How the maths works
The hurdle
Every bet starts behind. Before an edge is worth anything it has to clear the cost of placing it — and on a short pre‑kickoff trade that cost is bigger than most people realise.
Start here
There are always two prices
Open any Betfair market and every selection shows two numbers — say 3.85 and 3.90. They are not a range, and neither is the price. They are two standing offers from other people.
The lower one is what you can back at: somebody is willing to lay it to you at 3.85. The higher one is what you can lay at: somebody is willing to back it at 3.90. Nothing has actually happened yet — these are just offers sitting on the screen.
A trade only occurs when someone takes one of them. That moment is what gets recorded as the price, which is why the odds data has a single price column rather than two.
You get this. It's the lower number — worse for you than the middle.
You pay this. It's the higher number — also worse for you than the middle.
The catch
You always take the worse one
Look at those two cards again. Whichever direction you go, you get the side that suits you least. Back and you get 3.85, not 3.90. Lay and you pay 3.90, not 3.85.
That is not a trick, it is just how any market works — the gap is what pays the people providing the prices. But it means a trade that goes in and out pays that gap in full.
The worked example
Doing nothing costs 1.30%
Lay the draw an hour before kickoff at 3.90. Wait. The market doesn't move at all. Close out by backing at 3.85.
| You lay atthe higher price | 3.90 |
| Market movesnothing happens | 0.00% |
| You back atthe lower price | 3.85 |
| Result(3.85 − 3.90) ÷ 3.85 | −1.30% |
You are down 1.30% having done nothing. No bad luck, no wrong call. You paid to get in and paid to get out.
That 1.30% is the gap between the two prices — which is exactly one step on Betfair's ladder. At this price a step is 0.05, and 0.05 ÷ 3.85 = 1.30%.
The market has to drift out by more than one full step before the price you can back at even reaches the price you laid at.
Play with it
See it for yourself
Move the sliders. The break-even point moves with the price, because the step size does.
Try it — lay the draw, then back it later
per £100 laid- You lay atthe worse price for a layer
- 3.92
- Market movesto 3.92
- +0.50%
- You back atthe worse price for a backer
- 3.89
- Before commission
- -0.78%
- Commission at 2%nothing to charge
- —
The market has to drift out by more than 1.28% — one full step — before you make a penny. A 0.50% move isn't enough.
Across seven seasons of Premier League draws, the average drift in the last hour was +0.13%. Set the slider there and see what happens.
Why the number changes
Longer prices, bigger steps
Betfair prices don't move smoothly. They jump in fixed steps, and the steps get bigger the longer the price. That is why the hurdle is not one number — it depends what you are betting on.
| Price range | Step | Hurdle at that price |
|---|---|---|
| 1.01 – 2.00 | 0.01 | 0.53% |
| 2.00 – 3.00 | 0.02 | 0.80% |
| 3.00 – 4.00 | 0.05 | 1.43% |
| 4.00 – 6.00 | 0.10 | 2.00% |
| 6.00 – 10.0 | 0.20 | 2.50% |
| 10.0 – 20.0 | 0.50 | 3.33% |
Hurdle shown at a representative price in each band. A 1.90 shot costs 0.53% to trade; an 8.0 outsider costs 2.50%.
And then
Commission on top
Betfair takes 2% of your net winnings — not of your stake, and not of losing bets. It only bites when you win, which makes it gentler than it sounds, but it still sits on top of everything above.
So the full sum for a pre‑kickoff trade is: the market has to move more than one step, and then you keep 98% of whatever is left over.
What follows
Why this decides what we build
There are two shapes of bet, and the hurdle is completely different for each.
Trade in and out
1.56%You take a price to open and take the opposite price to close. You pay the whole gap. The edge has to beat a full step before you make a penny.
Nothing in the pre-kickoff market moves reliably that far.
Back it and hold
0.78%You take one price and wait for the result. You never sell, so you only ever pay half the gap — the distance from the true middle to the price you took.
A 5–10% mispricing survives this comfortably.
That is the entire reason Statometrics hunts mispriced matches rather than short pre‑kickoff trades. Not because trading is wrong, but because a 1% edge dies against a 1.56% hurdle, while a 7% edge against a 0.78% hurdle is a business.
Every edge on this platform is measured after the hurdle and after commission. A number that hasn't cleared both isn't an edge, it's a backtest.
Where 1.56% comes from
Measured, not assumed. Across 2,031 Premier League fixtures from 2019/20 to 2025/26, the recorded draw price alternates between two values one ladder step apart — the back quote and the lay quote, each printing as it gets taken. The median gap between them is 1.56% of the price.
Over the same fixtures the draw drifted out by an average of +0.13% in the final hour — real, repeatable, and about a twelfth of what it needs to be.