Matched Betting

[Marc]

MODEDIT: Please be aware that the only money moving FH Staff approve of is the Sever & Bandwidth fund, aka FH Subscriptions. If you want to give cash to bookies, that's your call.


Anyone want to make some easy cash? Matched betting is the way to go. What matched betting is, is taking advantage of the initial sign up bonuses that online bookies give you. For instance, Sky bet, deposit £30, they give you £30 for free. What you do is, use your initial deposit of £30 to back a bet (I tend to use football as its the best market) and then you lay the same bet on betfair This is called the qualifying bet.. Over the 2 bets you will probably lose money, id say on a £30 bet, around 90p to £1 loss. But thats ok as you now have a free £30 to play with and you do exactly the same with this bet, lay it off and you end up with a guaranteed risk free* profit. At a conservative estimate, you will end up with about 60% of your free bet value. if you take a bit more time you can end up with around 80-90% of it.

So far in a couple of weeks ive made about £350, but ive only been doing it the odd day for about 10 mins a day. The lads at work have been doing it daily and have made close to £1000. The only limitation is once you have exhausted all the online book makers sign up bonuses thats it. However, given that you will have signed up to about 30 online bookmakers, the chances are they will send you deposit bonuses from time to time. Also you will need around £200 capital to start with. Also, book makers wont let you withdraw your deposit bonus until you have bet that value a certain amount of times which is why, your second bet, ideally you want to win in Betfair so you can draw the money out straight away, you dont want to end up with vast amounts in say sky bet that you cant withdraw because you will end up having to put hundreds into betfair to lay off your bet (which you will get back of course).

*The only risk is human error, backing a bet and then laying it incorrectly or laying the wrong amount.

http://bet72.com/help/risk-free-bets-guide/

This is a good guide. Also, if you want to test it with an idiot proof way first...

http://www.fixtheodds.com/

Sign up here and they do the process for you. Read it carefully, each step and do exactly as it says.

 

[Raven]

Bot!

I have looked into it, just can't be arsed though. I make enough from betting on the football with £1 bets. about £800 last season and about £500 so far this season.

 

[Marc]

Im useless at normal betting which is why I have used matched betting!

 

[Nate]

What is backing and laying?

 

[Nate]

Do you want our significant stuff?

 

[Embattle]

I think something will need to be done about the increase in betting activity, it has always been a problem but it is growing rapidly and storing up another massive future problem which has been shown in this forum and the sheer amount of people who waste money on betting.

 

[Raven]

You only waste money if you lose or bet more to make up for loses. I typically put in £5 a week into my Skybet account and place 5x £1 bets on first goal scorer and the result and I do OK. It also makes watching the premiership a bit more interesting as I don't really support any team. Either way, I don't care about losing £5 but its awesome when that 150/1 bet comes in. My best result was a 250/1 bet, Chelsea vs someone (can't remember who) I was 1 goal off a 450/1 the other week too. Around £1300 up over the last two seasons.

I agree the advertising needs reigning in and there needs to be more help available to hardened gamblers but a little bet now and again is fine. With Skybet you can set a limit to your account that takes 2 weeks (I believe) to change. I have mine set at £25 a week maximum that I can pay in but rarely put more than £5 in, unless its a really busy football week.

 

[megadave]

You can do the same with casinos and their bonuses, bit more time consuming and complex. I made a decent amount in uni doing both.

 

[Gumbo]

*** THIS WAS FROM 2004 IT WON'T WORK NOW, I WILL NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYONE STUPID ENOUGH TO NOT READ THIS BIT ***

About 10 years ago I was one of loads on a car forum I frequent who did this and ended up with a nice free chunk of cash. As the disclaimer says, this was a long time ago, but things like this pop up every now and again.

go to www.ladbrokescasino.com and download the casino

open the casino program and register. ****DO NOT DEPOSIT AT THIS TIME!!!!!!****

go to www.ladbrokes.com and login with your details that you regsitered on the casino program.

click "Your Account" and deposit £100

log out of ladbrokes website and return to the casino

go to banking section and change £100 into chips, make sure it is from your ladbrokes account and not a card!

go to games and start VEGAS STRIP BLACKJACK

right click the chip on the table until its yellow, the chip on the bar at the bottom of the screen should also be yellow.

click EXPERT

click OPTIONS, and choose fastest and disable all sounds, then pess ok to exit

click AUTOPLAY, and select deals as 400

Click START and watch the 400 hands play

When finished go to bank and withdraw your money

on ladbrokes casino website press promotions, then click £100 bonus and enter your email and username.
Also do the same with the £30 June bonus.

You should recive a bonus in your account within 24 hours, its usually just an hour or so.

on the ladbrokes.com website log in, change this into chips then withdraw from chips and withdraw to your card!

You have just won £100 for doing nothing.

*** THIS WAS FROM 2004 IT WON'T WORK NOW, I WILL NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYONE STUPID ENOUGH TO NOT READ THIS BIT ***

 

[Chilly]

Careful with this stuff, guys. It's very easy to make a small mistake when calculating the appropriate arb bets to make on betfair. I happen to be a professional gambler and do a similar kind of arbitrage for a living. It's very, very risky and should not be attempted unless you can afford to lose what you're playing with. There's no such thing as free money.

 

[Gumbo]

Yeah I sometimes have a little play with a fiver on betfair. Usually on the last round of a major golf or something like that. I make tons of tiny bets and lays and get a little edge each time and finish up a few hours later having made a couple of quid at best. I can see that a slip of the finger, or an internet outage or something could be costly at the wrong time. Good fun though and I'd only ever do it with what I could afford to lose.

Interesting exercise though. I can see that if what I could afford to lose ran into the hundreds or thousands you could have some really tasty results though.

 

[ECA]

Gambling is a hard way to make an easy living.

 

[Gumbo]

You do it for a living too don't you ECA? Or have I got the wrong end of the stick? what do those of you doing it professionally do it on? Is it just sports or stocks etc? I'm curious. I play Poker every now and again and have got around £150 in a Poker Site account. I think in my life I've deposited maybe a total of £75. The numbers I see people playing with scare the bejeesus out of me so despite being 'profitable' albeit with a massively low hourly rate, I couldn't see me ever making 'proper' money out of it.

 

[Hawkwind]

All that effort plus risk to make 350 GBP in two weeks. Pass, stick to what I know and I know f'all about betting and gambling Just made 14,000 DHS (roughly 2.5k GBP) in two weeks. All I do is buy new items like Surface 2 whilst in US on a biz trip place them on souk.com and stupid people buy them for inflated prices. Always leave with one bad and come back with two. Been doing it for years, mark up items between 20%-50%. Always people stupid enough to buy them. Phones and tablets have been a great earner for me.

The market in UAE is great for this because new items take so long to reach the main retail outlets there. I was selling iPad 2's six months after US release.

 

[Nate]

ECA takes gold in and out of the country.

He's golden baby!

 

[Embattle]

You only waste money if you lose or bet more to make up for loses. I typically put in £5 a week into my Skybet account and place 5x £1 bets on first goal scorer and the result and I do OK. It also makes watching the premiership a bit more interesting as I don't really support any team. Either way, I don't care about losing £5 but its awesome when that 150/1 bet comes in. My best result was a 250/1 bet, Chelsea vs someone (can't remember who) I was 1 goal off a 450/1 the other week too. Around £1300 up over the last two seasons.

I agree the advertising needs reigning in and there needs to be more help available to hardened gamblers but a little bet now and again is fine. With Skybet you can set a limit to your account that takes 2 weeks (I believe) to change. I have mine set at £25 a week maximum that I can pay in but rarely put more than £5 in, unless its a really busy football week.

I used to work weekends with a bunch of horse racing nuts who did fairly well but even they agreed with me when I said most people will lose more than win otherwise bookies wouldn't exist, it isn't any different with online betting.

 

[Chilly]

You do it for a living too don't you ECA? Or have I got the wrong end of the stick? what do those of you doing it professionally do it on? Is it just sports or stocks etc? I'm curious. I play Poker every now and again and have got around £150 in a Poker Site account. I think in my life I've deposited maybe a total of £75. The numbers I see people playing with scare the bejeesus out of me so despite being 'profitable' albeit with a massively low hourly rate, I couldn't see me ever making 'proper' money out of it.

Let me put it this way. I have a degree in comp sci, have coded for over a decade and am very well versed in statistical methods and simulation tech. My partner has a first in chemistry from cambridge and has been studying stats and finance and sport since he left uni 6 years ago. After two years working together, we still only manage to make about 1.5% net profit on the volume we turn over. We work 20-50 hours a week each and put a SHITLOAD of capital at risk. Yes, it's lucrative, but it's a job like no other.

 

[Nate]

since he left uni 6 years ago.

In an Ali G type voice

Wait wait wait wait wait

Yous a ho?

Give us dem digits!

 

[Chilly]

In an Ali G type voice

Wait wait wait wait wait

Yous a ho?

Give us dem digits!

Partner as in business partner you bellend.

 

[Bahumat]

I read up on this a year ago and decided it hurt my brain too much to attempt!

 

[Gumbo]

I was reading up on it too last night. It's actually not that complicated and as I've done the whole bet/lay thing before it wasn't too hard to understand. There is certainly a big danger of screwing it up by clicking the wrong thing, but done carefully with proper research there's certainly scope to make a few quid, going to read a bit more then proceed carefully.

 

[Marc]

£136.88 profit last night from less than 10 minutes work. As Gumbo said, the biggest risk is from clicking the wrong thing. There are also calculators available on the net that calculate your lay bet for you, ie, how much you need to lay and how much you need in your betfair account to cover your lay liability

@Chilly A guy popped in off the street to see me. Wanted to buy his missus a pub and wanted me to do some due dilligence for him. Asked him how he planned to fund the purchase price of £200k to which he replied "cash". Due to money laundering regs I had to get some confirmation of where this money is comming from. He told me to come to his house the next day. So me and our head of tax turn up. He, along with his mate and some computer whizz have developed a programme that is making them profits of around £400k a year and he claims to have 15% of the total Betfair market. He wouldnt go into detail of what the programme does but he just clicks the .exe file then the start button on the programme and it does the rest, placing around £2million worth of bets each week (obviously the money is recycled as he doesnt have £2m of liquid funds). Now my first thought was arbing or ducthing but surely the bookies would be on to this and limit his account? I know hes telling the truth as for money laundering, he had to show me his bank statements and then he showed me all the various bookies accounts he has and they are making what he claims to be making. Any ideas?

 

[Chilly]

@Chilly A guy popped in off the street to see me. Wanted to buy his missus a pub and wanted me to do some due dilligence for him. Asked him how he planned to fund the purchase price of £200k to which he replied "cash". Due to money laundering regs I had to get some confirmation of where this money is comming from. He told me to come to his house the next day. So me and our head of tax turn up. He, along with his mate and some computer whizz have developed a programme that is making them profits of around £400k a year and he claims to have 15% of the total Betfair market. He wouldnt go into detail of what the programme does but he just clicks the .exe file then the start button on the programme and it does the rest, placing around £2million worth of bets each week (obviously the money is recycled as he doesnt have £2m of liquid funds). Now my first thought was arbing or ducthing but surely the bookies would be on to this and limit his account? I know hes telling the truth as for money laundering, he had to show me his bank statements and then he showed me all the various bookies accounts he has and they are making what he claims to be making. Any ideas?

That's essentially what I do. 15% of the whole betfair market? Hmm. Betfair do hundreds of millions a week turnover, so he's obviously talking himself up. He may well have 15% of some particular sport. EG, I'm about 5-10% of all greyhound betting on betfair (and probably like 2-5% in the UK as a whole) and was the 18th largest football punter the other week. He may well be massive in cricket or tennis or something. Does he happen to live in Hammersmith? I know quite a few of the massive accounts live around there.

As for what he does, given he has accounts with bookies it's strange. No bookie would ever let you carry on winning from them on a continuing basis. He's probably using them as a source of prices and then using those prices to find errors on the betfair markets. This strategy works - but requires balls and very clever software to properly exploit.

 

[Marc]

That's essentially what I do. 15% of the whole betfair market? Hmm. Betfair do hundreds of millions a week turnover, so he's obviously talking himself up. He may well have 15% of some particular sport. EG, I'm about 5-10% of all greyhound betting on betfair (and probably like 2-5% in the UK as a whole) and was the 18th largest football punter the other week. He may well be massive in cricket or tennis or something. Does he happen to live in Hammersmith? I know quite a few of the massive accounts live around there.

As for what he does, given he has accounts with bookies it's strange. No bookie would ever let you carry on winning from them on a continuing basis. He's probably using them as a source of prices and then using those prices to find errors on the betfair markets. This strategy works - but requires balls and very clever software to properly exploit.

Lives in manchester. Still seems strange, but he is making what he claims. Unless he also loses some bets aswell. I just dont know

 

[Chilly]

I dont disbelieve his income. I'd actually expect it to be higher given his turnover. That income for that turnover implies ~0.4% net profit on capital expended, which is very very low. His edge must be very slim. Or, more likley, given he works in a trio, it actually makes about 1.2% and that 400k is his cut, which is much more reasonable. I'd probably not get involved in betting £100m a year and only making 400k net profit - it's nowhere near big enough to insure against the potential variance involved.

At the end of the day, there's 1001 ways to make money on betfair, but as you get higher and higher up the ladder those options diminish until you're doing one of only a handful of things:
1) market making (ie YOU are the bookie and you know the odds and you take bets on that basis)
2) some kind of technical analysis (like the hedge fund boys, tracking weight of money and moving average shite)
3) exploiting mistakes from other large bettors
4) arbitrage

 

[Gumbo]

Put my toe in the water tonight. The matched betting forum on Money Saving Expert is really useful, almost too much info. It's crazy all the shorthand and acronyms, but no more than we all seemed to grow up with on online gaming etc. I get the feeling it will become pretty second nature fairly quickly. It'll be about this time tomorrow when I will have completed my first foray with pennies in the scheme of things, I shall update.

 

[Mey]

My Brother has PHD In Maths and a Degree in Computer Science, he works in london for an investment bank doing something IT/Maths related. Why hasn't he made me loads of money yet!

 

[georgie]

It'll be about this time tomorrow when I will have completed my first foray with pennies in the scheme of things, I shall update.

Seems @Gumbo got in too deep with mob and is now sleeping with the fishes.

 

[ECA]

You do it for a living too don't you ECA? Or have I got the wrong end of the stick? what do those of you doing it professionally do it on? Is it just sports or stocks etc? I'm curious. I play Poker every now and again and have got around £150 in a Poker Site account. I think in my life I've deposited maybe a total of £75. The numbers I see people playing with scare the bejeesus out of me so despite being 'profitable' albeit with a massively low hourly rate, I couldn't see me ever making 'proper' money out of it.

Yup. I deposited about £30 as a bored college student, I rolled that up to about £20k over 2 years instead of having a part time job/hobby/whatever, and realised If I went fulltime I'd make more than any job I'd get.
What you have to realise is anyone who does it for any significant income is probably at least playing 4-10tables simultaneously and playing a minimum of 30k hands/month. ( 100-200k hands/mo not unheard of to compare , live poker plays at around 25-30 hands/hr - you would have to play 1000 hours of live poker in a month to come close to my "low volume" months ), on top of that they are running a HUD showing peoples stats - some will even be buying mined hand histories so they have information on opponents they havn't played before.


Sports betting - not my area at all, I just didn't have the time to dedicate to the research needed to try and be successful at poker and sports at the same time. Anyone who bets sports and makes a living has my fucking respect.

ECA takes gold in and out of the country.
He's golden baby!

Actually havn't had to do that for a few years , it's still crazy surreal reflecting on it. ( security risk/exposure ).
It sounds glamorous but the reality was getting up at 4am, getting on a 6 am flight , getting a taxi to our supplier on arrival, picking up 2-50kg of gold/silver ( heaviest i ever did was 53kg, still dont know how the fuck i did that ) in boxes, checking contents, signing a piece of paper, getting a taxi back to the airport and and getting home around 10-12pm. No sexy women in evening gowns trying to sex me at all, or ski chases resulting in taking off from a cliff and parachuting into a plane. Most disappointing.

I did used to stop for coffee on the corner of the HBF( frankfurt ) though ( cincitta/wall street coffee ), and quite frequently saw pimps/hookers walking past as the red light district was nearby. First time there actually I was just exploring around the station and was propositioned by some old dude in a white vest telling me his girls were the best russians in town. Realised wtf was going on and backtracked the fuck outta there!




I guess the tldr is, if you wanna make it gambling you either have to study harder than you would for a degree, or have got a maths degree with some aspect in stat analysis.

 

[Chilly]

My Brother has PHD In Maths and a Degree in Computer Science, he works in london for an investment bank doing something IT/Maths related. Why hasn't he made me loads of money yet!

Does he want a job? I've got a pile of tennis stats that need mining.