One of the best ways to make money when it comes to football betting is to specialise. That is – to drill down into ‘niche’ betting areas where the bookies are vulnerable as they simply don’t have the time to check the odds on every market.

For example, take a look at any Premier League football game with one of the major bookmakers. Each game often has a bewildering array of sub-markets beyond just the simple Team X to beat Team Y traditional bet. Then multiply those markets by the number of games in an average weekend – the amount of markets to bet upon goes into the thousands!

With so many markets the bookies get lazy and use computers and formulas to help them price up some of the more obscure bets – leaving them vulnerable to a shrewd punter with an eye for value!

One such area they are particularly vulnerable in and ripe for exploitation is that of ‘Corners Betting’, which a number of our experts at SBC have been tapping into of late. Which is why we have this first part of a 3 part guide on ‘how to bet on corners’ to share with you.

If you like this article, be sure to check out our full corners betting insight, including our full strategy to make it work and interviews with 4 corner betting experts in Secret Betting Club Issue #67.

Betting On Corners – An Introduction

For those of you new to betting on corners, it’s worth running through some of the basics to get you up to speed.

To help with this we will use the Genoa V Inter game from the 13^th December. In this match at Genoa, Inter were a best priced 2.32 and favourites with Genoa as big as 3.50, whilst the draw was around 3.35

One of the most popular corner markets remains the ‘most corners’ which is a simple bet on Team A to get more corners than Team B. If however the corners tally is a draw at the end of the game, this bet will lose.

Looking at the markets for most corners, three bookies had priced this up and the best prices for each team were as follows:

Genoa: 2.35
Inter: 2.1
Draw: 7.0

Judging by this, it’s safe to say that the bookies felt Genoa had a much greater chance (2.35) of winning the most corners market than the actual game (where they are 3.50). This is how it panned out as whilst Inter won the game 1-0 in a fairly dominant performance, Genoa still went on to win on corners 6 – 4.

Corner Handicaps

Further to this there are also plenty of corner handicap bets to consider, especially when the bookies price up a most corners market in a manner more befitting of Scrooge.

In a game such as the fixture between Tottenham V Sunderland we have a prime example. In terms of match odds, Spurs were a very short 2/5, with Sunderland as big as 8/1 just to win the game.

In the most corners market however, Bet365 priced this up as 1/7 Spurs, 11/2 Sunderland and the draw at 10/1. The curious thing here is that both Spurs and Sunderland are significantly shorter in price than in the win market – suggesting a very inefficient market and one not to use. That is to say: beware of the swingeing use of the bookmaker’s built in profit margin in all the corners markets offered.

Therefore in this instance, you may want to consider betting with a handicap, that is to say to give Sunderland a head start on corners, which levels out the price and playing field. This can be found in the ‘Corner Handicap’ market, which is also fairly popular.

In the same Spurs- Sunderland game, Bet365 offer the following handicap:

In this instance, you are effectively starting the game with Sunderland 4 corners ahead of Spurs. You can then take 21/20 on either Sunderland or Spurs with that in mind or on the 13/2 on it being level pegging.

Often times, this can be a fairly decent market to play if as we see above the outright most corners market is offering stingy odds. Although it is worth bearing in mind that a -4 handicap might still not offer huge value as Bet365 do not seem too keen to take much money in this market!

Number of Corners

Another very popular angle for corners betting relates to the number in each game, with the ‘total corners’ market worth exploring.

The majority of games finish with between 9 to 11 corners, so it’s normal to see markets based on over or under these figures.

For example, take the St Johnstone V Aberdeen game, where you can see a whole range of spreads on oddschecker depending on what bet you wish to take…

There are plenty of markets on show here to illustrate the choice on offer to you such as…

Under 9 corners – Ladbrokes are offering the best priced 7/4 that there will be less than 9 corners.
Under 10 corners – Skybet, Blue Square & 888 Sport are offering 11/10 there will be less than 10 corners.
Over 10 corners – Bet365 are offering evens that there will be more than 10 corners.
Under 11 corners – Victor Chandler offering only 7/10 on less than 11 corners
Over 11 corners – Sporting Bet are offering 7/4 on over 11 corners in this market

There are also a range of other bets you can take such as exactly 10 corners or spreads such as between 9-11 corners with Sportingbet at 6/4.

The shrewd of you may notice the differences in prices between a number of bookies in this market. For example in the over 11 corners market, Paddy Power offer only evens, whilst Ladbrokes and Sporting bet go 13/8 and 7/4. Making it clear how important it can be to shop around when betting on corners.

Often you will find a whole range of other markets if you investigate further, so there are plenty of areas to specialise further such as:

• Half with most corners
• Most corners in first/second half
• Race to 3 corners
• Half corners over/unders
• Total corners – home or away team

My advice though would be to steer clear of more random markets such as First or Last Corner or Time of first corner as these play into the bookies hands. It would be very hard to predict such an outcome.

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Thats all for today, be sure to check our Part 2 and Part 3 soon when they are posted on the blog. For the full rundown of this article on Corners betting including interviews with experts and strategies to get you going, these can be found in the Secret Betting Club Issue #67.

You can access this immediately by clicking here now.