A green book is much revered among Betfair traders - it is when you have locked in a guaranteed profit in a market, no matter what the outcome.
The quickest way to do this is by backing and laying the same selection. You need to pay attention to the settings we detailed earlier.
To lock in a profit on the same selection, you need to capitalise on a fluctuating price. You need to recognise which way the price is going.
In the property market, you want to buy a house at a low price, then sell it later at a higher price to take a profit. On the Betfair market you want to BACK at the high price and LAY at the low price. It makes no difference which order you do it in, so long as you are on the right side of the trend.
Take the under/over 2.5 goals market in-play. Until a goal is scored, the price for under 2.5 goals will continue to drop. Recognising this, and expecting the game to remain scoreless for some time yet, you back Under 2.5 goals at 2. As soon as the price moves down even slightly, you are in a position to trade for a profit.
In the example above, you are proposing to back at 2 and lay at 1.98. If you back and lay for the same amount, all your profit will remain in just one selection - you will win nothing (but also lose nothing) on any other outcome.
Think of selling property - you buy low, sell higher for a profit - but it is only a one-line result. A betting market will have two or more options to spread the profit out on. You need to lay for more than you back for if you want a similar result on all outcomes. It's your choice.
Imagine a pizza - you can sell it whole for £6, or cut into eight pieces at £1 a slice to make more money. The profit on the original bet is what you are dividing up. You are in control of how much you stake and what price you take.
You won't be able to get both bets matched at the same time - if it was that simple, everyone would be doing it and nobody need ever work again!
Every investment you make - a bet, buying shares or property is a gamble - the price can go up or it can go down. Different markets behave in different ways - there are no guarantees of making a profit.
There will always be a gap in time between your two trades being matched. How long that gap is depends on the size of the gap between prices you ask for. The wider the gap in prices, the wider the window of time required will be. And the longer that time window is, the bigger the risk of the market going against you.
Some people will choose to make few trades, but expect to reap larger profits. Others will find that too risky and prefer to make small profits over and over again.
The choice is yours if you decide to trade - there's more than just one way to make money on Betfair. For further information about trading, click here.