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Todays been a good one, up £74 today so happy with that. At this rate my debts will be paid off in a month 
Matched betting - who's done it and who's good at it? (No Referrals)
- Thread starter knowlton
- Start date
Sure. Don't mind sharing as it is not anything that revolutionary and it has already been mentioned earlier in this thread some months ago.
So I wanted something that could be automated so I could set and forget. This led me to use a piece of software called Bet Angel but all this does for me is automatically follow these steps you could do manually.
The strategy is commonly known as lay the draw. You place a lay bet of £X at whatever odds the market offers just before a match kicks off. As soon as a goal is scored, the odds of a draw tend to lengthen and so you then back the draw for a smaller amount of money and whatever then happens you have made a profit. If the game gets to 60 minutes with no goal scored then the odds shorten and you need to place a back bet for more to come out for a loss whatever happens.
There's many variations on that and the skill you hope to have an edge with is picking the right type of matches to use the strategy on or have some clever variations of the strategy - for example there's a method that holds off placing the initial back bet until half time if it is still 0-0 as the draw odds have shortened but statistically more goals are scored in the second half.
I'm still finding my way with picking the right matches, but so far I seem to have the most success with strong favourites at home. The trouble with that is that the risks become much higher so you have many more peaks and troughs. Or sometimes the odds of a draw are so high you don't have the bankroll to place the initial back bet.
Generally if I win them I win half my initial stake value and if I lose I tend to lose about twice my stake value, so,you have to be confident 4 out of every 5 bets is a winner to make a profit long term.
Guess a worked example might help.
At kick off Team A vs Team B I lay the draw at say 5 for a £20 stake. Team A might be a favourite at back odds of 1.5 in this example.
At this point I will win £20 if it's not a draw and lose £100 if it is.
Half an hour in and Team A scores. The odds of a draw shoot up to 12. I back the draw now at 12 for a £10 stake.
At this point if it is not a draw I win £20 from my lay and lose £10 from my back - £10 profit
If it is a draw I win £120 from my back and lose £100 from my lay - £20 profit.
I do nothing more as I'm a winner whatever the result.
Note the software (or Betfair's cash out feature) will make sure it gives me equal profit whatever the result rather than my lopsided example.
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Or you can move on to start and introduce risk to whatever your comfortable with. For example I've started trading modestly. It's a tough learning curve, I'm not confident enough yet to increase my stakes, but so far in three months and 150 trades the trend looks to be heading in the right direction with one of my strategies:
not trying to be funny - but the 'trend' there looks like you winning then giving it back then winning then giving it back then winning... I don't think I'd be too confident just yet
Oh I'm absolutely not confident of anything yet and you're absolutely right that there's huge swings in there that don't necessarily show real progress. Thing is that some of those big downward swings were me fine tuning the match selection and exact parameters of when to make the stop loss trade and other things I'm still trying to get a grip on. There's a few errors in my scripting that needed correcting that cost bigger than it needed to etc. where you see some of the really big drops in a short space of time. Still a big learning curve and it'll be a year before I could say anything with any confidence. I hope the graph then looks like the peaks with just the minor drops you see, not the huge ones. I don't have the bankroll to do it any quicker though.
It's gambling pure and simple and shouldn't really be considered anything like matched betting which guarantees profit. I'm only experimenting with what I'm prepared to lose because it is quite interesting and I like statistics and by putting a bit of research it looks like it might yield an interesting small, low effort profit stream. After all, there are professional traders in all walks of life with an appetite for risk who do this sort of thing. I also have to say it's nice to have something on the go where I have an interest in the outcome of a football match as of course with MB it doesn't really matter what the result is.
I mentioned it in response to someone saying what to do when you've run out of opening offers. Risk free, beyond reloads and each way sniping, if you want to guaranteed profit I only see ACCA refunds as being relatively steady and half decent return. Some have laughed on me here but in the football season I maintain you can get 8 ACCAs a week on across three or four bookmakers yielding a guaranteed profit of £50-£60 a week. More potentially if you want to use methods that don't guarantee profit. 40 weeks of the year yields £2K at least which would have needed me to earn closer to £4K from my regular job to clear net. But it takes time and the automation aspect of looking at trading is also interesting to me for that reason.
There are other strategies I want to get into, like laying the field in horse racing and there's a 1% Betfair football strategy that sees you picking an odds on favourite 24 hours before kick off, laying at the back price, backing at the lay price. Neither bet gets matched initially, but over 24 hours the odds tend to tick up and down between the two prices and sees both your bets getting matched more often than not. When they both do you've guaranteed 1% profit from your stake. And if they don't you can back out for minimal or no loss compared to most other trading strategies. It's a bit more complicated than that, but that's the gist. Some long term test by others sees about a 75% success rate (the rest you can back out for net break even) so you can effectively make 0.75% of your stake daily, which doesn't sound a lot but keep reinvesting and upping your stakes with the winnings and the compound effect is quite marked over time. Again this appeals because of the lower draw on time to do, but should still be considered gambling. That's what trading is - informed gambling. Matched betting is in no way gambling.
Associate
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Once you've exhausted the free offers, what's required to repeat the process (if possible). I've moved, got a different bank account, but same name and DOB - wonder at what point is someone flagged for creating a new account but not being a 'new' customer for these offers?
ping you an email via trust if you don't mind
Associate
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got a partner that lives with you that you can just use their details, get him/her to open another bank account and work out of that using her details?
You should be ok with a different address etc, that let you redo the lot.
Many check your address, but some let you get away with same address just a different name and bank details. Managed a 2nd account on betfair, skybet, Coral and ladbroks so far.
You do run the risk of them letting you have the free bet then withholding your winnings.
It's a great offer. Best left until later in your journey of matched betting as ideally you'd like to lose quickly and that means long odds and long odds on £200 necessitates a big bankroll in your exchange. Of course you can always do it in smaller chunks more slowly if required.
Was my best one yet
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I wouldn't go long odds for Bet365 as sod's law you will win at the bookie and tie up loads of your funds. You also risk getting stake limited.
Big stakes on low odds football is the way to go and aim to complete wagering.
Big stakes on low odds football is the way to go and aim to complete wagering.
Soldato
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Any more information about this technique please?
It seems prone to some issues to me.
Let's say the back odds on a team are 1.5 and the lay odds 1.52. You back at 1.52 and lay at 1.5. Obviously neither get matched.
Let's say the odds then come in on the team. So first they come in to 1.5 and your lay bet gets matched. Then they continue to shorten. Let's say when you come back to it the odds have fallen to 1.4. Are you not pretty screwed then?
There's certain patterns to look out for that minimise what you describe happening - you don't pick matches that are likely to fluctuate by as much as your example. It would be unfair to say anymore as the guy who describes it well (Mike Cruikshank) makes money selling it so I don't want to do him out of sales.
Soldato
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Don't really see that as your problem to be honest. This is an open forum and he doesn't have a patent on it. Anyone else willing to share information?