Matched betting - who's done it and who's good at it? (No Referrals)
- Thread starter knowlton
- Start date
2Up and GG are on at the weekends mainly and it doesn't take long to get a few bets placed on Friday evening/Saturday morning. They're relatively hassle free and can give you a decent return. Hitting BOG is nice but I'd just think of it as a bonus rather than something to target.
2UP - back a team on bet365 (do not bet on a draw) and lay the bet. If your team goes 2UP (e.g. 2-0, 3-1 etc.) your back bet at bet365 will automatically win and your options open. You can essentially cash out for varying amounts of profit with the ideal but less likely situation been the other team either draws or beats your team. A usually good tactic is to cash out 50% of your stake when your team goes 2UP and the let the rest ride either hoping for the draw/loss or cashing out the remainder when the other team gets one back. It's a decent offer but bet365 have made their odds pretty bad this season, I've even heard PaddyPower can have better odds these days which never happened before.
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I've noticed that. Over the last couple years, I've been getting fairly close matches, this year the odds seem to be way off and my QLs are much higher. It really eats into profits if you're having to suck up £5 worth of QL each time. I might have to check out PP!
Soldato
I havent found anything since been gubbed pretty much everywhere over a year ago now. Ive kept some profits going through only low risk casino for over a year but now thats dried up too. In exactly 3 years of matched betting as of this month i stand to make my first ever negative month.
I think if you spend the time you can make really good "Long" term money with it - trading etc.
I'm more of a buy and hold for the long term and just collect the dividends the "top" players produce, rather than trying to scour the lower ranks for the next big thing. I spend 5/10 minutes a week checking my portfolio and just leave it alone generally.
I'm up 19% on the money I've invested. Very small fry compared to some of the numbers I've seen people making.
I still have a little reservation about the money/platform and it's safety in terms of what happens if it disappears tomorrow. However it's funds that I withdrew from my various bookies account over the years from matched betting as it was getting too much hard work trying to make that money work for me.
I don't think this really fits anywhere else, but is there a name for this... When you use two different bookmakers who disagree on the odds, and so one bet of "Team A to win" , at £10 might get you £30 if they do , whereas on the second Bookmaker, "Team B to win" at £10 would get you £20 , essentially breaking even? I'm sure it must have a name?
Isn't that just normal betting? If the teams draw you lose out on both.
Yeah there is that element, Just something i'd seen this morning that got me thinking if you placed bets far enough in advance that you could technically cover all the odds. I don't gamble and have no intention of starting (see it as a slippery slope for me) but i do find it interesting
Yes, it’s called arbitrage. It’s essentially what you’re doing when you’re matched betting though rather than a bad price you’re taking advantage of the free bet instead.
Like matched betting you could get banned quite quickly when doing it as the opportunities would tend to arise when one bookie is a bit slow/posted some square odds relative to the rest of the market.
There are also people who do it in shops - very much small pickings but perhaps worth it to students - essentially some bookies honour the odds printed on betting slips but if the market has moved then there is an obvious arb.
Sharbing' it's called and I was a member of a group of sharbers for a while. Each of us would get to whichever bookies we could as soon as the coupons came out and post up the odds into a database that auto picks out the arbs compared to the exchange. Then we'd pop back to said bookie to relay back to the group if the price was holding. Then get around to as many of the shops as you could with your big wad of sweaty cash
I think rexxar was meaning 'dutching' actually and I also had a lovely spreadsheet for that that would work out the stakes needed. Got gubbed pretty quickly on some of the bookies as was putting on 4 figure sums to make 20-50 quid. Using the free bets in a dutch is a good way of getting into it with smaller stakes. Sometimes the bookie would pull the bet if it was an obvious bad price and that totally mess up the dutch and left you scrambling around trying to salvage the whole thing
Sort of though this gets a bit conflated - what rexxar was talking about is arbitrage. Dutching doesn't necessarily involve an arb but rather can be simply betting on more than one selection (backing more than one horse say) in an event and structuring your bets so as to not have a preference (i.e. if one selection has shorter odds then it would require a higher stake than the other(s) etc..) . Obviously if you spot an arbitrage opportunity then you'd back all the possibilities (in the same manner) and lock in an arb.
This is essentially what people generally do when matched betting too (taking into account the value of the free bet) as they're generally ambivalent towards the actual result and just basically want the same locked in profit regardless of the result..
edit - sorry, interesting re: your sharbing - did you work as an actual syndicate - like pooling money etc.. too or was it just sharing information?
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Soldato
I spent a couple of years doing 2up offers mainly with bet365, paddypower, smarkets and betfair (owned by PP so be careful).
As expected gradually the money all ended up in the bookies. Sure I was up, but the seconds you withdraw any meaningful amount from the bookies to move back to the exchange you end up getting gubbed. Happened time and time again.
I ended up making about £5k over the two years with a bank of about £15k so a 17% tax free return per annum which I was happy with!
Bottom line, the bookies are there to make money, the second they think you are, they will gub your account.
As expected gradually the money all ended up in the bookies. Sure I was up, but the seconds you withdraw any meaningful amount from the bookies to move back to the exchange you end up getting gubbed. Happened time and time again.
I ended up making about £5k over the two years with a bank of about £15k so a 17% tax free return per annum which I was happy with!
Bottom line, the bookies are there to make money, the second they think you are, they will gub your account.
Soldato
Just a thought - if you tell - say - bet365 to delete all your data under the GDPR rules and then open another account if it is gubbed from the start then surely they haven't deleted all your data and you can get them fined?
No we each went with our own stakes according to our circumstances and kept our our profits. We had a WA group and password to gain access to the software which we could all update as and when we could get to the bookies and availability of coupons. Some times it was just a case of photocopying the coupon and uploading it asap (straight from the bookies). Thing was though the assisants got to know you pretty well cos you were putting on decent stakes rather than digging in your pockets for change like the majority of punters. In the end I didnt have enough local books to make it worthwhile the hassle of getting there in time to place the bets before the books pulled the odds and I had a wasted journey.
I thought an arb was just a discrepancy in odds between bookie and exchange creating a profitable solution for the punter. Dutching is covering all the possible outcomes of the race/match etc (like backing all horses in the race or backing win/lose/draw in footy). Sometimes adjusting the stakes so 2 of the outcomes result in break even leaving the preferred outcome with all the profit