Holy Grail or Wholly Fail?

[harry_rag]

With the occasional post using the "holy grail" hook to attract attention I thought I'd post some thoughts and a question.

If I ever found a genuine "HG" I'm pretty sure I wouldn't reveal it on here or post many of my bets. I also wouldn't come on to do any of the "cock inflating" hinting and teasing that we occasionally see. Ultimately I'd keep it to myself to preserve the edge because a genuine edge is obviously a fragile and valuable thing.

It's my view that if there is a HG to be found it will involve selling on the spreads. As most people want to buy a thrill (e.g. bet on lots of goals/corners/cards/runs/tries etc.) this is reflected in the prices so that any value is likely to be on the sell side. As Kevin Pullein often points out, the best bargains are often to be found on the bets that no-one wants to place rather than the ones that are obvious and appeal to the majority. Also, most people are more inclined to overestimate how many of these things there will be in a game/match.

In the early days of spread betting (pre-internet and the wide availability of detailed statistics) there were some crazy prices offered, e.g. corners might have been 16-17 or even higher. The opportunity to blindly sell total corners at 16 in every game would yield a substantial guaranteed profit in the long run. Over time the firms and the punters got a better understanding of things, shrewder punters started to sell clearly wrong prices and the markets settled at a point much closer to reality. Despite that, the greater demand from buyers continues to inflate prices to a degree (remember Muppet's successful HG corners thread which ran for years).

So all that gets me to pondering, are there certain markets in certain sports where one could make a profit by blindly selling? Or, perhaps slightly more likely, by applying a limited set of filters such as minimum price and maximum "market" spread width? To give an entirely hypothetical example:

Sell player performance in cricket as long as sell price is 40 or more and spread width is 1 or less. So if a player is 40-44 with both firms that would be no bet but if one firm went 43-47 then that would signal a sell at 43 (as the market price would be 43-44 and the spread width just 1).

Assuming anyone makes it this far (I appreciate there aren't that many spread aficianados on here) the question I'd welcome feedback on is:

Are there any markets that you think are worth looking at from the point of view of the spreads always tending to be on the high side, offering value for a strategy based on selling?

[Torque]

One bet no-one ever seems to want to place is on 0-0, so maybe with some filters that could be a fruitful strategy - although I remember years ago someone on here tried to turn a profit backing 0-0 but I don't recall it being successful. Probably not much of a useful contribution from me reading this back