Matched betting - who's done it and who's good at it? (No Referrals)

[Royal Fleet]

Those -ev bets at the bookies are unchanged whether you lay or not - if you don't think they're unchanged then please explain why.

Surely this comes down to how well you can match your bets.

You assume have two strategies. You gamble or you match. In both scenarios you get 10% of free bets for your back bets at the bookies.

Strategy 1 - You gamble and win in accordance with the probability and bookie's overround of 8%. Your stakes of 1000 bet at 10 (so 10000 gambled) would return you 9200 in winnings and 1000 in free bets.
Strategy 2 - You lay all your bets with a QL of 4%. You pay no commission on your lay bets*. Your 1000 bet at 10 would return 9600 in winnings and 1000 in free bets.

You then repeat the same with your free bets. Same margins would apply (the impact of stake not being returned would impact both equally)

*This is possible if you use PA in partnership with Smarkets for example.

 

[Street]

Is it better to hold off doing this until you can invest a larger sum of money vs trying to grind a balance with lower amounts ?

You can start fairly small. If you do all the intro offers, you can build up a few hundred fairly quickly and then you'll have more of a bank to work with. The only problem with starting small is having to wait for withdrawal from bookies to start the next offer.

 

[BaZ87]

Just a quick reminder. As stated in the OP (and now the thread title), nobody should be requesting referral links, giving out referral links or even telling somebody who to contact to get a referral link.

 

[Minusorange]

The only problem with starting small is having to wait for withdrawal from bookies to start the next offer.

So better to wait then, think I'll give it a try next month

 

[glenimp617]

Is it better to hold off doing this until you can invest a larger sum of money vs trying to grind a balance with lower amounts ?

I started with £100

It soon jumps up, I was in the thousands after a few months

£10 here, £20 there

 

[Royal Fleet]

Likewise started with £100. 6 months later I should hit £3k profit soon.

 

[dowie]

Surely this comes down to how well you can match your bets.

Well potentially - if you're able to otherwise make money from betfair via +ev bets or get lucky, otherwise not really.

Of course you might find a straight up arb too (though in that case it would more likely be a dodgy price at the bookies)

I think you had a flawed example previously (you had a dodgy betfair price then based an argument around it) and have been stuck on that. I presume you've thought about the questions posed previously?

If not then consider a coin flip - this should illustrate it

lets say paddy power offers the following:

Heads 1.8
Tails 1.8

the EV is (8*.5) + (-10 * .5) = -£1

(the vig is 11.1/111.1 = 10%)

The true odds for each are 2

Now suppose betfair has a more efficient market around the true odds 1.95 : 2.05

well we could lay at 2.05 for a QL of £1.22

note this is a bigger loss than the EV of the paddy power bet

note if betfair allowed us to lay at 2 (i.e. at the true odds, a 0ev bet) then we have a QL of £1 - identical to the EV of the bet at the bookie... if we were able to lay at less than 2 at betfair... on a coin flip... well we don't need matched betting, we've got free money from betfair already... that would be a +ev bet!

Note the EV of the bet is unchanged - and generally betfair doesn't give away free money easily, you're generally going to have some additional loss thanks to betfair.

Hopefully it is abundantly obvious that a) if you carry on betting on coin flips at paddy power at 1.8 then you'll lose money in the long run
b) if you carry on laying coin flips at betfair at 2.05 then you'll lose in the long run

You make money from the free bet, that money comes to you via the bookie, the effect of laying at betfair is to reduce variance, it costs you money, it is like insurance. If you were able to not lose money at the exchange then you might as well just make money from betfair!

 

[Royal Fleet]

@dowie

Agree with your example. However if you could find a lay bet on your coin toss at 1.84 you would have better value than gambling on it. Obviously unlikely in this case as the probability is so transparent. But in real life using a tool getting a 96% match would be quite possible for the scenarios you need. (e.g to back Arsenal tonight I can back at 1.28 on Bet365 and lay at 1.29 on Smarkets)

I am confident I can get close matches and paying no commissions means my QL are smaller than I would lose in overround. YMMV.

 

[Minusorange]

I started with £100

It soon jumps up, I was in the thousands after a few months

£10 here, £20 there

Others hobbies haven take priority this month so I'll have to wait, irony is that I'm only wanting to do this to help pay for those hobbies

 

[glenimp617]

Others hobbies haven take priority this month so I'll have to wait, irony is that I'm only wanting to do this to help pay for those hobbies

Mine was to clear my credit card, ended up clearing the credit card, loan and overdraft. That money which was going to paying debts is now going into savings for a new house.
Chuffed to bits.

 

[roccles]

I got my free £50 free bet for the 14:50 at Cheltenham but something came up at work and I only managed to place the bet minutes before the race started and did not get a chance to lay at the exchange. So whacked 50 quid each way on Frodon and crossed my fingers it only finished first! So lady luck was on my side this time £183 profit. Happy days!

 

[dowie]

@dowie

Agree with your example. However if you could find a lay bet on your coin toss at 1.84 you would have better value than gambling on it.

Not sure what the relevance of 1.84 is here? If you could find any lay bet below 2 then you're be getting value from that lay bet itself.

I'd happily lay say 1.95 on coin flips all day.

Obviously unlikely in this case as the probability is so transparent. But in real life using a tool getting a 96% match would be quite possible for the scenarios you need. (e.g to back Arsenal tonight I can back at 1.28 on Bet365 and lay at 1.29 on Smarkets)

Those are two exchanges though, they're going to be pretty efficient. Assuming the true odds (which of course we don't know) actually were 1.28 then you've got a 0ev bet and a very slightly -ev lay.

I am confident I can get close matches and paying no commissions means my QL are smaller than I would lose in overround. YMMV.

Your QL is essentially made up of the EV of your bet and the EV of your lay, the EV of your lay would need to be positive for the QL to be smaller than the EV of your bet... in which case you're making money from the exchange and don't need to match in the first place! This is unlikely in the general case, it is generally the case that the exchanges are pretty efficient though and so most lays at the exchange that involve crossing the spread should be -EV

I wonder if you're perhaps getting good prices from the bookies in some cases on the specific bet you're placing but you're then making a dubious comparison between the overround (should be the vig really if you're going to make this rough comparison) and the QL which doesn't actually reflect the fact that you've got a rather low -ev bet or even a value bet. (be careful in the latter case as this is where bookies clamp down on you)

This is again where the previous point comes in, the EV of the bets at the bookies whether you're laying or not is unchanged... you'd benefit from the same value bets or low -ev bets whether you lay or not, laying is still the process that costs money and the same point remains.

 

[Royal Fleet]

Expected value is the average value over a series of bets. The value of an individual bet is unknown but as a mathematical model the series will reduce the variance to the point where it will smooth out to an EV.

If you are backing and laying there is no EV - the value is known. If you have backed and laid to cancel out as you should it makes no difference to the outcome of the value of the bet whether the bookie or lay bet wins. So in the example shown above

Back £100 at bet365 @ 1.28 - Arsenal win
Lay £99.22 at Smarkets @ 1.29 - Arsenal not to win

Arsenal win - £128.00 in bet 365 account; (£100 stake plus £28 profit) - £128 not in Smarket account (99.22 liability paidout; 28.78 winnings you didn't get)
Arsenal didn't win - £128.00 not in bet 365 account; (£100 stake lost plus £28 profit you didn't get) - £128 in Smarket account (99.22 liability not paidout; 28.78 winnings)

The loss here is 78p - your QL. This is known before you place the bets.

 

[dowie]

Expected value is the average value over a series of bets. The value of an individual bet is unknown but as a mathematical model the series will reduce the variance to the point where it will smooth out to an EV.

That depends on the bet, where it is unknown then people can of course estimate it (for example handicappers) or indeed make approximations for it etc... assuming the prices form a sharp book or mid price from an exchange reflects the true odds... But regardless I picked an example, to illustrate the point where the ev is know as the probability is known - i..e a coin toss.

If you are backing and laying there is no EV - the value is known. If you have backed and laid to cancel out as you should it makes no difference to the outcome of the value of the bet whether the bookie or lay bet wins. So in the example shown above

That is not true. I think this is the blind spot for you, you're not looking at what is happening with the individual bets, I did ask some questions to try and illustrate this previously.

Your series of bets at the bookie all have an expected value ditto to your series of bets at the exchange, that doesn't magically disappear because you've hedged. Essentially what you do is get rid of variance, you lock in the expected value of the bets combined - please see again the coin flip example - there is an expected value of -£1 from the bookie and -£.22 from the exchange - this is your QL of £1.22.

If you didn't hedge (and there were no free bets) then you'd expect to lose, on average -£1 per bet over time. If you do hedge then there is another -ev event from laying at the exchange... you simply lose £1.22 directly from that bet and lay combo ergo your QL is greater than the expected loss for betting at the bookie alone. This ought to be intuitive simply by considering that laying at the exchange is -ev.

This is where I need to point out again that if you don't believe that laying at the exchange is -ev then why bother with matched betting at all, you'll apparently already have a +ev betfair strategy. If you do accept that laying at the exchange costs money then I'm baffled that you're still not following this.

 

[Rotty]

Lets put it simply (yes there are exceptions when arbitrage situations pop up)

If you bet and gamble on the value you are paying the bookies cut once

If you bet and lay you are paying it twice



Anyway, 3 days in and just using Skybet and Betway offers I'm £230 up

 

[Royal Fleet]

We need to nail down this EV issue as this is where we are disagreeing. I am not sure why you both maintain it is a factor in a matched bet. You are laying two bets. One that some thing will happen and one that it won’t. By definition one of these will occur on every bet. Arsenal win or they don’t. Aguero scores first or he doesn’t. You have covered both sides of this outcome. You are in effect acting as punter and bookie in the same event. You will win on one side of the equation every time. As long as you stake accordingly to balance that equation out the net effect is zero. (Not withstanding the qualifying loss).

Where the confusion may arise is that exchanges display the lay odds actually as back odds. In reality you are accepting someone else backing the event at those odds to you as the bookie.

If you can get perfect matches (which is possible) and laid a whole series of such bets you would retain 100% of your stakes. All that would happen is that in some cases your back bet would win and in some cases your lay bet. The net effect is zero.

Consider roulette. If you back black and red equally you will lose money over time as there is a green space on the wheel. If you could back black and not black you would not lose money.

PS - 3 days in and 500 up - some cheeky extra places helped me out.

 

[Oxide™]

Going to look into MB this weekend - yesbets the best place for tutorials etc on what exactly to do?

 

[Ben3991]

Lets put it simply (yes there are exceptions when arbitrage situations pop up)

If you bet and gamble on the value you are paying the bookies cut once

If you bet and lay you are paying it twice



Anyway, 3 days in and just using Skybet and Betway offers I'm £230 up

Do you mind me asking which offers you are using at these? And are they daily/regular?

 

[Royal Fleet]

Skybet have an offer where if you lose on the first race they refund your stake (as cash) up to 20. Betway is similar but you get free bets as refunds instead of cash.

Dependent on your approach you either gamble on these knowing you will have a positive return over a series of these, or lay off each bet to guarantee a profit.

Other similar offers from Bet365, Unibet and Betfair sportsbook. (risk free bet if your horse wins)

You can also profit from the extra place offers which some bookies offer. Either through a higher EV or from the difference between the bookie placings on each way and the exchange (so if your each way bet comes in on an extra place your back bet wins and your lay bet doesn’t lose).

Most of these are regular but ramped up for Cheltenham

 

[Simon]

Bethard double odds on first race.