There is however a method of betting called ‘Matched Betting’ which if done correctly is a low risk way of extracting money from the free bets that are offered by nearly all bookmakers to encourage you to open an account with them.

Most customers that signup for these free bet offers tend to either be risk-adverse and bet on the favourite, or risk-seekers going for extremely high odds to maximise their returns. Favourites don’t always win and very few will win bets with very high odds (and those that do will share their success with everyone they know providing great advertising for the bookmakers!).

What Matched Betting does is use the free bet to back one outcome and then use a betting exchange to back all other possible outcomes (known as a lay bet). If you have never come across this idea then it can be very confusing at first, but if you read through the examples in my Euro 2008 blog posts it should hopefully make more sense.

Most bookmakers require you to stake some of your own money first (known as qualifying bets) before they give you the free bet and the first bookmaker that I selected for my Euro 2008 challenge required me to bet £20 of my own money before I got my £20 free bet. I used the same Matched Betting technique for the qualifying bet to cover all outcomes, although it is rarely possible to do so without losing some money and in this case it was £1 no matter what the result was in the game between Portugal & Turkey.

Once my first bet had settled I was then able to use the £20 free bet to back a draw in the Greece v Sweden game with the lay bet on the betting exchange ensuring that no matter what the result I would end up £13.08 better off.

The same bookmaker offered a further £50 free bet if I made five further bets of at least £10 each so I used the same technique to qualify for this offer resulting in a loss of just £2.54. I was then able to use the free £50 bet to back a France win in their crucial game with Italy. France were rubbish that night and lost the game but I still ended up making £30.87 from the lay bet I had used to insure the outcome.

Whilst this was the last free bet that this bookmaker was offering me I was still able to make another £13.75 by allowing someone to claim that they had referred me and sharing their bonus from doing so.

Having run out of ways to profit from this bookmakers account it was on to the next bookmaker which I found details of on this forum which discusses introductory offer loopholes. With this bookmaker it was simply a case of making my first £50 qualifying bet which I was actually able to make a small profit on and then I used the free £50 bet to earn £29.47 the very next day, it really was that quick and easy!

I did exactly the same thing with another bookmaker that was offering a £25 free bet converting that into £16.73 before signing up to my fourth and final bookmaker during this challenge which was offering a £50 free bet followed by a free £25 bet if I made five qualifying bets of at least £10 and then another £50 free bet if I made another five qualifying bets. I was able to convert the first £50 free bet into a profit of £34.75, the second free bet into a £24.12 profit before using the final £50 free bet to make a £32.66 profit on the final game of Euro 2008.

In total over the 31 matches of Euro 2008 I managed to make a profit of £200.41 using this matched betting technique (along with a couple of other small promotions on offer) from the four online bookmakers that I signed up with.

Three of the four bookmakers were also offering cashback so hopefully the final figure will be nearer £250 once they have all paid the cashback (can take a couple of months with some cashback sites).

So not only was Euro 2008 a great tournament to watch, it also proved very lucrative for MillionaireAdventure, and I will definitely be re-visiting Matched Betting as there are plenty of other bookmakers offering similar promotions.

 

I have not named the bookmakers that I signed up for as some class Matched Betting as abusing their promotions and have been known to close customers accounts. If you want to give Matched Betting a go yourself then a quick Google search will find you plenty of offers from well known bookmakers similar to the offers I used.

I had a £50 free bet to use on tonight’s final which went on the game being a draw after 90 minutes. I also took advantage of another bookmakers offer betting a £10 qualifier on the game being 0-0 at half-time, with a free £10 bet going on the same outcome.

The possible outcomes for the £50 free bet were:

The £10 qualifier would result in a loss of 61p whatever the outcome:

And the possible outcomes from the £10 free bet were:

Germany looked confident and started well but faded throughout the first half. Spain were the better team and deserved their one goal lead courtesy of Torres at half-time. Germany were unable to create any serious chances in the second half as Spain held on to their lead to win the game. So Spain finally shed their underachievers label as they celebrate winning Euro 2008.

The final match ended well for me too as I netted an overall profit of £37.76 to end what has been a fantastic tournament both in terms of the football and betting.

The possible outcomes were:

The first half was a tense affair with neither side able to break the deadlock. However Spain were to waste little time in the second half as they took the lead shortly after the break. After that Spain dominated the match and secured their place in the final by going two up after 75 minutes, with a third goal following shortly afterwards.

I wasn’t able to setup particularly good matched bets tonight and lost £2.04 over the two bets but have a free £50 bet ready for the final on Sunday.

The possible outcomes were:

A thrilling first half saw Turkey take the lead but despite not playing well Germany quickly responded with an equaliser. With the game level at half time a thunder storm moved over Vienna and knocked out TV coverage. Whilst we were without pictures Germany took the lead but yet again Turkey were able to find an equaliser with only minutes to go. But this was not to be another late escape by the Turks as Lahm grabbed a winner for Germany in the last seconds of the game.

So Germany go on to the final and in doing so all my bets were won with the bookmaker. My losses were minimised at only £1.59 as I make three of the five qualifying bets required for the free bet.

The possible outcomes were:

I also had another £10 free bet that I qualified for on the Germany v Portugal game on Thursday that I used to back an Italy win with the following possible outcomes:

The first half was a rather boring affair with the Italians playing very defensively to cancel out the Spanish attacking threat. The second half was more of the same, albeit it with a few penalty shouts but it was destined to end nil nil at the end of 90 minutes and secure me a total profit of £24.12.

So yet again extra time was required to settle a quarter final, but another 30 minutes was to make little difference and penalties were to be required. The Spanish finally broke their penalty curse to beat the Italians 4-2 on penalties.

I used the Holland v Russia game tonight to make all 5 bets, with two bets of £10 on Holland to win in 90 minutes. The possible outcomes from the 5 bets were:

Russia scored first and Holland equalised just before the final whistle to take the game into extra time. Penalties were not required tonight as Russia went on to score twice to win 3-1 after extra time. This meant that I won all my bets on my Betfair account tonight with a higher loss than I hoped for of £2.03.

The game remained a boring nil-nil draw going into extra time, but Croatia grabbed what looked to be the winning goal with only a minute to go. But Turkey were not finished and in the 4th minute of injury time they found an equaliser to take the game to penalties. Croatia were effectively beaten when they conceded the equaliser and had little confidence going into the penalty shootout and it showed with them losing 3-1 on penalties.

For the record the possible outcomes before the game were:

With my existing bookmaker the possible outcomes were:

And with my new account the possible outcomes were:

Germany got off to a flying start grabbing an early two goal lead and looked like they were cruising towards the semi-finals when Portugal got a goal back just before half-time. Suddenly there was all to play for as Portugal went chasing for the equaliser. But it was Germany that were to score next to make it 3-1. Just when it looked like the game was over Portugal scored again with 5 minutes to go but time ran out before they could get level.

So Germany progress to the semi-finals and I end up £3.01 down but I carry forward £60 worth of free bets to tomorrows match.

Basically money for nothing, so I gave him my email address to claim the referral and within 24 hours there was £15 in my Paypal account from someone that goes by the username of Munk. Only downside was Paypal took £1.25 in transaction fees reducing my earnings to £13.75, but seeing as this guy is a stranger that I met online I wasn’t about to give him my bank account details instead!

France started the day badly when their Coach crashed on the way to the ground and the evening never got any better for them from that moment on. Conceding a penalty and going down to 10 men effectively ended their interest in the tournament there and then. Fortunately for me the result didn’t matter as I stood to win £30.87 whatever the result.

In the other game tonight Romania lost to Holland, so Italy escaped the group of death and move on to the last eight.