Lower Risk <> Greater Value

There's currently a thread on the Betfair forum on laying the 0-0 score, and the opening line is this gem:

Laying 0-0 IMO is profitable in the long term if you have the patience to wait until the match is in-play and the odds have dropped to give yourself better value

Amusingly, the author adds 'in-depth research' to the thread title, presumably an attempt to add a little gravitas to a silly idea, which just made the thread all the sillier. Why exactly should the price after x minutes be better value than the price at the start? Yes, the liability is lower, but similarly there is also less time remaining, and there is no evidence that more value is available in-play than at kick-off. That people think this way is encouraging though, but it won't work. This kind of a strategy, if you can even call it that, is doomed to fail. You might string a nice run of winners together, but that scoreline will come along soon enough. There's a reason why the prices on these markets drop quite quickly once the game is in-play, and it's not to offer layers better value.

I've seen similar threads on the 3-3 scoreline, but that scoreline doesn't work either. They may be few and far between, but they do happen. 3-3 is a result that reminds me of a story from the Racing Post many years ago. In a similar, but lower profile, to the coup achieved by the Hole-In-One-Gang someone noticed that the 3-3 draw price was value, and would back doubles or trebles every Saturday. I honestly don't recall the precise details, but I think I am right in saying that the generally available 100-1 on that scoreline became 80-1 pretty soon. Anyway, back to laying the 0-0, and like the 'lay-the-draw' system, it's an old strategy that, even if it did work at one time, has long since been found out, and if anything, I would expect there to be more value in on the back side - if you'll pardon the expression.