My first steps into Matched Betting

Having lost so many of my recent bets I was determined to start recovering my losses from the bookies and having heard how much some people were making through a technique known as Matched Betting I knew I had to have a go.

The basic idea of matched betting is to sign-up for a new betting account with an online bookmaker that is offering a free bet as an incentive to attract new customers. This free bet offer will normally require you to bet through a qualifying stake before you receive the free bet, or in other words risk your own money first!

However there is a way of offsetting your liability by laying on the same result with a betting exchange, which is basically betting against the outcome you risked your own money on with the online bookmaker. This effectively cancels out your original bet and provides a risk free way of qualifying for the free bet offer. If you have never come across this idea then it can be very confusing but it should make more sense as I go through the bets I placed.

A Google search on ‘free bet offers’ will quickly find you plenty of online bookmakers offering free bets to encourage you to sign up. I decided to sign up with a well-know highstreet bookmaker that was offering a £25 free bet once you had staked £25 of your own money. I also signed up via Quidco as they were offering £12.50 cashback.

Having signed up I decided to place by qualifying bets on two football matches as follows:

£15 on Spurs beating Portsmouth
£10 on Man Utd beating Liverpool

I then placed lay bets (i.e. bets against Man Utd & Spurs winning) with my choice of betting exchange Betfair. This meant the possible outcomes were:

	Betfair	Bookmaker	Total
Spurs win	-£14.83	£13.64	-£1.19
Portsmouth win / draw	£14.83	-£15	-£0.17

	Betfair	Bookmaker	Total
Man Utd win	-£11	£9.50	-£1.50
Liverpool win / draw	£9.50	-£10	-£0.50

This meant the worst possible outcome was a £2.71 loss, or best case a loss of only 67p. As it turned out Spurs won and Man Utd won so I was down £2.71. However I now had a free £25 bet with the bookmaker that I had just joined which I could have just bet and hoped I won but by using the same technique I could guarantee I would win some money no matter what the outcome of the free bet.

I used the £25 free bet to back Chelsea to beat Arsenal, and placed a £17.88 lay bet on the same outcome with Betfair.

	Betfair	Bookmaker	Total
Chelsea win	-£17.88	£30	£12.12
Arsenal win / draw	£12.12	–	£12.12

This meant no matter what the outcome of the match was I was guaranteed a profit of £12.12 from the two bets. After the £2.71 loss on the qualifying bets this meant a net profit of £9.44 which means I was able to get 38% of the £25 free bet back.

This was actually quite a low return as I had deliberately selected markets with low odds to minimise my risk from making a mistake as I learnt this technique. In total I bet £68.71 of my own money and although the value at risk should be next to nothing it would be quite easy to mix up your bets and not offset your liabilities.

A profit of £9.44 represents a 14% return on the total investment of £68.71 in betting stakes, and if you add in the £12.50 cashback the return is a very respectable 32%. In total it probably took me about 2 hours to understand the technique, sign up with the bookmaker, place the bets and most importantly double checking I had got all the bets the right way around. Now that I know what I am doing I think I could take advantage of another offer far quicker, but even so this is an hourly rate of £10.97 per hour.

If you want to have a go at matched betting yourself then I strongly advise you to study this forum thread in detail. I’ll definitely looking out for more free betting offers to take advantage of as this is easy money if done right and just about everyone of the many online bookmakers has a similar offer.

*** July-08 Update ***  I finally recieved the cashback in July, several months after I signed up and for some reason I was paid £20 instead of the £12.50 that I was expecting, not that I am complaining of course!