Matched betting (4 Viewers)

by the way befair make their money through commision, it's 5% on your winning bet, I use smarkets for alot of my laying as their commision is 2%. It's much easier to find odds that don't lose much money when the commision is lower. The downside is smarkets website isn't as good as betfair and there are much much less people using it so there might not be enough liquidity. So I have both open, I find the odds on betfair but then check smarkets to see if I can use them instead.

torchomatic said:

Ah, I see. Thanks v much.

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you're welcome, its scary the first time you do it unfortunately, even though I'd tripled checked before placing my first bet and I knew for a fact it was guaranteed profit until you see it work out it's scary.

torchomatic said:

Stupid question, I suppose, but is going with a £100 or £200 if you factor in the losing bet the best way to start or can the terrified (that's my mate, not me obviously) start with a smaller amount? Or is it not worth doing that?

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well you always want to get full value from each signup, so don't do ladbrooks with a small ammount for instance, always do the £100

but sure if you want to start small you absolutly can, coral.co.uk is a bet £5 at odds of 1.50+ get a £20 free (stake not returned bet)

You will need a decent ammount of money in the betfair account to get good value from the free bet though as free bets where the stake isn't returned have to be done at high odds to get good value. But at least that will be your second bet then and you'll have seen it work.

for example if you use your free £20 at odds of 6.00, if you win you'll win £100 at the bookie (£120 but the £20 stake gets taken back), you'll have to bet £16.72 at 6.00 at smarkets but to do that you'll have to have £84 in the smarkets account, because if you win the £100, you'll lose at smarkets and have lost £83.60. This gives you a profit of £16.40 from the £20 free bet, (this is a bit too good of an example, £15 is more realistic)

One bookie that is alot of effort (the most effort of any bookie I've done) but is good to start with is 888sport.com, the free bet is £88 but you have to place 22 bets to get the full amount, you place one £10 bet and they give you a free £10 bet, then when you place 3 more £10 bets they give you another £10 free. which goes on up until 22 bets where you have received a total of £88 in free bets. By the time you've done this bookie you'll be very comfortable with what you are doing. But like I say it's hard work and won't give you the great boost of motivation you get for makeing £75 in a few minutes.

Did anyone try this? I'm at £2060 (+£180 cashback owed) profit now after about 8 weeks though I am running out of bookies (though still making a decent amount from ongoing offers)

jon92 said:

This the same as laying a horse to loose?

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yes if you lay a horse you will win as long as the horse doesn't win, what I'm doing is both backing and laying the same horse (or football team or whatever) in order to be close to breaking even and then make my money from being given freebets.

Thanks for the tip L887ccfc, I generally stay away from actually gambling though unless there is a bet just too good to miss. I like the peace of mind from doing the matched betting where I know I've made a profit before a ball is even kicked.

I do spice up games occasionally by underlaying a bit lowering my guaranteed profit in order to increase it if something happens. ie on tonights Chelsea game I've got a guaranteed profit of £19.50 but if Chelsea win 3-0 I have a profit of £120. I could have taken a guaranteed profit of £26 instead but this makes the game a bit more interesting.