'It's 40 per cent football knowledge and 70 per cent maths!' – professional punter Nick Goff shares the secrets of his success

In the final instalment of our three-part series, professional punter Nick Goff explains his approach to betting on football

Most people graduating from my economics degree course in 2002 ended up moving to London to get into the banking sector.

But a flatmate suggested I look at the Racing Post's classified section, where bookmakers were advertising for junior trader and odds-compiler roles.

I got a job with an Australian firm called Super Odds, who had some fairly harebrained ideas about breaking into the UK market.

My first real break came when Tony Bloom sold Premierbet and took all the good traders with him.

The new owners had ignored the number-one rule of betting – never buy anything from Tony Bloom – and a friend recommended me for the job of head football trader.

I was only 24 or 25 so it was a big responsibility. I had to learn on the job and it was a difficult role with a really sharp customer base.

I moved on to be head trader at Stan James and then Coral's head of football for eight years. That ended in 2016 so I've been punting full-time for exactly ten years.

My preparation for the subsequent round of league fixtures starts on a Saturday night, watching EFL highlights to see whether the post-game numbers match up with the chance creation in each game.

I watch all the Premier League action, making notes of injuries and suspensions, and on Monday I price up the weekend fixtures and see if there's any value in the outright markets.

I like to have new outright bets, singles and multiples, every week. Ante-post betting isn't something that ends on the first day of the season – in fact, that's when it really starts for me.

This approach won't suit everyone but it's good to build an ongoing season-long portfolio, if you're in a position to do so.

Think about it: the outright markets are put back up on a Saturday evening by odds compilers who have been looking at screens for ten hours. That final job of the day often gets the least amount of attention.

It's easy to shorten up winning teams and lengthen sides who lost without digging any deeper. Who's been lucky today? Who's played brilliantly for the third game running but not won?

The traders don't have time to do that, initially, so when those markets go back up there are ricks week in, week out.

My first set of prices on a Monday will just be Asian-handicap supremacies and a total-goals line.

As the week goes on, more information comes out about injuries. When there are midweek European fixtures, you have to adjust for the travel and assess whether the weekend league game is a team's top priority.

When Tottenham and Manchester United made the Europa League final two years ago, they pretty much put the league in the bin.

For Premier League bets, I can get on early in the week because the limits are quite high for a one-man band like me.

For League One, League Two and Scottish football, though, I have to wait until at least the day before the game.

The big football-betting syndicates have access to the Asian market when it opens on Saturday so things start to move at 2am or 3am UK time.

My first job on a Saturday is to check those moves and see which teams the syndicates like.

As the morning goes on, some people are obviously getting team news that the rest of us don't have and the market moves again.

Between 10am and 1.45pm is the dead zone for the Saturday 3pm kick-offs. I don't want to be placing bets during that period because there's an information asymmetry.

I back myself against almost anyone when I've got the same level of information as them. That happens early in the week and once the teams have been announced – not at 11am on a Saturday, when some of the syndicates definitely know things I don't.

At about 1.45pm, I take my expected starting line-ups and compare them to the confirmed teams. My player ratings give an approximation of how much one player is worth compared to his replacement so I can make adjustments and work out new prices.

I will bet again late on but I don't want to be doing 75 per cent of my business in that half an hour before kick-off as it's generally the hardest time to play.

I don't do much in-play betting but I'm very keen to follow the market, especially in the first 20 to 25 minutes of a game.

The in-play limits in Asia are much higher than they are pre-match. That means market moves in those first 20 minutes are an even better indication of a team's strength than the moves shortly before kick-off.

Starting prices are a damn good guide on the top divisions. But in smaller leagues, where there's not the same turnover, it only takes one punter to move the SP significantly.

If I've got a strong view about, say, Montrose on Saturday and back them repeatedly, I could move the price 15 or 20 ticks. I'm not trying to sound big-time here – that's how small the market is!

In that case, I clearly can't rate teams based solely on starting price because I'm the one who's moved it.

Conversely, I could have my maximum bet on a Premier League team, close to kick-off, and the price wouldn't move one tick.

Starting prices are an excellent base guide but you also need to follow those in-play market moves.

And be mindful that SPs are shaped by factors that are only relevant to that specific game: injuries, suspensions, how one team's style matches against another in a particular fixture.

Uncommon occurences, such as a goalkeeper error, can skew expected-goals dataCredit: Getty Images

Casual punters should be wary of reading too much into expected goals (xG). It's an angle that has been done to death and the publicly available xG data is far from perfect.

Here's an example of its limitations: imagine you're watching a Premier League match and a great move ends with a tap-in from five yards – a chance that's worth 0.8 xG. But if that goal is disallowed by VAR for being an inch offside, a team goes from getting 0.8 xG to zero.

If you've got the time and inclination, watch games back and rate the chances yourself.

Try grouping them by one team's skill versus the other team's mistakes. Another weakness of public xG is that you might get 0.9 xG when a goalkeeper gives the ball straight to the opposition striker. That's nothing to do with the attacking team's skill – it's been handed to them.

Figuring out what is and isn't repeatable gives you a big edge because the pure numbers miss things like that.

The three markets I focus on are Asian handicaps, total goals and traditional match betting. I would be spreading myself too thinly otherwise.

But for small-stakes punters, it's good to specialise in areas such as corners, bookings and shots on target.

The popularity of bet builders means the smaller guy can be more on top of that data than bookies, who inevitably make mistakes when they're offering so many markets.

If you're comfortable with stats and want to get into serious, analytical punting, there are definitely ways you can model corners betting.

Look at teams' past performances and the match odds, plus their expected chance of being in front or behind at certain stages of a game, all of which affect corner allocations.

With some research, it is possible to build something that at least gets close to beating the market.

There are interesting subjects and challenges out there for people who don't want to take on the biggest syndicates in the Asian market on Asian handicaps – which is the toughest place to start betting on football.

I'm not saying you'll become a millionaire betting on corners but there are ways to make a nice amount of money without getting involved in the top markets.

The opportunity is not completely dead – football is not officially solved.

It also helps that bet builders are regarded as a recreational market so betting on them should help punters stay under the radar for a bit longer.

My mate's sister, a professor at Oxford University, asked what is the ideal balance between football knowledge and maths in my job.

I told her it's 40 per cent football knowledge and 70 per cent maths!

In fact, you don't need to be a mathematical genius to make football betting pay.

The SPs for a 3pm Premier League match are effectively the consensus of all the big groups. Those odds are as close to a true reflection of a team's ability as you can get.

So if you're a good football watcher, betting into those correct prices, you only need to see one per cent more than the market does to gain an edge.

In some ways, there's never been a better time to think: "I'm not going to bother with any modelling. I'm just going to watch football and back myself to know which teams are roughly better than other teams by a certain amount or which match-up suits a certain side."

I wouldn't put anybody off betting that way. Modelling and maths isn't for everyone – we're all a bit nerdy!

Lots of good football watchers understand what's going on without needing to know that Team A is 0.47 goals better than Team B before factoring in home advantage.

Artificial intelligence is the biggest change I've seen in a decade of betting professionally. It allows me to build tools myself, without having to pay a quant – a quantitative analyst – to do it for me.

Everything I used to put into spreadsheets – bets placed, time struck, prices taken, firms used – can now be analysed very quickly by AI.

I experimented with AI during the World Cup, although I probably created too many models and tried to do too many things in the middle of the night during a heatwave!

The whole tournament frazzled my brain. I didn't perform as well as I should have but lots of lessons came out of the World Cup.

AI is only going one way so I'm teaching myself how to use it more regularly and more efficiently in my betting.

Nick was sweet on Brighton's prospects this season and they have enjoyed an impressive start to the season Credit: CameraSport via Getty Images

In the Racing Post's Big Kick-Off, I recommended backing Brighton, Brentford and Leeds in various markets so I've been pleased with their starts.

Those three clubs appealed because they were stable and well run. They signed well in the summer and looked capable of kicking on in a season when so many mid-table teams were unstable.

Bournemouth, Newcastle, Nottingham Forest and Crystal Palace had new managers, Aston Villa sold half their first 11 and Sunderland will be stretched by playing in Europe.

Further up the betting, Chelsea have spent another billion pounds and got worse, which is a super effort.

Manchester United might need another managerial change – and that's before you even mention the Manchester City situation.

Liverpool are probably the third-best team in the league but are they head and shoulders above Brighton? I don't think so.

In the EFL, Millwall are a team to back in outright markets now. They started slowly in the Championship but had a ton of injured players, who should be back in the coming weeks.

Millwall were superb for the first hour of their draw with West Ham and I still think they'll finish in the top eight.

At the other end of the table, there's a real danger that Burnley could suffer back-to-back relegations, just like Luton and Leicester.

People are slow to react when Premier League teams come down and struggle in the Championship but I can't understand how Burnley are still 14-1 for relegation.

Finally, I've got to mention Stockport because my numbers have them around half a goal better than the rest of League One, which is ridiculous.

They're not winning every game but they consistently come out miles ahead of every other team, which suggests the 7-2 that they win the title is a bet you need to have.

Racing Post+ subscribers can also read our racing-focused Fundamentals Of Betting series. You can read the others here:

'The good ones live on the edge' - how top punters tackle the massive variable that can make or break your bets

Top punters fume at ‘fantasy’ going descriptions - but this is how they still use the ground to their advantage

'I'd try to take Willie Mullins on every time' - Pricewise, pro punters and a team of experts are back in our essential betting series

'Jockeys can't make them run faster, but they can bloody well make them run a lot slower'

It was once the keys to the safe, now it drives punters ‘absolutely mad’ - but can you still make money betting the draw?

'It's the number one factor that would make me have a bet' - racing's best betting brains on how to master a 'hugely underplayed' part of the sport

A pro punter, Pricewise and the Racing Post's sharpest minds reveal the key to backing winners - and exactly how they find them

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