I’m a Matched Betting Beginner
How my Journey Began
So, I started matched betting in December last year. This was initially on an experimental basis, but it then went on to take over my life slightly, allowing me to go from matched betting beginner to a bit of an expert (term used loosely!). Let me explain.
Save the Student
It all really began a few years back while I was at university. I was looking into ways of making money from the comfort of my home and came across it myself without realising it. My initial plan for financial success involved heading down the eBay route. I would buy anything I could in bulk and try to sell it on for a profit. This would have worked out great if people wanted to buy key rings and plastic jewellery, but as it turned out they didn’t. I also discovered almost immediately that the amount of time I’d have to dedicate to be successful would almost certainly get in the way of my busy university schedule (sleeping and drinking). I gave up on this adventure before it began, which was probably for the best. I now found myself in a state of confusion, with only a box of brightly coloured bracelets to keep me company, this could only go one way, so inevitably I began to gamble.
There is a System
Now I’m not talking about the type of gambling that Jeremy Kyle goes on about when he tries to relate to heroine addicts and justify why he’s shouting at them, not Kyle gambling; I mean betting £10 on Man United once a week. This, however, was enough to get me thinking about ways of using the system to make money. Now if there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I love to make use of the system, and if there’s a system to be used, you’ll see me there using it! So anyway, I started looking into ways of placing bets with different betting companies in order guarantee a profit. It quickly became apparent that the odds offered on sporting events differed slightly from company to company. With this in mind, it would, in theory, be possible to bet on all outcomes of an event (i.e., home win, draw and away win) and make a profit no matter what the outcome. This would work as long as the difference in odds between the betting websites was great enough to do so. With this in mind, I proceeded to search manually through the odds on different websites to find opportunities to execute my genius plan. However, this was not as simple as I had anticipated, for every sporting event I looked at I could only ever guarantee myself a small loss, never profit. It was as if the betting companies didn’t want me taking money from them. After more research, the Internet informed me that what I had in fact discovered was something known as arbitrage and that people have been doing it successfully for years. After even more research I concluded that even with the correct software, the amount of effort I would have to go to to prevent my betting accounts from being shut down would be so much that it wouldn’t be worth it. So just as with eBay, my betting adventure had come to an abrupt end. At least I thought it had.
Fast-forward a few years and I’m still the same system exploiting, almost genius I was three years previously. I see an advert for PaddyPower while browsing (*stalking) Facebook. The offer was for a free £25 bet on the George Groves vs. Carl Froch boxing match taking place later that night. Now this is the point at which I had another “I’m going to become a millionaire” moment. It wasn’t because the offer was particularly amazing, it was because I realised something that could be repeated over and over to get free money. What I realised was that if I had access to 2 accounts with the bookmaker (i.e., I have an account and a friend has one), I could use one free bet on George Groves and one on Carl Froch. With no real money being used, we would be guaranteed a profit. Even if by some freak chance the fight resulted in a draw we would still lose nothing as the bets were placed with free money.
Matched Betting with a Betting Exchange
What I had basically discovered was an inefficient and wasteful version of Matched Betting. By using this method (which I didn’t), I would be leaving myself open to making nothing from the bet. In the case of a draw, two free bets would be wasted and nothing earned. But I had made an important discovery, that could be fine tuned into a money making machine. And after more research I learnt about the art of Matched Betting. All I needed to guarantee profit was a betting exchange account, such as Betfair. By placing a free bet offered on a bookmaker website followed by a real money lay bet on the same event on Betfair I was guaranteed a profit. The key to maximising each opportunity was finding back odds for the offer and lay odds on Betfair, which were high but also close to each other. The higher the odds, the more of the free bet I could guarantee myself back as real money.
This was great for a day or two while I still found it enjoyable searching through betting websites to find appropriate odds. But I quickly got fed up with this time-consuming process. I looked into software that did the searching for you, like that used for arbitrage. This sped up the whole process, meaning that I could take advantage of the offer after offer until my betting bank was completely tied up in websites. The only drawback to this software was that it would only update the odds about once every 20 minutes; this was because it was a free version. Now 20 minutes might not seem like a long time, but trust me, regarding price movements it is. In 20 minutes the odds can change drastically, meaning that profitable opportunities can vanish before you even knew they existed. For this reason, I decided to bite the bullet and use a paid for service.
After a bit of research, I found a website and signed up for a free trial, #BestDecisionEver. Not only does their odds software update fast, but they also supply new offers to take advantage of every day, as well as a matched betting calculator. After three months of using the service, I made over £4000 in profit. This is substantially more than I was making before and takes an even shorter amount of time each day. This is because I do not need to search for offers to take advantage of and the available odds are so much more accurate. I now only spend around an hour a day completing offers. As my bank grows, I can make more and more as each week passes.
Is it legal?
Now it’s worth mentioning here that Matched Betting is legal.
Anyway, until next time, if you’re a Matched Betting Beginner or want more information to check out the matched betting information page where you will find everything you need to know! Or if you think you’re ready and don’t need any more information, I’d recommend grabbing a free trial from a matched betting service.