Matched betting?! Tell me more...

[ExpatMrs]

Just came across a good few MNers talking about it on another thread. I don't even know what it is but from the jist of the convo, there's good money to be made from having a couple of hours a day to do it... I have those hours!!
Can anyone enlighten me please?

So having read this thread, watched all the training videos from the various matched betting sites and navigated my way around some of the bookies websites I triggered my free £20 bet with Coral and made £13.33 profit. I've just placed my next qualifying bet at Betfred and am waiting for the match to finish tomorrow so I can get my £30 free bet. I am particularly awful at maths which would usually stop me from even trying something like matched betting so this is a huge confidence boost for me.

.I have made a mistake with my lay bet and need some help with working out my loss. I signed up to Coral with the bet £5 get £20 offer. I put £6 in my Bet Fair account to cover the liability (£2.69). I won on the Coral account and so was up £2.50 there minus the £2.69 liability at Bet Fair.

I then put another £6 into my Bet Fair account and put a free £5 bet at Coral on Man U to beat Chelsea. I then calculated the odds wrong. My bet at Coral is at 2.7 and the one at Bet Fair for Man U to lose is at 2.94 odds. I put the stake at 4.53 in error and my liability is £8.79.

When I work it out I come out as being £4 down whichever way the result goes. Is that right?

You've overlaid the lay stake at betfair- as it stands you'll lose 29p if your bet wins into coral but gain £4.30 if your lay bet at betfair wins

Thank you for the explanation Dangerismymiddlename.

Forgot to say before that I've also joined Quidco - is this likely to raise suspicion with the bookies?

Following with interest

ooo just got my first reload from william hill, which is good, considering i screwed that one up if the money ever transfers back into my bank i might actually be able to take advantage of it (bloody bank holiday!)

£44.55 up over two days - unlocked the coral and ladbrokes offers. Ballsed up the William Hill one and think I must have ballsed up the betfair one too as I still haven't been credited £30 from them and it's been 2 days. Signed up to Oddsmonkey premium as I can't do it without the oddsmatcher! Have also used cashback sites to sign up to bookies so should get another £56.80 from that. Enjoying getting the hang of it at the moment but it takes me forever to work out what to bet on and check and re-check the odds. Sticking to football at the moment until I feel like I've got the hang of it a bit more.

Can someone pleas explain how the "get your stake back if you lose" offers work for matched betting? I'm struggling to understand!

Millie

Back and lay your bet as usual.

If you win at the bookie you lose at exchange = no profit or loss

If you lose at the bookie you win at the exchange and get your bet back.

So worst case scenario you effectively break even, best case you make the amount of your bet.

Lauren
What you have done is accidentally overlayed.

It is possible to somewhat equalise your profit margin, and thus remove the gambling element from your unsettled ManU v Chelsea pick. If those odds haven't changed:

1. You can go and stick another free £5 back bet on ManU to win at Coral. Then go and lay against a stake of £1.35 in Betfair. This would have the same effect as placing a free £10 bet all at once. Unfortunately, I don't think you can lay against less than £2 in Betfair. To counteract this, you could scale up again to effect a £15 free bet, but I'm guessing the tiny amounts in Betfair mean you don't have much cash available for liability? If you have enough spare though, you need to make a further £10 free bet and then lay against £4.29.
2. You can adjust your stake at the bookie to one that would trigger a lay of £4.53. That stake would be £7.70. Unfortunately, you can't split a £5 free bet at Coral, so you'd have to make this £2.70 back bet out of your own cash. The outcome, accounting for the exta cash you've put in, would be about £2 profit, whatever the result.

Let me know if you have cash for Betfair and we can see what's best.

Can someone pleas explain how the "get your stake back if you lose" offers work for matched betting? I'm struggling to understand
I wrote a long post upthread on exactly how to deal with these offers. You can search my posts for 14/04 at 13:42.

Do not do what ItsAll says. Unequal outcomes = gambling. We can use these offers to make guaranteed equal profit.

Do not do what ItsAll says

Oops, sorry

Although I'm not sure it's gambling when byou can't lose, just have a potential gain

Reposting.

14/04/2017 13:42 MaidOfStars

CORRECTED VERSION (I have asked for the previous post to be removed)

Bet £X, get a free bet of the same value if you lose

A note: The % profit of the free bet value in these offers, at around the 50% mark, is lower than the % profit we can wring from standard “free SNR” bet. This is somewhat traded off by the fact that these bet offers can sometimes be completed in a single bet process, rather than requiring a pair of bets. They are therefore worth doing, IMO.

This post is going to outline how to make money from these bookmaker offers. This type of offer is called a risk free bet. Your initial stake is not at risk, because it’s returned if you lose.

First bet, with real life money
Because our initial stake is not at risk, we can underlay at the exchange i.e. we can lay against a stake far smaller than our back bet.

If we win at the bookies, this offer is completed. You’ve made more at the bookies than you’ve had to pay out in liability, job done. Withdraw your cash from the bookies (or leave it if you want to mug bet in future etc).

Again, if you win the first bet at the bookies, you’ve made your profit and no further action is required

If we lose at the bookies, we win at the exchange. Because we underlayed, the stake we win is smaller than our stake outlay at the bookies. This will have us down overall, and by a little more than we are usually down after a standard qualifying bet. Think of values around the five quid mark for a £25 back bet.

But don’t be put off. Because we lost at the bookies, we now have a free bet to the value of our initial stake.

Second bet, with virtual money
This is turned over as standard free bet, usually SNR. The profit here will be similar to what you’re used to seeing with these bets.

The reason the overall % profit is smaller is because we are allowing a situation where we are down overall after the first bet. Unlike an initial qualifying bet, which we try to make as close to zero sum as possible, we are deliberately creating a bigger gap in our money out/money in. The free bet value covers this, but obviously at greater cost to our profit from it.

The ideal outcome is to win the first back bet at the bookies and take your winnings. We underlay to maximise our profits should this first back bet win, and use the free bet only to cover our arses should this back bet lose. I hope some of you reading this have now jumped to the (correct) conclusion that, in order to further maximise our potential gain on this first back bet, our first back bet is placed at longer odds than those we use for standard qualifying bets. We are looking for odds of 4+ for this first back bet.

How to calculate this first back bet:
Open Oddsmatcher.
Find a good match, odds of 4+.
Open the calculator.
Check the bet type as “risk free bet”.
Fill in your back bet stake.
You will see that a third box has appeared in this calculator interface, asking for free bet award and free bet retention Fill in the values. What free bet value will you get if you lose your first back bet? How much % profit do you predict you will make from this free bet (default is 80% but we might be more like 70% as newbies).

The calculation runs to equalise the profits between

1. winning on your first back bet

versus

1. losing the first back bet and turning over the % profit on the free bet.

That’s why the small writing underneath the “risk free bet” check box says “equal profits”.

Go to your bookies/Betfair and bet/lay what the calculator tells you. Wait for the result.

If you win the first back bet, you’re finished with this offer.
If you lose the first back bet, turn over the free bet as standard.

Although I'm not sure it's gambling when byou can't lose, just have a potential gain
But what matched betting does is take the those two extremes - win nothing with one outcome and win 100% with the other outcome - and split them out to win 50% with either outcome.

Still struggling to get this bit. If I bet £10 with the bookies and they are offering to refund my initial stake if I lose, by way of a free bet to the same value, why would I need to lay the outcome? Either way I'd "win" at the bookies: if I actually win, I get my initial stake plus my winnings (but no free bet). If I lose, I get a free bet which I can then back and lay as usual.

Place marking :)

Ignore my last post, think I get it now!

How much is usual to lose on your qualifying bets? Around the £0.50/£0.60 mark?

Yeah, less than a quid. But you might accept a bigger loss for a bet that fits your betting profile, IYSWIM?

I'd take a 30p loss instead of a 20p loss if the 30p loss was on an obvious English football match as opposed to an obscure South American lacrosse match.

I think the lowest loss I've been able to find has been about £0.45. Although I've got one today where I'll be £0.10 up! It was a red one

Slowly getting the hang of it but have been caught out a couple of times by not putting a qualifying bet on odds of 1.5 or over so have missed out on a couple of sign up bonuses. Grr.

I still got my sign up offer from bet188 even though I bet on odds too low with my first bet. I placed another bet on the correct odds and was credited with my free bet. The terms said first bet so I thought I had lost out. Currently only one of my free bets has come I. So I'm approx £14 in profit. My second free bet is due in later on, then I should have enough liability to do my bet188 free bet. So far only done coral and betfred.

I've managed to get the ultimatcher to work and it seems good and simple to use once set up.

Just stumbled acrross this thread. Placemarking!

Pity this is in chat, it may take me more than a month to read the thread and get my head around it

IMPORTANT OBSERVATION ABOUT BETFAIR

Match today West Brom v Liverpool.

On 13 April, I placed a lay bet on WBA win:
Liability of £26.35.
Captured immediately from my balance, all as expected.

Just now, 16 April, I placed a lay bet on the draw:
Liability of £57.20.
Only £30.85 captured from my balance.

57.20-26.35 = 30.85. Presumably, the permutations mean I can only lose one of these sets of liabilities. Betfiar does not therefore need to take both sets of liabilities. Betfair has therefore captured only the most amount of money I will have to pay out i.e. a total of £57.20.

Neat. I have more money to play with in Betfair than I predicted.

And worth remembering that if you're laying on different results for the same event, you might not be surrendering as much liquidity in Betfair as you think.