Football Betting Systems: What Works and What Doesn’t

Knowing about the basics of profitable football betting is all well and good but something that’s equally important is to have a football betting system.

It’s quite normal for most of us to go with our guts and to bet a random amount of money on a football match.

But, what sets professional football punters from the rest of the crowd is their ability to have a football betting strategy and to use this strategy to decide how much money they should bet on a particular football match.

Professional Football punters rely on these football betting systems to minimize their losses and maximize their profits based on a variety of factors which you’ll be reading about below.

In this guide on Football Betting systems you’ll learn about how these football betting systems work in theory and in real life and weigh the pros and cons of each betting system.

If you would like some Football betting tips check out our article on Football betting tips.

Football Betting System # 1 Martingale System

Before we talk about the Football betting systems that do work it’s important for you to know which betting systems that do not work. The most popular betting system that seems to work in theory but fails miserably in practise is the Martingale System.

The Martingale system is usually applied in casino games like Blackjack. This betting system can be used on a straight bet that allows you to get even money on your investment.

How is the martingale system used in Football betting?

In the world of Football betting the Martingale system is used when you have several even money bets being offered where you have odds of 1:1. 

For example, let’s say you are betting on the Premier League and there are 20 even money bets being offered across a span of one month.

You have the choice of to ante-up your bet on these games in a sequence. This basically means that you bet on match 1,wait for the results of match 1, then bet on the next match.

If you were to use the Martingale Football betting system, for every losing bet that you made you would have to double your previous bet.

For example let’s say you bet $5 on the first match, in order for your bet profitably using this Football system you would need to bet $10 on the next match.

This pattern would follow until you would win a match and when this happens you would come to realize that a profit that is equal to the size of your opening bet.

Match	Bet Amount	Money you have spent so far	Your Profit
1	5	5	-5
2	10	15	5
3	20	30	10
4	40	60	20
5	80	120	40
6	160	240	80
7	320	480	160
8	640	960	320
9	1280	1920	640
10	2560	3840	1280

In short, the Martingale system forces you to double your bet each time you lose so that you can eventually win and get a profit. The amount of profit would be equal to the value of your bet. So,let’s say you lost your first 5 bets, on the 6th match you would have to bet 32 times your bet amount and you would have essentially have spent $240 in order to turn in a profit of $80.

In theory this could work in the long term, but you would need to have a really big budget for it to work for you. Another problem you might face is that there are betting limits put into place by bookmakers. Even if you manage to win or place a big amount of bet, you are bound to face withdrawal limits and KYC issues for big amounts of money.

Football Betting System #2 Labouchere Football Betting System 

The Labouchere system is similar to the Martingale betting system and is a marginally better Football betting system. When it comes to football betting this system can also be used for even money bets.

You need to decide how many “units” you want to win in order to use this Football betting system. 

For instance, if you want to get a profit of $50 you would break this amount into 10 units of $5 each. The next step involves writing down these units down in a linear format like:
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 

You then use these line of number from the number of units on the far left and the far right and add them up. This tells you how many units you need to bet on a single match. 

If you win this bet,you then cross off both these units.If you lose, then you take the sum of these 2 numbers on the right side of the number line.

If this sounds a bit complicated, don’t worry. We’ve explained this below with examples:

Step 1: Define your profit, in our case we have decided on a profit of $50.

Step 2: Define the number of units. Make sure these units are an even number. We have decided on 10 units. Each unit would have a value of $5 ($50 divided by 10).

Step 3: Create the linear number line of units. In our case, since we have decided on 10 units our number line would look like this:

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 

Step 4: Take the unit on the far left and the far left for the first bet. That means for the first bet we bet 2 units of $5 or we place a bet of $10.
Case 1: If we win,we then proceed to cross off the first and the last number on our linear number line and our left with 8 units.

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 

On the next bet you would repeat the process with the 8 numbers left on your linear number line.

Case 2: If we lose we take the sum of the numbers of units in the far left and the far right and the sum in the far left. In our case we add 1 +1 and 2 the far right corner of the number line. The new number has been highlighted in red.

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2

In the next bet you would repeat the process. This time you would bet 1+2 units or 3 units. Since each unit equals $5 you would be $15.

If you lose this bet again you would add the number of units on the end, 2+1 and add it on the far right.

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 3

Now you would bet 3+1 units or 4 units of $5 each or $20.

You continue the process until all the numbers have been crossed off to get to your target profit of $50.

The Labouchere Football betting system is more flexible to your budget and you may not need a huge budget when starting off. However, if you keep losing a string of bets this betting system might become expensive for you as you have to bet a bigger amount of money depending on your luck.

This means you still have to have a decent sized betting budget. Our tip would be to assume that you will lose the first 3 matches and have a budget to place a bet of 5 units.

Needless to say, using this football betting system requires a lot of patience and discipline otherwise you may overshoot your budget.

Football Betting System #3 The Kelly Criterion 

This betting system is definitely worth taking a look at. The Kelly criterion is used by professional Football punters and sports bettors throughout the world. Many Football punters swear by the Kelly criterion.

In a nutshell the Kelly Criterion helps you to set out the perfect bet amount based on the value of the bet. This makes the Kelly Criterion an excellent football system that helps you with money management while betting on Football.

Money management helps you optimize the potential for winning while minimizing risk. The Kelly Criterion does this by helping you to find the optimum bet amount based on your budget.

Kelly Criterion Formula For Football Betting

The Kelly Cirterion Formula for Football Bettings is as follows:

BR% = (P*B) – 1 / B – 1

BR% here stands for  the percentage of your bankroll or football betting budget you should spend on a particular bet. If this number is negative, that means you should not place a bet.

P stands for the probability of you winning the bet

B stands for the odds offered by the bookmaker

We have mentioned an example below to show you how this would work:

Let’s say there is a match between Manchester United and Everton. The odds for Manchester United to beat Everton that is offered by bookmakers is 1.91. You estimate there is a 56% chance that Manchester United will beat Everton. Then in this case

Then P=0.56
        B=1.91

And BR%= (0.56*1.91)-1/(1.91-1).
You would get a result of 0.07648. Then you simply have to convert this decimal into a percentage by multiplying this result with 100. This gets you a result of 7.648%.
So for this particular game, according to the Kelly Criterion you should bet 7.648% of your bankroll or betting budget.

Keep in mind that you can run into problems while using this variable because of one variable,that variable is P or the probability you set with regards to your team’s probability of winning.

But as you get more experienced with Football betting you would become better at assessing the probability of your team winning.