In early 2017 a blog post was put up on Medium explaining a strategy for Betting on the Over 2.5 Goals market. It explained how a successful strategy could be using going against trends and exposing value in the betting markets. Read on to find out more about this contrarian betting system.

Betting on Over/Under 2.5 Goals

We’re written plenty about betting with value on the Bet Dynamo blog before, along with betting with stats it’s our favourite subject to explore and to continue to learn about. If you don’t know what it is then we suggest you start here. At its most basic betting with value means you’re betting at odds that are higher than you believe they should be. So, for example, in an upcoming Premier League match you see the odds for Over 2.5 goals is 1.95, but you believe they should be close to 1.85, so you’re getting 10 ticks of value. Bookies don’t make these kinds of mistakes very often but by paying close attention to prices and the implied probabilities of events occurring we can find good value in the betting markets.

Over 2.5 Goals Betting Strategy

The strategy written about uses value and looks at stats to find bets. At its most basic its a very simple strategy but it takes a bit of work to find matches that will fit the criteria. The criteria are as follows:

`1. Over 2.5 goals price must be between: 1.70 - 2.40. 2. Home Team: Last three matches must have finished with Under 2.5 Goals 3. Away Team: Last three matches must have finished with Under 2.5 Goals.

You can see here it’s going against a trend and is a contrarian bet and, importantly, we’re not only looking at matches played at home, or away, but it looks are the last three matches wherever they were played.

The strategy was tested over four years and across 21 different leagues. Of those 21 league only four were not profitable: the Premier League and League One in England, the German Bundesliga and the Scottish Championship. To see the full data on the league, go here.

The system saw that 472 bets were made and it yielded a 16% profit across the four years that it was used. 55% of the bets won and 45% lost.

Betting with Value on Over 2.5 Goals

As said above, one of the criteria was that the betting odds had to be between 1.70 and 2.40. A further analysis of the closing odds on matches found that for matches that were priced between 2.0 and 2.4, the yield was even higher; 28%. From 183 bets made, it made a profit of 51.15. For a full break down of the results connected to betting odds click here.

As you can see then this system proved to be profitable over the four seasons it was tested over. Of course this doesn’t mean it’s a winning system, but rather that over those four season it was a winning one, but it’s certainly something to ponder over. When teams are coing up against each other and their previous three matches have seen Under 2.5 goals landing then bookies and the public are more likely to believe that Unders will occur again. This means that the odds for Over 2.5 goals will be more favourable and this is where value makes itself visible.