Anyone do matched betting?

[AintNobodyHereButUsChickens]

And can explain to me, slowly, how it works? I've been watching lots of how-to videos but I'm still quite confused Maybe I'm just really dim

I've read loads of "simple" guides on it and still can't wrap my brain round it. 😂

@Squirrelblanket

I've read loads of "simple" guides on it and still can't wrap my brain round it. 😂

I feel you. I've watched the videos and thought "Anyone who finds this easy must be an actual bonafide genius!" 😂🤣

I did it but gave up as in the process of applying for a mortgage. As someone who enjoys a flutter on the horses anyway it was a most enjoyable pastime. In short, you cannot lose at matched betting. So.....

• You bet at a bookies that horse X will win
• you bet at the exchange that horse X will lose ( you can also bet on football, tennis, golf etc, I enjoy horse racing so generally stuck to that)

You are bound to win one bet or the other and so long as the odds of each outcome are close then you will only lose a few pence at most.

The bookies then give free bets when you sign up or as a loyalty bonus. This is free money. So a free £5 bet can be used to bet on horse X to win, while you use your own money at the exchange to bet on horse X to lose.

There's far fewer free bets floating round these days and bookies are much more clued up about matched betters and will ban them from their sites, so not as easy as it used to be.

The main thing I would say it it was much more effective with at least £200 in the pot to begin with. Otherwise it's frustratingly slow as payouts are not instant and you cannot place further bets until your winnings have cleared.

Also as previously mentioned, mortgage companies view it purely as gambling rather than a structured system, and are very sketchy about loaning if your bank account shows too much gambling activity. I did use a completely separate account but in the end decided that the risk was too great.

Lastly I signed up to Odds Monkey. They have a really helpful section about how to get started and tools that give you the bets with the best returns. After a free introduction period there's a monthly charge but it was well worth it for the convenience.

I used to. Watch the step by step videos on oddsmonkey very carefully, follow all the steps in order, and you can't go wrong. I made £1000 from a £30 start, but I stopped because it gets very time consuming once the initial free bets dry up.

Sorry, I meant watch the team profit videos. They also have a very helpful Facebook group which I found really helpful and friendly.

I did it fairly intensively for about three years and made about £16k in total. Not sure there's as much to be made now as a few years ago - free bets seem to be fewer and far between.

Join Team Profit or OddsMonkey or Profit Accumulator. Join the Team Profit Facebook group (there used to be a newbies group - don't know if it's still around). Open a dedicated matched betting bank account and email address. Then read, watch the videos, ask questions online until you do your first trigger bet and free bet. Take notes. Ask if there's anything you don't understand. When I finally bit the bullet DP and I sat down for three hours with two laptops, two notebooks and worked out way through placing a trigger bet and doing the free bet. The process will click but at the start it does seem confusing.

If you have any addictive tendencies then maybe avoid it. Don't get sucked into gambling and if you end up doing casino offers you need to be very disciplined.

@AintNobodyHereButUsChickens - I’m very part time, but my tips are:

Access the Team Profit website. It’s free. Their tutorials are great and they give step-by-step instructions for each welcome offer. They give guides to starting with £10, £50 or £100 (roughly, it’s a while since I started). You will NOT make more profit if you start with £100 - it just means you can progress a bit faster due to moving funds around.

In tandem, request to join the Team Profit Facebook group. If you have ANY queries, post on there and an admin or other members would try to help. They would rather you ask a “daft” question than place a bet and lose money. NB - you won’t lose money if you’re doing it right, so do not hesitate to ask.

After welcome offers, the “reload” offers aren’t as good as they used to be. They’re still there, but you have to work harder for them.

Asinine can be a good diversion, but not going solo. Don’t touch casino offers on your own. Team Casino (monthly fee - more than pays for itself) is great. Again, full instructions for every offer. As a pp said, be careful if you have gambling tendencies. But if, like me, you don’t then following their strategy is profitable.

The main thing you should take away from this is to follow the guides - for betting or casino. You might think you’ve found a loophole, or a genius way to lay a bet, or a better way of utilising a casino bonus. Believe me , you won’t - you will simply be gambling!

It’s definitely worth trying. I was a failure at maths during my school years. Watch the videos, read the guides, spend a weekend doing a couple of “test” bets on paper - and ask on the TP Facebook group if you want reassurance before placing your bets - you can post screenshots and someone will reply.

And, as @DappledOliveGroves said, it’s highly recommended to set up a separate email account and a separate bank account/card. This makes it easier to ensure that your funds for this are separate from everyday funds and that you don’t miss any emails. You will need to “recycle” funds all the time from your bookie/exchange/casino sites, so having them go through a separate bank account makes things much easier.

*Asinine = casino! Stupid autocorrect.

I made unreal amounts of money off this and would be very happy to help other people take advantage.

However, it's nowhere near as good as it used to be.

Realistically you can make £500 quite quickly then maybe £100-£200 a month until the bookies start restricting your accounts.

I recommend odds monkey but profit accumulator is a more chatty and dare I say women-friendly group.

Team Profit are great

Definitely team profit and Odds Monkey on a free trial. As others have said it is hardly worth the effort now as there are less free bet offers around

I don’t like team profit these days but used them when it was free, much prefer odds monkey. Matched betting isn’t what it used to be but still some money to be made. I found I didn’t really understand it until I jumped in and actually did it, using the guides. I watched lots of videos and still felt a bit confused but doing it following the step by step guides it sort of clicked.

Don’t expect to make the same amount of money that people used to and that people brag about but there is still some free money to be made from it. Also it’s easy money at first but then tubings (when bookies realise what your doing and stop you from doing it) quickly come in so it’s not as profitable as your first few months. By all means go for it and enjoy some free cash but some people sell it as a way to still make tens of thousands easily a year which they did years ago. I think the only ones doing that are multi accounting hugely

When you say intensively - how many hours do you think you were putting in?

It varied. I'd say up to maybe 2 hours a day on weekdays, then perhaps 4-5 hours each day over the weekend, depending on the season and the offers. I do think, though, that the offers now are far less valuable than they used to be, so whether you can make any decent money doing it or not, once you've done the sign-ups, I don't know.

So making £5 an hour.

Hmm. It’s something I have thought about doing rather than wasting my time on MN.

Odds Monkey is good for this.

Make sure you fully understand:

• the difference between a betting exchange (eg Bet Fair, Smarkets) and a bookie (eg Coral, William Hill).
• the concept of lay betting and back betting
• that each profit takes two matched bets - the first is the qualifying bet for which you make no profit. This ‘unlocks’ your free second bet is your free bet from which you will match and make a profit.