bet is £80, you get the message.

A bad streak of losses and suddenly you’re dealing with bets like £2560 and £5120 and above just to get back to zero. Obviously this is a terrible system and best avoided.

The Half-Martingale

The updated version that you see quite a bit of on strategy websites involved the half-martingale and by the way, most of the time you’ll see these martingales named as something completely different because if they were called martingales by the snakeoil salesman then people would soon, via their own research, realise it’s a con. Anyway, the half-martingale says that you should add half the stake onto each losing bet until you get back to zero. But it doesn’t take a math genius to realise that this is also a one way street to the poorhouse.

When it comes to strategies that you see for sale or behind a paywall on the internet, be wary. If you’re paying a subscription for access to a strategy then don’t be shy about asking for detailed records regarding performance over the last year or longer. Strategies take years of detailed work to devise and if you ask any of the long-term football traders out there they’re usually armed with a few simple ones that work well and have stood the test of time and most of them revolve around predicting either the first goal or a next goal in a match.