One of the strangest games I've ever traded....

Sometimes you find yourself involved in situations that make no sense - things happen, or don't happen, that seem to defy all rational explanation. Such a situation arose last night in Argentina as Banfield took on Athletico Rafaela. Looking at the game early in the evening I had come to the conclusion that it would finish u2.5 and the most likely scores were 2-1 or 1-0 (I know that sounds contradictory, but I know what I mean!) - with Banfield pre-match favourites. A trade was set up accordingly and I decided to scalp 0-0 as I also thought it would be a 'slow fuse' match taking a while to get going...

So, there I am, confidently scalping 0-0 and building up a reasonable green when a goal is scored! To Athletico... no major drama, a £20 loss but the rest of the trade looking reasonably good and under control - a set back, yes, but not a catastrophe. At 12 minutes they go and get a second!

With the script now in tatters I had to do something to bring the trade back into some semblance of recovery, and regular readers will know that I usually favour a 'get in deeper to get out sooner approach' in these situations. So I put £20 on U2.5 at 7 point something and laid O2.5 at 1.17 for £35. I also laid Any Unquoted at 4.6 for £30 so I was really now quite exposed. To further dig into the mire I laid Athletico - this harps back to earlier discussions about teams chucking away a two goal lead. I know this could be seen as the epitaph of a man committing financial suicide, but my intention really was to merely stay in the goal and cs trades for as little time as possible to reduce my liability on the original trade and then get out of the whole match.

The CS and goals markets were moving steadily in my direction when the suspended sign came on - bit of a heart in mouth moment with a boatload exposed on an AU lay! Red card to Athletico.

To briefly re-cap the situation, the underdogs were 0-2 up and down to ten men with about half an hour gone. And then,  as if someone somewhere had turned a tap off, all the liquidity flooded out of the markets. I can only assume, like me, that people's scripts were also in ruins and they had exited and gone off in search of easier markets. Didn't really help me though! I sort of scraped around laying and backing the odd £2 off here and there, but still things were ok.

A sigh of relief at half time, and a green up on both the goals trade and the AU lay left me a small overall profit after taking into account my lay of Athletico at 0-2. I was still of the opinion that the pre-match favourites would nick at least one goal back and that would spin a losing position completely round.

The next suspension, a few minutes into the second half, heralded the second red card for Athletico. Were they TRYING to throw the game a way?? At this point the whole thing became quite surreal. I often lay teams after they take a two goal lead, especially if they are / were the underdogs or if the team name begins with an 'A' and ends with an 'l'. But I have never been able to green up on such a lay without the other team getting a goal. I was able to in this game - never seen football markets jumping around all over the place like they were last night. This effect was probably exaggerated  as the lack of liquidity was allowing people to ask for, and get, silly prices.

I honestly can't recall much beyond that  point, other than that somehow the nine men held out at 0-2 against all odds. It was an interesting experience, and I think in some ways shows some benefit to working with small stakes in low liquidity markets - ask for silly prices  - there might be someone so desperate to escape from a bad position that you might get matched! I didn't really maximise my trade in the game - but as a learning curve it was brill! Just hope this rambling write up doesn't send you all off to sleep...

Until next time.. stay green!