A popular choice among card bettors these days is to focus on individual players. For many, the best way to do that is bet on individual players to receive a yellow card.
You can now bet on players to receive a yellow card by using the ‘Player to Be Booked’ market, which is offered by several bookmakers.
What does being booked mean?
If during a football match a player steps outside of the law, the referee has the ability to show either a red or a yellow card, depending on the severity of offence. For lesser offences, players will be shown a yellow card.
There are numerous instances where a player may be shown a yellow card, which is often referred to as “ being booked”.
Common offences are fouling an opponent in a cynical and non-violent way, being abusive to the referee, or handling the ball. When a player does one of these things, they tend to be booked.
Betting on a player to be booked
Because a player being booked is an event that can happen during a football match, it’s something that can be bet on.
Why would you bet on a player to be carded?
One reason that many bettors choose to bet on individual players to be carded is because they’re betting on something that is completely independent of the result of the match.
Another positive for many is that the bet often has a longer shelf life than say a bet focused on goals. For example, if you bet on a player to be yellow carded. As long as they’re on the pitch, they’re only ever one foul away from being booked. In contrast if you bet on ‘Over 2.5 Goals’ and the game is 0-0 after 55 minutes, chances are, the bet is dead in the water.
You may choose to bet on a player to be booked because you’ve noticed that they’ve been making a lot of full-blooded tackles in recent weeks, or maybe they’ve got a habit of receiving a yellow card in certain types of game.
The invention of the ‘Player to Be Booked’ market presents bettors with some interesting and potentially lucrative opportunities.
‘Player to Be Booked’ Betting Strategy
You always need a strategy. You can always bet randomly on players to be booked and just have some fun with it, but be prepared to lose money.
Specialise
With any football betting, you should specialise. And specialising on the ‘Player to Be Booked’ market is as viable a route as any.
You still need to specialise further, though. Why? Because there’s simply too much football to stay on top of everything. Pick a league or a small number of leagues. Focus on trying to find bets in those leagues.
Once you’ve got your league, you need to know how the teams perform in terms of fouls and yellow cards. Doing this will help you to get a better feel of how certain players perform in that sense. If you can understand how players behave in certain situations, whether they commit more fouls against certain opposition, or tend to pick up yellow cards in big derby games when tempers flare, then you’ll be well placed to identify viable ‘Player to Be Booked’ betting opportunities.
Individual player stats
You can get to know the players that you need to by watching plenty of football. However, it’s hard to watch everything.
Fortunately, there are lots of individual player stats that are freely available. These stats can really help if you’re looking to bet on players to be booked, especially if you’re looking to do so in a way that may turn out to be profitable in the long run.
Naturally, you want to know how many yellow cards players are picking up on average, but you also need to be more specific. Look at what type of opposition they’re getting booked against. Look at the overall disciplinary record of the team too.
You also want to know how many fouls a player makes per game, find out if it’s a lot. Are they making more fouls against certain teams? For example, a defensive midfielder for a mid-table side might commit more fouls when his side face the best teams in the division than when he comes up against those at the bottom of the table.
In addition to fouls, it’s useful to know how many tackles a player makes per game. The more tackles a player makes, the more opportunities there are for bad tackles and thus fouls.
Finding player stats
You need to know where to find stats. Fortunately, you have plenty of options. The Premier League website is great for punters looking to bet on players to be booked. It offers stats on fouls and yellow cards, which are great tools for finding out how many yellows a player picks up or how many fouls they make per game.
For any stats, especially player stats, whoscored.com is an excellent option, as it offers a plethora of data. There’s lots of yellow card, foul and tackle stats to get stuck into, all of which are ideal for those punters looking to play in the ‘To be Booked’ market.
If you want to see how a player’s team performs in terms of fouls or yellow cards in relation to other teams, then FootyStats is perfect, offering perhaps the most comprehensive package in that sense.
Know the referees
Knowing about referees is very important too. Know which referees give more yellows, which referee let more go, and which referees blow their whistle every time a player breathes in the direction of someone on the opposing team.
Keeping on top of the referee stats in the league(s) that you’re betting on can simply leave you in a more informed position, which should lead to more informed decisions when placing bets.
For more information on finding referee stats, check out our full card betting guide.
Bookmakers offering the ‘Player to Be Booked’ market
Card betting is a big thing now, so most bookmakers offer multiple card betting options. Then again, not every bookie offers the ‘Player to Be Booked’.
In fact, of the big bookies, only bet365 offers the market ‘Player to Be Booked’ in its specific form.
bet365
To find the ‘Player to Be Booked’ market, head to the website and find ‘Soccer’ from the menu of sports on the left hand side.
Find your chosen fixture from either the list of upcoming games or the competitions breakdown.
From the main odds page of your chosen geam, simply click on the ‘Player’ tab at the top, then scroll down until you hit the list of player names and odds under the title ‘Player to Be Booked’
PaddyPower, William Hill, Betfred and Betfair
These are big players in the online betting industry, but for some reason, they don’t offer a ‘Player to Be Booked’ market.
However, they do offer a ‘Player to Be Shown a Card’ market, which is very similar. If you wanted to bet on a player to be booked, you could do it by betting on this market, and even if your chosen player wasn’t booked but was shown a straight red card, you’d still win the bet.
