Sorare is a combination of fantasy football and digital trading cards. It is a platform we have joined recently and are really enjoying. We think it has huge potential and for people with a good knowledge of football there are significant opportunities to benefit from it. 

If you are new to Sorare, we would recommend checking out our Sorare Guide which details what it is all about, how it works and why we think it has such potential.

We are also tracking our own journey with Sorare live here on the site, which you can check out here.

Now though we are going to take a look at our strategy for getting the most out of Sorare.

We have spent many hours reading guides, watching YouTube videos, listening to Podcasts and of course participating in Sorare fantasy contests ourselves so we have learned a lot and wanted to pass this on so you can benefit from our experience.

We hope it is of some use to you if you are just getting started and want some pointers – or maybe you have been involved for a little while but are looking for a few hints and tips to push you on to the next level.

Either way we will do our best to cover what we think are the key points to succeeding on Sorare.

If you haven’t signed up to Sorare already you can sign up here and get a free Rare Card once you have bought your first five Rare cards through an auction.

 

Focusing on Fantasy Game

First up before we get stuck into the strategy guide we wanted to emphasise that we will be focusing on the fantasy football element of Sorare – the SO5 game – rather than the collectible element of it. 

There are some people out there who are happy to pay $50,000 for an Mbappe card and not even enter it in the fantasy games, believing that they will either be able to sell it for more at some point in the future, or if not have a nice collectors’ item to enjoy. 

That kind of speculation is not our focus here because it is inherently difficult to predict. A whole range of factors could affect whether speculation on cards pays off, including market sentiment, whether the current excitement around NFTs is just a “craze” or will be sustained, and much more. 

What we will focus on instead is getting the most out of the actual fantasy football game of Sorare, in order to help you win prizes, grow the value of your portfolio (or “gallery” as it is called on Sorare) and enjoy the experience of being part of a community and pitting your wits against other managers. 

We will also briefly cover “flipping” (or trading) the cards later on, but that is secondary to our main concern of picking players and building teams for their utility, ability to win rewards and long-term value. 

 

Valuing Players

One of the most basic and fundamental questions to consider when we join Sorare and look to buy players is – what is their actual value?

At the time of writing this, player prices have exploded over the last couple of weeks and there are now many people asking – with some justification – whether the cards are actually worth what people are currently paying for them. 

Our own view is that at the top end of the market, prices probably have gone a little beyond “fair value” in some cases. More broadly however, you have to consider what a player might return you in rewards over the lifetime of a card.

Remember there is no expiry on the cards so that as long as Sorare still exists (and there are of course lots of third party games popping up now too) then you can keep on playing these cards in fantasy contests for as long as the player is still playing in an eligible league. 

Take a promising 20-year old player available now for around €200-€300 for example. That player could be earning you rewards for the next 15 years – or longer.   

Even just taking the ETH threshold payouts into account and ignoring winning any rare cards, it is feasible that if you spent say €1250 on five of these players they could return their cost within 12-18 months. 

For example, if we presume you can enter two “gameweeks” per week, so approximately 100 gameweeks per year. 

And let’s say you were picking up an ETH reward at a mid point between the two rewards, so 0.015 ETH – that would be approximately €18 at the time of writing. 

If you hit an ETH reward just 50% of the time, you would have made that initial investment of €1250 back in less than 18 months. Yet those young players can play on for another 14+ years, potentially making you great returns for a long time to come.

And that’s excluding:

• Winning any rare cards, which are currently selling for hundreds and even thousands of Euros;
• Presumes Sorare won’t increase the rewards – which they have said they are currently looking at doing;
• Excludes winning any rewards in all the offshoot games being set up by third parties;
• Or compounding your returns by reinvesting rewards.

So looking at it this way, paying €200-€300 (or even a bit more) for a good player doesn’t seem so outlandish and in fact could be tremendous value.

On the flip side of course we have to consider potential risks: what if ETH crashed in value – would Sorare adjust the ETH payouts to compensate? What if they actually had to reduce rewards in future? What if Sorare ceased to exist? (v. unlikely in our view and with blockchain technology it might still be possible to continue using cards in other games anyway). 

Ultimately as with anything else, you should only put in money you could afford to lose if the whole thing went bust and we would never recommend “betting the farm” on this – or any other – platform.

But when it comes to valuing players, these are the kind of calculations you should be making to get a true sense of what they are worth.

Looking at it another way in terms of cards at the top end of the market, if a player is priced at €2,000, are they likely to return that money to you in rewards? If they are a top talent or a super-rare card then perhaps they will, but it could be more of a risk than a €200 player who is getting similar scores on SO5 and is of a similar age. And of course if the player picks up a long-term injury, that purchase price of €2,000 could sting a little more than a €200 one.

Sign up to Sorare here and get a free Rare Card once you have bought your first five Rare cards through an auction.

 

Use Your Best Sorare Friend: Sorare Data

No strategy guide for Sorare would be complete without referring to the veritable goldmine that is Soraredata. This is your best friend when it comes to scouting players, checking SO5 scores, hunting down bargains, checking for value and all the things you should be doing as a Sorare manager. 

The centrepiece of Soraredata is the rankings tab on the left hand sidebar, which brings up options to search for players individually or seeing them ranked according to league, position, U23s-only and so on. 

Here is the Soraredata profile of Kylian Mbappe for example:

You can see his average score for the last five, last fifteen, and forty games, the number of cards of him that have been minted by type, average sale prices and so on. 

Then if you move below there is more data to choose from on the orange menu. The key option you want to look at here is the “SO5 scores,” which brings up that player’s scores going back for 50-odd gameweeks. 

Here is Mbappe’s:

The scores are nicely colour-coded as you can see, with DNP (did not play) at the bottom.

For an elite-level player like Mbappe you would expect to see a lot of green scores, but for any player you are scouting you should aim to see at least a few greens and a decent number of yellows and as few reds and dreaded DNPs as possible.

You can also hover over each score dot to see how many minutes a player was on the pitch for, which is a useful bit of context to have about their score. A low score could be explained by a short amount of time on the pitch for example.

Once you have checked a certain number of these SO5 scoring profiles you will get a feel for what a good SO5 scoring chart is and what is not. It’s really a treasure trove of information and we couldn’t recommend scouting players without recourse to these charts.

Soraredata has a host of other information including ongoing and closed auctions, overall Sorare stats like the amount of growth and sales volume on the site, other managers’s portfolio values and much more besides. We would recommend taking some time to familiarise yourself with the site and everything it has to offer because as we say it should become your best friend if you are involved in Sorare.

 

Using Other Sites to Help With Analysis

In addition to using Sorare Data, we would recommend using a few other sites to bolster your analysis. 

Let’s say for example you have identified a promising player on Sorare Data but they have a worrying number of the dreaded “DNP” (Did Not Play) marks on their chart. It is worth investigating further to determine what the reasons for those DNPs were. Was the player injured? If so, how serious was the injury and do they have a history of lengthy spells out? 

Or perhaps they had a lot of games on the bench or not being in the squad, but that was under a previous manager and the new manager is much keener on the player and is playing them regularly.

You can find this sort of data on Flashscore, by either searching for a player or going to their relevant league and team and then clicking on the squad. You will be able to see what the reason for them missing games was and judge if it is manageable or warrants moving on to someone else.

Here is Romelu Lukaku’s profile for example:

You can see his recent games and how many minutes he had, together with one game he missed due to suspension. 

Then below you can see his career history with number of games played, goals scored etc by club and league:

There is also a section below that with the player’s injury history.

A site like Transfermarkt can also be useful in getting a sense of a player’s value. Whilst we tend to treat the valuations on there with a pinch of salt as there is some subjectivity to it, a player’s transfer history and current valuation can be a useful yardstick and comparative tool when looking at different players.

Sometimes there is a very highly valued player who is just out of favour or hasn’t hit the headlines recently but clearly if they had a big transfer fee in the past then there must have been a reason for it.  This can then be supplemented by some google research to learn more about the player and their potential. There are some good news sites and club-specific websites with analysis of individual players and their strengths and weaknesses, so all this research should help to build up your picture of a player.

In general we don’t pay too much heed to YouTube montages of players because just about anyone can look good on those! This is because they tend to show the very best things a player has done and don’t give you any sense of their overall ability and level of consistency. But if you happen to watch one and aren’t impressed by a player then that might be cause for concern!

 

 

Getting the Right Mix

Before purchasing any cards on Sorare, it is advisable to have a think about the mix of players you want in your squad. Firstly you obviously want to make sure you end up with a relatively even mix of defenders, midfielders and forwards in your squad, with perhaps a slight bias towards the latter two as they tend to score the most points and therefore can help get you rewards if used in the “extra” position in your team.

Overall though you want a fairly even balance between these positions and don’t want to get stuck in the trap of buying all forwards for example because they are more exciting and then forget to buy the other types of player.

You will also need a goalkeeper or two, although the nuances and challenges of this are such that we have devoted a separate section to it below. 

Presuming you have a decent mix of players in terms of position then, the next thing to think about is how many, and which, contests you want to target. 

This will depend largely on what kind of budget you have at your disposal, but ideally if you have the funds to do it, we would recommend building your squad in such a way that you can target multiple different Sorare contests/leagues.

So for example you might build one group of players to target the Champion Europe divisions, one for the U23 divisions, another for the Asian divisions, one for the American divisions and so on. This would you give multiple “shots on goal” (if you’ll excuse the pun) in terms of chances of winning a prize. It also means you can have teams playing you for in both the Summer and Winter leagues so you don’t end up with a big gap in the calendar where you can’t win any prizes. 

As we say, obviously just how many teams you can build is largely budget-dependent, but if you have funds of around €1,000 – €2,000 then (at the time of writing this at least) that should allow you to buy enough players to enter at least one or two contests per gameweek, depending on how the fixtures fall and injuries/suspensions etc.

Get 10 free cards on Sorare to get you started.

 

Goalkeepers

As we say, goalkeepers deserve a section all to themselves due to the outsize importance they have on Sorare. This significance is down to the fact that there are so few of them available and they are in such demand that it can be a real challenge to find an affordable one at all. Competition is fierce. 

If you do your research and scouting and can find a goalkeeper who is playing regularly at an affordable price then we would say go for it as such opportunities are few and far between these days. 

Alternative strategies include just using your common card goalkeepers, which can actually work quite well and we have been able to consistently hit the ETH threshold using a common goalie. They lose 50% of the their points outside of the Rookie League but can still get a 25 or 30 point score which is okay and won’t normally sink your chances of grabbing a reward. 

Or you could take a chance on:

• A keeper who is injured;
• A current reserve keeper who you think has a chance of grabbing the number one spot;
• A goalie who has just been dropped but you think will either get back in the team or make a transfer;
• Or a young up-and-coming goalkeeper who could be on the verge of a breakthrough.

All of these come with a degree of risk but could really pay off if they come good for you. 

Failing all that you could just bite the bullet and pay a big asking price for an established goalkeeper, feeling it is worth it in the long run to have that stability in your squad.

N.B. – Update 17.03.21 – It might be worth waiting on this however as Sorare have recently stated they are planning to take some action around the cost of goalkeepers – this might involve the new scarcity level for example. 

 

Building a Team for Scoring 

As well as looking at individual player’s attributes, it is also worth considering their suitability for SO5 scoring and the kind of team you want to build.  

In our view, the type of players to focus on in SO5 terms are those who play regularly and get consistently good scores. Whilst it’s nice to speculate on the “next big thing,” it is usually better to focus on a player with proven credentials and a history of good SO5 scores, certainly if you can pick them up for a decent price. It’s generally best to avoid the Twitter hype and those players being pumped based on very little substance.

Playing regularly is such a key part of SO5 because with only five players participating for you in each contest, one of them not playing and scoring a big fat zero can really drag down your score and mean you end up missing the threshold for an ETH payout, or could even mean you miss out on a rare card prize if your other players have put in good scores. 

The interesting thing is that players don’t really need to do very much in the Sorare scoring matrix to score 40-50 points if they start a game, as long as they don’t have a complete ‘mare. Five of those scores and you are well on your way to picking up an ETH payout on Global All-Star Division 4. 

 

 

Targeting Young Players

One element we certainly think is worth focusing on is finding good young players on Sorare. As we discussed above in our analysis of how to value players, the beauty of Sorare is that cards don’t expire so a young player could feasibly be churning out rewards for you for 15 years or more. 

We are surprised in some ways that young players aren’t even more highly prized on Sorare. Yes the big name young players considered the “next wonderkids” like Florian Wirtz and Jamal Musiala are exorbitantly priced but lesser-known young players are often comparably priced to much older players with similar SO5 scores. 

In addition to having a much longer career ahead of them, young players on Sorare have the added utility of being able to be entered in the U23 league.

Younger players also have more potential to improve and develop as they get older, with many being raw talents when they burst on the scene who need game time and experience to develop their skills. Don’t forget that in his first season at Man Utd, Cristiano Ronaldo only scored four league goals, was considered by some to be a “one trick pony” and “too weak” to survive the physicality of the English game. Well just look how that turned out…

So we would advise scouting around for good young players, avoiding the “obvious” ones but rather focus on players with good SO5 scores and the potential to improve.

If you haven’t signed up already you can sign up here and get a free Rare Card once you have bought your first five Rare cards through an auction.

 

Looking at Obscure Leagues and Players

One of the nuances of Sorare is that an unheralded forward in the Belgian Jupiler League can score just as well in SO5 as the likes of Kylian Mbappe and Mo Salah. There is no bonus for scoring your points in the big leagues instead of the smaller ones nor bonuses for playing against stronger teams week-in, week-out.  

Although there aren’t quite as many real bargains to be found in the more obscure leagues as there used to be, there is still value to be had in shopping around in the Dutch, Belgian, Portuguese and Russian leagues and the MLS for example.  

 

Picking Players with European Football

Another aspect to consider when choosing players is whether they have European football, in terms of Champions League and Europa League fixtures. These are eligible competitions when it comes to the Sorare fantasy contests (SO5), meaning your players can score points in games played in these competitions.

So having players who will get a lot of extra games via these competitions is certainly an advantage. Whilst players from the top clubs like Real Madrid and Juventus tend to be already highly valued, there are players from top Portuguese and Dutch clubs for example who are good value and are normally involved in European competition.

 

Even players from a less glamorous but very successful club like Athletico Madrid are available at cheaper prices than their more illustrious neighbours. They are frequently involved in the Champions League and often get to the latter stages with their tough, gritty style of play. 

So having a look for players who have this added bonus of European football is certainly an advantage that you can get, often for little to no extra cost in terms of a player’s value relatively to a comparable player who doesn’t have European football.

 

Picking Up Out of Favour Players

Whilst our natural instincts tend to attract to us the red-hot, in-form players making headlines, it can really pay off to focus instead on the injured, suspended, out of season and generally out of favour players – presuming of course we think they are actually good players and have some data to back that up. 

A player’s value can drop significantly when they are injured as people want players who they can play in the next gameweek, but presuming the injury isn’t too serious and threatens their career, then it can actually be an ideal time to pick them up. 

We have seen instances of a player’s price being significantly suppressed whilst out injured, even though the player is only due to be out for a few weeks and the injury is pretty minor. Then when that player recovers and starts playing again, the price jumps back up. A good resource for injury news is the Sportsgambler site.

The same thing can be true of players in leagues that are on a break or players that have been suspended. It can also be true of players who are out of form and have been dropped, although there is a risk that it could be a while before they get back in the team. A certain amount of judgement and knowledge of the players and clubs involved is needed here.

Again though, if a price has dropped and you think the player is genuinely quality and the dip in form is just temporary, it can be worth taking a long-term view that the player will get back in the team or get a transfer, sooner rather than later.

 

 

Choosing Your Gameweek Entries

When it comes to picking which players will go in your teams, the choices can be tricky. This is particularly the case if you have a lot of cards and can’t decide which ones to enter in the various contests. 

First off you want to check any team news and injuries, although Sorare moving the deadline for entries from 6pm to 1pm UTC has made this a little more tricky. But you should be able to check for any obvious injuries and suspensions of those players who are definitely going to be out, allowing you to exclude those players.

Then you probably want to check which players have been playing regularly in the last few games. Although rotation is part of the modern game, particularly with certain managers such as Pep Guardiola and can be the scourge of Sorare users, ultimately by following your players closely you should get a feel for whether they are likely to start or not. Some players are “first on the teamsheet” kind of guys who barring injury you know will be playing, where as others might be more likely to start European games than league matches for example. 

It can then be an idea to look at the fixture list and see whether any of your players are involved in potentially hard or easy games – a top against bottom match-up for example. Whilst we wouldn’t get too wound up in this as often players perform fairly consistently despite who the opposition is, it can be worth looking at just to see if there are any obviously easy games to take advantage of or hard games to avoid. 

In terms of which leagues/divisions to target, our own preference is to always ensure we have a team in the Global All-Star Division 4 so we have a chance of winning the ETH payout. We tend to like the “Steady Eddy” types who start regularly and usually hit around 50 points so we have as good a chance as possible of hitting the thresholds.

When considering the other leagues, it’s a good idea to look at what percentage of entrants typically get a prize in that league. The Twitter account @SorareHub usually produces a table of the average percentage of managers winning prizes per division, both on average and in the last gameweek. You can also look yourself on Sorare in the “play” page at how many people have entered each contest and how far down the prizes go. 

In general the Asian and American divisions have had the lowest score needed to win a prize, with unsurprisingly the Global All-Star division 4 having the lowest percentage of managers winning card prizes (but excluding the ETH rewards).

There is no right or wrong answer in choosing which leagues to enter, although we would recommend going for a league you have a chance of hitting a prize in rather than trying to “shoot for the stars” in one of the higher divisions thinking you want to test yourself against the big boys (and girls). The upper divisions are very competitive and you will generally need really high quality super-rare or even unique cards to be challenging for the spoils in those upper echelons. 

You can check out Sorare for yourself here.

Flipping/Trading

As we mentioned at the outset of the article, we are long-term holders and are not really focused on the practice of “flipping” – or in other words buying a card in the hope of selling it on quickly at a higher price – but it is worth a short word on as it does make up a part of the opportunity on Sorare.

If you are going to flip, here are some trends we have noticed:-

• It can be advantageous to find players who are cheaper compared to a very similar players. Opportunities like this still exist and if you see two players of a similar age, with very similar SO5 scores and standing in the game but one is twice the price of the other, it usually isn’t that long before the cheaper one rises in price as other managers spot the discrepancy. 
• The kind of out of favour players we mentioned above can be ideal for flipping – injured, suspended, benched or out of form individuals can be a bargain at a knockdown price to sell on later once they are back in the team.
• It can be worth making offers to other managers for their players, particularly if the manager won the card as a reward and isn’t using it (which you can see from the bonus percentage and XP points). However, don’t make derisory offers – this is likely to get you blocked and make flipping harder in the long run. Have a look at recent secondary market prices and those of cards currently for sale and perhaps offer a little below that, maybe 5-10% max. The days of expecting to have an offer accepted 40% below the current asking price are gone – for now at least. 
• If you are going to approach other managers it is a good idea to use Discord to make approaches rather than making a direct offer on Sorare. This has two advantages: one is you can negotiate (and have a bit of banter) and hopefully come to an agreement suitable to both parties, where as at the moment the process on Sorare itself is limited to an offer and acceptance/rejection; secondly, currently on Sorare once you have made an offer the funds are taken out of your ETH wallet until that offer is either accepted or rejected, making it quite difficult to make multiple offers simultaneously, unless you have a large balance of course.
• Look for a good window to sell a player. We listened to a podcast recently where a manager said he was doing very well by putting his players up for sale in the hours before the deadline for a gameweek. His belief was that people really want to enter the contests and will often pay inflated prices for cards to enable them to do so.  He would then buy cards up again later when things had settled down, listing them before the next deadline. Rinse and repeat, as they say.

One final note on flipping: it can be tempting to see people’s screenshots on Twitter showing big profits made from flipping and think it will always be easy to make a profit this way. However, at the time of writing there has been a huge bull market over the last few weeks with the prices of just about every player rising, many by huge amounts. Flipping might not be quite so easy in a flat or down market, particularly if there isn’t significant liquidity (a large pool of willing buyers).

 

Summary and Further Resources

Sorare is an amazing concept but it is complex for the uninitiated and there is quite a lot of nuance and skill to getting it right. Doing your research by scouting players, looking at their history and stats, checking team news and injuries and generally putting in the time is definitely a good idea if you want to get the best out of it. 

We have set out some strategies above that we hope will be useful to you in your journey on Sorare. No doubt some of the dynamics will change over time so it is worth keeping up to date with the latest developments. We will be tracking our own progress live here on the site so you can see how we get on.

This strategy guide is by no means exhaustive or the only resource out there on Sorare of course. We can recommend the following resources for further information on the platform:

• SorareHub on Twitter with useful tables and stats on Sorare contests;
• Football MDJ on Twitter who has some insightful comments and articles;
• Quinny on YouTube who is quite an experienced player and has lots of useful info and tips as well as live streams etc;
• John Nellis on YouTube, with some good introductory guides plus some chats and discussions;
• Sorareinfo, which has lots of useful news and updates on Sorare as well as tips on players to buy.

No doubt many more will pop over time as Sorare grows but those are the best resources we have found so far.

Anyway, we hope you have found this strategy guide useful and please let us know if you have any questions in the comments below or by dropping us a message at info@honestbettingreviews.com.

You can sign up here and get a free Rare Card once you have bought your first five Rare cards through an auction.

 

 

 

 

With the advent of Betfair and the betting exchanges in the early 2000s, punters were given the chance to do something they hadn’t been able to up to that point – bet on selections to lose. 

Otherwise known as lay betting, this new tool in bettors’ armoury forever changed the game and created whole new dynamics in terms of betting, trading and how punters saw markets. 

Where as previously you had only been able to bet on a horse, player or team to win, now you could potentially make money from betting on them to lose, just as the bookies had been doing for centuries. 

Ordinary bettors could even become market-makers themselves, pricing up selections and becoming defacto bookies. 

Now that the betting exchanges have become an ingrained part of the gambling world and are largely taken for granted, it has almost been forgotten what a revolutionary development the introduction of lay betting has been. But we should not forget how significantly it has changed the landscape nor the opportunities it opens up for us as bettors.

Below we are going to take a look at some of the best of these opportunities – the top five most effective laying strategies we have uncovered through all our years of reviews and testing here at Honest Betting Reviews. 

Before we get on to that though, a quick word on lay betting.

 

Introduction – Lay Betting

Although as we have said the advent of lay betting was a tremendously significant development in betting and is an additional tool in the bettor’s arsenal, it should not be thought of as a road to instant riches. 

When the bookies lay selections (or take bets on them in other words), they do so with an over-round in their favour. This “house edge” means they offer slightly worse odds than the true chances of the selections winning – that is how they make their money.

So if for example a horse has a 5/2 chance of winning a race, the bookies will offer 9/4, or even 2/1 if we are talking about the more stingy bookmakers…we won’t name names here but you know who they are! The bookies can do this and know that bets will get taken as there are millions of customers out there.

Whereas if you are laying a horse on Betfair, such is the liquidity of the markets and competition for prices that you would not have that luxury of offering poor prices and expecting bets to get taken. Occasionally you may get matched at lower odds due to the general fluctuations in the market but this would not be consistent. 

On top of that, you would need to overcome the 2% commission you are charged by Betfair, so in effect you would need to beat the market by at least 3% to make a profit in the long run, just as you need to with back betting.

So making money laying is actually quite hard, despite how easy it might seem at first to “pick losers.” In fact, at Honest Betting Reviews we’ve found only a handful of really good laying systems and the majority of the winning strategies we’ve found are actually backing ones. 

There are some good ones out there though who have found a knack of profiting from laying, which we will take a look at now.

 

Top 5 Lay Betting Systems

So now we take a look at our top five lay betting systems we have found through our extensive testing and research, starting from number five down to the best. They cover quite a wide range of sports and approaches but have all shown an ability to produce a consistent profit. 

 

5. Donkey Lays

In theory the idea of backing horses to lose seems very appealing – it seems easy to pick those wretched types who look like they could never win in a month of Sundays. Well it is actually tougher than it first seems and we have in fact only found two decent horse laying services in our time here at Honest Betting Reviews.

One of those is Donkey Lays, which is a service that looks for horses to lay in the win and place markets on Betfair. They only lay at prices of 4.0 and below on the place market, although that can still mean the prices on the win part of the bet are as high as 18, which is a little higher than we would normally like to see so a large bank is recommended to cover any such losses.

However, the results so far have been very good, with over 160 points profit made in total. The strike rate on the place market is excellent at just under 90% whilst it is also strong on the win market at over 67%.

It is still relatively early days with this service but the results look promising and Donkey Lays seems to have found a propsensity for identifying out-of-form types.

 

4. Lay Overs – Trade on Sports

When it comes to football, most punters don’t like the idea of laying goals. They like the feeling of backing the overs market and cheering for there to be goals, when they can celebrate with lots of “Booms!” and positive emojis.

This service takes an alternative approach however and has been remarkably successful at doing so. It comes from the excellent Trade on Sports platform and is known as their “HT 2 ahead lay overs” strategy. In simple terms that means they are betting that there will be less than two goals in the second half of selected matches. For example that means if a game is 1-1 at half-time, you are laying over 3.5 goals.

The strategy is based on a huge database of stats of past matches, known as the “Gamestate App” which looks at leagues and teams in question and works out the chances of more goals, taking into account the timing of goals in the game so far. We ran a review of Trade on Sports and gave it a resounding thumbs up after they made a superb profit across their systems.

The Lay Overs strategy itself has produced excellent results, making over 45 points profit since going live at a return on investment of 17%, which is exceptional for football betting. The strike rate is impressive at 53%, meaning over half the bets have been winners. 

Trade on Sports consider this to be their number one strategy  and we can see why. Sometimes it pays to go “against the crowd” as it were and this is one of those instances where doing just that and laying further goals in a game has really paid off. 

 

3. Tennis Goldmine

Tennis is one of the most gambled-on sports in the world and the liquidity on matches on the main ATP and WTA tours  is usually very high. This means there are good opportunities for trading and for laying. 

One strategy that has capitalised on this opportunity is Tennis Goldmine from respected tennis betting expert Patrick Ross. It is a simple lay betting system with a few rules and it only takes a few minutes per day to find the bets. 

We ran a live trial of the system and it performed very well, making 28 points profit at a return on investment of 10% and with a strike rate of 52%, which is good going. 

There are two staking systems to choose from, one is a loss-recovery system known as the Fibonacci staking system which can be quite volatile and requires a substantial bank to weather the potential drawdowns, whilst the other is simple flat staking. Whilst the Fibonacci staking is more risky it also offers potentially higher rewards. 

Tennis Goldmine now comes with Patrick’s tennis betting tips for free, making it excellent value for what you get as part of the package. As a simple laying strategy that has produced solid results it is well worth checking out. 

 

2. Football Advisor Lays

Next up is a long running football laying service from the respected Football Advisor team. This is a service we have reviewed twice, firstly back in 2017 and more recently in 2018. Both times it made a profit, notching up a combined 44 points profit. 

They provide both lay the win and lay the draw selections in leagues from around the world and use their extensive stats database to find value bets. It was the lay the win selections that performed best during our trial so it may be best to concentrate on those. The strike rate for the selections was very high at nearly 80% whilst the return on investment was a decent 7%. 

The service has been running since way back in 2013 and we often say here that longevity is the ultimate sign of a successful system. In that time they have made over £11,420 profit to £35 stakes and have averaged a strike rate of 84%, which means a very high number of successful lays. 

All in all then with return on capital, or bank growth, at over 320% Football Advisor Lays has stood the test of time and proved itself as one of the best lay betting systems out there.

 

1. Little Acorns

Taking the number one slot in terms of the best lay betting systems is none other than the multi-award winning Little Acorns. 

As we mentioned with Football Advisor Lays, longevity is a key test of a truly successful system and there are few betting services with greater longevity than Little Acorns. Having been originally released way back in 2009, it has made a profit every year since and is one of the most tried and tested strategies out there. 

Little Acorns is essentially a simple betting system for laying horses at odds-on according to a set of just four rules which are laid out in the PDF guide. Much like Tennis Goldmine, it recommends using a form of loss-recovery staking, although you can of course use flat staking if you are of a lower-risk appetite – but the profits will be lower at the same time. 

As the old saying goes and the name of the services alludes to, “Great oaks from little acorns grow.” The idea is that you can start with a small amount and just build it gradually and steadily into something quite substantial, using the magic of compounding. We have heard that some members have done exactly that and now bet at quite hefty stakes, producing very decent profits.  

We ran our own review of the system and it performed admirably, racking up 189 points profit with a 51% strike rate. What’s nice about the system is that it only takes around 10-15 minutes per day to find the selections and there is an average of just one bet per day, so it’s easy to use. 

It is no surprise that Little Acorns has won numerous awards in its time, including our very own Best Horse Racing Service 2020 voted for by our members, after having been runner-up twice in the same category in previous years. It has a loyal fan base who have seen what it can do. 

Given its long track record of success over such a long period, Little Acorns is deserving of a place right at the top of this list. 

 

Conclusion – Lay Betting Systems

So there you have it, our top five lay betting systems. 

They cover a variety of different sports and a range of different approaches, but all have one thing in common: the ability to generate a decent, long-term profit. 

This is our own choice, so please let us know if there is a good one you use that isn’t mentioned in this list. 

Lay betting presents punters with a valuable tool in their arsenal but there have been surprisingly few successful laying strategies developed over the years. It is not as easy as it seems, which makes the achievement of those that have managed to make a profit from laying all the more commendable. 

Whether you follow one of the systems above or develop your own laying strategy, good luck with your betting and please always gamble responsibly. 

 

 

 

Do some online casinos payout better than others? Which casinos have the biggest winners?

These are some of the important questions to ask when choosing your ideal online casino, but it gets a little more complex the deeper you dive in as it very much depends on the type of game you like to play.

The best metric for comparing casinos is their return to player values, usually known as their RTP.

This is simply the percentage of stake money returned to the player. If £95 is paid out on every £100 bet, then the RTP is 95%. The higher the RTP, the better it is for casino players, and the lower it is, the better it is for the casino. Naturally, this is a delicate balance for the casino.

By offering a high RTP they are likely to attract more players, but at the same time, they are reducing their profits, and vice versa.

There is also a significant difference between the RTP of online casinos and high street casinos. Typically the RTP of high street casinos is 80%, while, because it is a more competitive market, that of online casinos is usually over 90%. RTPs are calculated using hundreds of millions of games literally.

Return To Player Values (RTPs) of Different Games

Below we will take a look at the various casino games and their Return to Player Values. 

Table games

Certain table games such as roulette have similar RTPs whatever casino you play it at. The odds are fixed. Naturally, special bonuses can change the RTPs, but they tend to come and go, and the best advice is to stay on the lookout for them.

The same goes for blackjack, but here you need to be more careful as there are many subtly different formats that produce different RTPs. eCOGRA publishes the RTPs for table games for all accredited online casinos. 

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Slots

However, it is not the same for slots. The RTP of slots games can vary enormously. The tightest slots may have RTPs of 85% or even lower, while the loosest slots may have RTPs of up to 97%. Again you need to take care as generally slots with the lowest RTP may be those that pay out the largest jackpots.

If you are happy with many small wins, then it may be better to choose a slot with a consistently high RTP. Note that it is a legal requirement for online casinos to publish the RTPs of each of their slots.

RTPs are assessed over millions of spins, and there is usually a fairly high variance, so for an RTP of 99% don’t expect to receive £99 for every £100 you bet. You may receive less, but you may receive considerably more if you are lucky.

Slots and Casinos With the Highest RTPs

Here is the data you’ve been waiting for. Underneath we list the slots which currently have the highest RTP along with where you can play them. We have only listed example casinos. You will often find the same slots at other casinos too.  

 

Slot game	RTP	Where to play (not exclusive)	Developer	Description
Mega Joker	99%	Grosvenor Casinos Ladbrokes Admiral Casino Redbet Casino	NetEnt	Classic fruit machine
Cosmic Quest	98.5%	Vegas Slots Online Cacoa Casino	Rival	5 reel 20 payline
Jackpot 6000	98.86%	JenningsBet NetBull Casino Funn88 UK	NetEnt	5 reel 25 payline
Cinema Classic	98.5%	Video Slots Casino	Multislot	5 reel 25 payline
Lucky Mermaid	98.5%	Slotsup Vegas Slots Online	Multislot	5 reel 9 payline
Golden Legacy	98.3%	Casino City Video Slots Casino	Multislot	5 reel  9 payline
Diamond Diggin	98.2%	Video Slots Casino	Multislot	5 reel  9 payline

 

So there you have it, those are the numbers to be aware of when looking at casino games.