For a long time, the betting industry has been dominated by bookies with an inherent advantage when it comes to betting. The bookies know they’ll make money from gamblers otherwise they wouldn’t be in the industry at all. As the saying goes, ‘the house always wins.’
More recently, one company is striving to change the gambling industry for the better. Smarkets, one of the leading betting exchanges, is taking a unique approach to the industry and setting itself apart in the process.
They want to make the industry more transparent with less of an advantage given to the bookies. Their CEO, Jason Trost describes the existing betting industry as ‘shady’ and out there to just ‘milk as much money as possible out of customers’. In all honesty, this is very true.
Smarkets want to make betting a commodity much like Gold or shares in a company. They want users to be able to trade bets like they would on the stock market. This may seem like a strange vision but it’s no different to how the industry already works, specifically betting exchanges which allow gamblers to trade bets online.
Smarkets want the industry to be more transparent and flexible to suit different users. In making this vision a reality, Smarkets are continually thinking of new ways to entice users to deal in betting markets.
Smarkets Live Charts is the latest innovative feature they’ve rolled out. This is a first for the betting industry and brilliant news for matched betting.
What are Smarkets Live Charts?
Recently Smarkets have come up with the brilliant idea of adding live charts to their betting markets. This shows the user what the price has done over the last few hours and allows the user to predict trends in the future. These charts sit very nicely in the site layout and make the Smarkets platform seem more like a financial trading platform – which is exactly what they’re after.
You can now ‘follow trends in the market and identify trading opportunities’ all from the comfort of your own home.
Rumours of Smarkets Live Charts have been doing the rounds for a while. But now that the feature is live, let’s take a closer look:
The first example is for a football game between West Ham and Arsenal. You can see the red line represents Arsenal, the blue line represents the draw and the green line represents West Ham.
In this example, all three of the lines have stayed fairly flat. This is typical for football betting as the odds usually remain very stable. Compare that to the next one which is for a horse race at Wolverhampton:
You can see the odds have moved considerably more in the second graph compared to the first one. It becomes more tricky to predict the future price of these markets as it’s so varied. This type of market is also more difficult to place our matched bets as the odds are continually moving.
It’s important to add a caveat for horse racing too: the graph only shows the top three favourites for a horse race at a given time.
Matched Betting and Live Charts
How does the rollout of Live Charts affect matched betting?
It’s a great question.
With the help of this new feature from Smarkets, you can easily check for any trends in a given market. This allows us to accurately predict how a market is likely to change in the future.
When you first start out with matched betting, we recommend you pick stable markets in terms of the odds. Using live charts, you’ll easily be able to spot these stable markets and take advantage of them. It’s an innovation welcomed in the matched betting arena as this simply wasn’t possible before.
For more advanced matched bettors, these live charts will allow you to increase your earnings by predicting the future of a given market.
For example, you could place your back bet at a certain price and wait to place your lay bet. This could allow the price to move and ultimately allow you to make more money.
In the past, we strongly advised against this as it could lead to unnecessary, costly mistakes. However, being able to accurately predict the future of a market now makes this a more sensible approach.
Find out why Smarkets are our favourite betting exchange.
Live Charts Overview
Overall, Smarkets Live Charts are a glimpse into what the future of betting may look like. The user will have more knowledge of previous betting patterns – allowing a more accurate picture of what the market is likely to do in the future. This will certainly help our matched betting and the amount of profit we can make.
A very nice feature from Smarkets and another reason why we think you should use their betting exchange platform.