Stick or twist?

Reno posed a question recently about how to handle the 'wrong' scores in a Scatter Gun trade:

HiInteresting concept and I've been trying this at small stakes for a few days. When the score-line of 1-1 is reached, hallelujah.. the money comes in. But what do you do when 2-0 or 0-2 is reached? Cashing out at this score leaves you -6p on average, but if it gets to 3-0 or 0-3, you loose all your stakes. So I was wondering whether you trade when 1-0 or 2-0 is reached (or 0-1 and 0-2) Thanks! Reno

The key to answering this, in my opinion, lies in the very first sentence Reno writes. Use small stakes. As simple as that, really! By small stakes I mean small relative to your bank, of course. I am always prepared to lose my entire stake if an SG trade goes completely wrong. That's not to say that I never take 'corrective action' - more that I'm quite prepared not to.

I don't see any point, personally, in trading out at 2-0 or 0-2. Many of those games, even if they don't end 1-2 or 2-1 will see one of those scores at some point. If a team scores a third, take it on the chin and move on.

The trade works best the later in the game that goals come. If there is an early goal, especially to the favourite, you might consider backing 3-0 or 0-3. That way, if they score the second goal you can probably scratch the trade by laying off 2-1/1-2 and 3-0 / 0-3.

Another 'nightmare' scenario is a flurry of early goals - I was trading  the four Brazillian games last night and the Joinville v Boa match was 1-1 after five minutes and 2-2 by half time! In that situation I scrambled out for a small red at 1-1! Not much else to be done really.

I don't think you can be too 'mechanical' with correct score trading. The SG is a pretty resilient trade, and my records show it to be nicely profitable over the long term. If you get out of too many trades too early you are, in my opinion, walking away from profitability and not giving the trade a chance to work.

The bigger question, and the most difficult to call, is what to do at 1-1? Assuming this score occurs in the second half you, as the trader, have to decide how to go forward. You could just hedge for a nice profit by greening up all three scores. You might green just the 1-1 to leave maybe  a small loss there and chunky wins on the other two. you might remove some or your total liability by laying 1-1 to some degree. The only thing I would say is that once you've chosen a particular course of action just do it, and don't look back over your shoulder and kick yourself if you make the wrong call!