How to win on Betfair on a Friday evening...

... trade the Scatter Gun in Ligue 2. It is, pretty well, that simple.

For reasons best known across the channel the Ligue 2 Friday evening matches kick off at 7 pm rather than the 7.45 slot they occupied last season. This has played absolute havoc with my Friday trading as I'm rarely home before about half seven. I've still traded them and made money, and I remain convinced that this league is one of, if not THE best, league for this trade.

I've been picked up before, quite rightly, for making sweeping statements with not a lot to back them up, so, in the interests of accuracy, I trawled through www.soccerstats.com noting just the Friday night results for the current season. There are two match days left but I doubt the figures you'll see here will change that much.

I have made some assumptions for the purpose of this exercise, namely that all bets will be placed from the off, and that every single match played was traded - i.e. no filters whatsoever. The odds I've used are realistic, and the stakes scalable. A quick glance at the attached image shows a loss over the 36 rounds to date of £14 from total stakes of £3,058.

Betting theory states that if a 'system' can't be profitable to level stakes then it can't be profitable, and obviously I really wouldn't want to trade 300 odd games to come out the other side a few pints in arrears! But the SG is not a 'set and forget' trade / bet. It is designed to be actively worked in-play. In reality, for example, there is no way I'd take 17 as a 2-2 bet - my method is to wait until the 2-2 price hits at least 20 and more usually I look for 24-26. I also sometimes trade out of the 2-2 at 1-2 or 2-1, other times I'll let if run having already taken a green book as the game has progressed. A classic example of this is the Auxerre match against Angers this evening. It finished 2-2, but I'd already got an all green book of over £25 before Angers scored a last minute equaliser to net me a further £45. On the spreadsheet pictured that game made £23 so you can see just that one match would have turned a loss into a profit overall.

So the next time you think about heading to your local watering hole on a Friday night, tell your mates you'll be a bit later than usual and put your beer tokens in your wallet courtesy of a league in a country some people would have you believe is useless to trade soccer in!