Normal Service…

..will be resumed shortly.  Work has been fairly time consuming recently, and while I’ve been able to keep matched betting, the diaries have taken a back seat.  For now, here’s an updated total:

Matched Betting (20 weeks) – £3853 of £5000 by Christmas ’08 – £1147 to go (£104 per week):
New sign-ups – £1644 (43%), Existing Accounts – £1306 (34%), Arbs – £398 (10%), Cashback – £240 (6.5%), Referrals – £268 (7%) (PLUS Golf Vouchers worth £100, Golf Glove worth £7).

Week 18 – On the up again

Getting back to normal this week, with a net total of £186 in profit (and possibly another £1 to come from a skewed dutch).  While I’m travelling more on business now, I’ve invested in a 3G dongle from T-mobile which is keeping me connected more than before.  The £15/month investment seems pretty good for a a high speed connection that can also act as an emergency back-up for home.  I can now check for 06:00 dutches and arb my way to sleep in the evening.

New accounts this week was the result of finishing off the Boyles bet-basket at a total profit of £36.51.  I’ve managed to get through without being limited (which seems to be a rare occurance), something I put down to focussing on horses (usually the last 10 minutes before the race), and other good value dutches.  I can now focus on any other offers that come up with them.

Existing accounts was again mainly due to the Bet365 Channel 4 offer, taking up the freebet from last week, and working through another few races.  These gave me a profit of over £60, which was knocked back by taking a hit on the weekend Deal or No Deal promotion at Totesport – bring back the top-trumps promos!

Lots of small arbs and dutches gave me a profit of around £30 on that.

No cashback this week, but a referral bonus from a friend gave me a further boost of £55 at Partybets.

It was good to get over the £3500 barrier – next stop £4000.  I would like to make to £5000 by Christmas – we’ll see how we do!

Total Statistics (17 Weeks) – £3534 (up £185 from last week)

New sign-ups – £1560 (44%), Existing Accounts – £1188 (34%), Arbs & Dutches – £299 (8%), Cashback – £240 (7%), Referrals - £248 (7%) PLUS Golf vouchers worth £100. Golf Glove worth £7

Current Target – £5000 by Christmas – £1466 to go!

Week 17 – Slow and Steady

Another quiet week this week due to work commitments, but £80 profit in total.

For new accounts, a net £42.54 was the result of the 3rd free bet from Boyles – a result of a nice arb on the free bet and 5 good qualifiers.

For existing accounts, I cleared an additional £19.73 profit from a few Bet365 4-1 offer bets and a variety of Ryder cup offers. I won the last channel 4 race on Saturday at Bet365, so need to place the corresponding free bet next Saturday for an easy £45 or so.

A nice little £16.21 profit on Arbs rounded the week out – Ryder cup again.

One nice little bonus was the Ryder cup competition that Sky hadn’t promoted very well. This won me a set of golf vouchers worth £100 as a gift box. Depending on how it looks when it turns up, it might get used, given as a Christmas present or sold on Ebay!

To start next week off, I have a couple of Arbs on the go for midweek, as well as the Bet365 free bet, and hopefully a referral bonus from a friend.

Total Statistics (17 Weeks) – £3350 (up £80 from last week)

New sign-ups – £1523 (45%), Existing Accounts – £1124 (33%), Arbs & Dutches – £271 (8%), Cashback – £240 (7%), Referrals - £193 (6%) PLUS Golf vouchers worth £100

Week 16 – Busy, busy busy…

Firstly – an update to last week’s entry. I found yet another mistake (gah!) – where I forgot to confirm a back on Skybet. Thankfully, this was one of those mistakes which worked out and it actually increased last week’s profits to £178. So that was nice.

Onto this week, where I’ve made a modest profit of £104 (with possibly more to come this today if I get my finger out). I started a new job with more travelling and longer hours this week, so it’s not been as easy to carry on as usual. I can’t really do the Bet365 4/1 offers at all for example.

For new accounts – £40 of this week came from another Boyles free-bet – second one in the basket, so £100 more to come there assuming I don’t get too limited.

For existing accounts – £20 came from realising the bonus from last week’s Expekt offer – I still have to work through the WR or bust out of this one. The remainder of existing account profit came from doing Friday’s Bet365 channel 4 offer, netting a handy £10.

I also managed to rustle up a sneaky litter £33 in Arbs and Dutches this week, but no cashback or referrals to boost the total.

Looking forward, I’ve got £5 to use from the Totesport instant games offer this week (and I even made a small profit on the qualifier – thank you top-trumps). I’ve also set-up a couple of Ryder Cup offer qualifiers with Jenningsbet (potential £100 – minimum £1.50) and Centrebet (£10 guaranteed). Baldy (Betfred) also had one of their £10 mobile bet offers on this week, so I’ve got that to come next weekend too.

Total Statistics (16 Weeks) – £3270 (up £105 plus the error from last week)

New sign-ups – £1480 (45%), Existing Accounts – £1104 (34%), Arbs & Dutches – £255 (8%), Cashback – £240 (7%), Referrals - £193 (6%)

Week 15 – The Week of %$£-ups…

Bah.  This week should have given a total at least £200.  As it was, two major screw-ups lost me approximately £120 of this to end up with a total of only £90 for the week.

On Monday, I made my first screw-up on the Bet365 4/1 offers, failing to get my matched bet on at betfair before the off.  The odds shot out while I was laying, and I held off laying in the expectation that they would come back down.  They didn’t.  Similarly, I didn’t manage to get the bet on in play, although I did manage a small trade on Betfair to pull back some of the profit.  However, I ended up down £46 for that race.

After that debacle, the exact same thing happened with the other feature race.  However, this time, I bit the bullet and took the loss (laying at the last possible minute).  Another £9.50 down the drain.

These losses spurred me on to do another couple of sign-ups, and early in the week I signed-up with BetDaq for a £25 bet using the CITYPUNTER1 code (via quidco for £20 cashback).  I dutched the qualifier and placed the freebie on an Asian Handicap for the 2% commission.

My second screw-up of the week was due to trying to place a Tennis dutch too quickly.  I managed to bet on the wrong market, but in this case, it actually work out for me and I ended up £50 up.  No further details on this one as it’s too confusing…

A nice bonus offer from Partybets and Gamebookers kicked off the NFL season for a little £11 profit.

The last and worst screw-up was also a dutching one.  I decided to try an “in-play” dutch on the world cup qualifiers, and for some reason managed to a) fail to see that the odds had changed on one site, and b) manage to place only the two teams but not the draw.    For a while it looked like it might work-out, but then came the equaliser and I ended up placing a low odds draw bet to minimise the loss.  The hit on this one was £75.

If it wasn’t for the cashback from BetDaq, a referral for Bet365 and the screw-up that went in my favour, this week would have been wiped out by my mistakes.  Lesson for next week?  Pay more attention and take your time…

On the bright side, I’m off to a good start for next week already, with the first £50 free-bet from Boyles due tomorrow, and £20 credit from Expekt also in the works.  Probably just as well as I’m starting a new job which will leave me less time for Matched betting.

Total Statistics (15 Weeks) – £3075 (up £80)

New sign-ups – £1400 (46%), Existing Accounts – £1074 (35%), Arbs & Dutches – £170 (5.5%), Cashback – £240 (8%), Referrals - £193 (6%)

Week 14 – How am I doing?

Wow. Well, it’s been a few weeks since I put the original guides up, and people are still coming here, so I guess it must be useful. Suppose I’d better keep it updated then. eh? OK – weekly updates it is then.

In the initial posts, I mentioned that I’d made about £2000 in 10 weeks. Well, I’ve continued to make good progress, and I’m just shy of the £3000 mark at the end of week 14.

This week was my best to date, with a total profit of £375.45. Woo! I placed 54 matched bets this week and used 7 different bookies.

21% of this (£78) came from new sign-up offers – I finished working through the Casinoredbet £100 bet-basket which I started last week, with a return of 84% on the 4 £25 SNRs and 17 qualifying bets despite being limited towards the end.

57% (£212) came from existing bookies, the majority from Bet365 and their 4/1 offers, althought Sky and VCbet also contributed.

The biggest difference this week was in Arbing and Dutching. I cleared £84 profit (22% of the total) in this area this week, mainly due to a good spot from a friend I introduced to matched betting (no – I’m not going to tell you what it is!). This was the first week I’ve done any significant dutching, and I now see how lucrative it can be.

No cashback or referrals this week – so it’s all pure matched betting profit.

Total Statistics (14 Weeks) – £2990

New sign-ups – £1380 (46%), Existing Accounts – £1110 (37%), Arbs & Dutches – £110 (3.5%), Cashback – £220 (7%), Referrals – £170 (6%)

Underlaying Guide

I’ve noticed a few searches for underlaying coming to this site, and rather than writing something myself right now, here are a few useful links which will give you all the information you need to know.  Once again, these are at the Moneysavingxpert forums:

The Art of Underlaying
Underlaying – A Guide

Some situations where underlaying might be useful would be:

• Where there is uncertainty whether an offer is SR or SNR, e.g. JAXX.
  • In this case you may choose to lay the offer as if it is SNR (bearing in mind that you will want odds of at least 7.0 if you are doing this).  If you accept that your minimum return from this bet will be at SNR levels – around 80%, then if your selection wins at the bookie, you will get a handy bonus.
  • For example – a £25 bet matched at back and lay odds of 7.0, with 5% commission.  If laid as SNR, this will require a stake of £21.58 for a return of £20.52 (82%).  However, if it is settled as SR, then if it loses at the bookie you still get your 82% return, but if it wins, you get a return of £45.52 – 182%!
• Where you have a large Wagering requirement for an offer.
  • If there is a large wagering requirement for an offer, e.g. 3 times the bonus or 5 times the bonus and deposit, then this can impact your overall retrun via small losses on your WR bets.
  • One way to avoid this is to underlay such that you either:
    • Bust out at some point in the WR – taking all your loss in one go for a quick exit, or
    • Make your way right through or partially through the WR for no loss until you either bust out or are able to withdraw.
  • To do this, you would work out the loss you are willing to take, e.g. based on how much you would lost if you have to work through the full WR.  You would then use this figure to work out how much you need to win at Betfair after commission.  For example:
    • You have £10 you need to extract from the bookie.  You want to ensure you get at least £9.00 of this (slightly less than you would get if you bust out at the first), but need to bet it through at least 3 times.
    • With odds of 3.0/3.1 available, and a commission of 5% at Betfair, you would place the back bet of £10 at 3.0 and a lay bet of £9.47 at 3.1.
    • If you lost at the bookie and bust out, you get your £9.00 straight away.  However, if you win at the bookie, you get a return of £10.11 (a slight profit), and have reduce the remaining WR.

Don’t start here…

But I wanted to highlight the questions page I’ll update with additional information not in the posts below:

http://sportsbetuk.wordpress.com/faqs/

What’s this all about?

So, you’re probably here because you saw my post on the B3ta “Get Rich Quick” QOTW and want to know more. Well, thanks for taking an interest!

I’m not going to get into the deep details here – there are much better existing sources of information for that. I aim to tell you enough here to get you interested, and point you in the right direction for more detailed information. The notes here started out as e-mails that I sent to a couple of friends, and I’ll be updating them over the next couple of days to make them more general (and readable). If you have any questions – just add a comment or drop me an e-mail and I’ll see what I can do.

I spoke about my profits to date in the b3ta post mentioned above. I’ve averaged £200 a week since I started, split 55% from new account sign-ups, 20% existing account offers, and the remainder Cashback, Referrals and other bits. I expect that this rate of profit will slow down, but I hope to maintain a rate of £200 to £400 a month through the rest of 2008 and into 2009.

I’ve been lucky in that I’ve been able to work from home and fit this in through the day. However, even if you can only do this for an hour or so in the evenings, it should be easily possible for you to make similar amounts – although perhaps over a slightly longer timeframe.

The Risks

Perhaps the most important thing to say about this is that while it’s almost risk free if you follow the guidelines in the links I’ll provide, there is always a chance of you making a mistake and losing some money. I’ll give you two pieces of advice:

• Don’t consider this if you can’t afford to lose the small float you will start off with. This is very unlikely, but if you’re in this situation, please don’t take unecessary risks with your limited funds.
• Don’t do this if you have had any sort of gambling problem in the past. Done correctly, this is not gambling, but it will put temptation in your way.

So, with that in mind – read the linked materials, enjoy yourself (this can be a strangely absorbing passtime), and don’t blame me if you do make a mistake!

What’s in it for me?

Right now – nothing.

I gain nothing, and lose nothing by introducing others to the opportunities that Matched betting provides. However, If you want, you could help me out a lot by using my referral codes when you sign up to Betfair (and other bookies later). By doing so, we will both get some extra money, and you’ll earn my undying gratitude!

My Betfair referral code is 6CAVX6QTX – make sure you copy and past this in the sign-up form (it needs to be correct or we won’t get the bonus). But – make sure you sign-up via Topcashback, Cashback Kings, or another cashback site to get the most money available!

There are a number of other bookies which have referral programmes, and I’ve put a guide to the best way to sign-up to these on the left hand side of this page (see the link pimping page). When you get round to doing these, I’ll happily share any referral bonus I get with you if you use me to sign-up. Note that these are typically some of the more challenging in terms of financial commitment, but are ultimately the most rewarding bookies. You should not consider doing these until you have build up a betfair float of around £1500 – which won’t take you more than 2-3 months.

Of more immediate relevance to you, I’ve given an example for signing up to your first 5 bookies and what you should be aiming for from these (I estimate a profit of around £200 for these ones alone). There’s nothing in this for me – I just want you to get started within the mimimum of fuss!

Matched Betting – Getting Started

(Note: I’m linking out to other sites here which give a much better and more detailed descriptions of matched betting that I could at short notice. Read these very carefully – especially the MSE Introductory thread – as they will tell you all you need to know)

The Big Idea

Online Bookmakers (such as Coral, Paddypower, etc.) offer free bets to tempt you in and spend lots of money with them. Later, they may offer you additional free bets as promotions for events (e.g. Ascot, the World Cup).

Normally, if you took up these offers at face value, you would have to be very lucky to win anything at all. By using Matched Betting techniques, it is possible to make a profit of roughly the full value of the free bet offer – usually taking a small hit to qualify for the free bet.

How it Works

First things first, the main source for all of this material is this forum on Moneysavingexpert.com:

Gambling Introductory Offers and Loopholes

The first posts you should look at are:

Health Warning

Introductory Guide and FAQ – Start Here

These will cover the fundamentals. Read them thoroughly – then read them again!

While you’re assimilating this, you can do some other basics.

• Set up a new e-mail account for this purpose. I just use Gmail account.
• Sign up with the cashback sites below (…where I have one, I’ve given you a referral code). Not all of the bookies have cashback sign-up offers, but where they do, the best offer is not always not all with the same place. Rpoints to a best cashback challenge – so if you see a better offer elsehere, but want to keep all your cashback together, you can go through rpoints. Between Quidco, Cashback Kings and Rpoints you should have most opportunities covered:
  • Quidco
  • Rpoints (we each get a £5 bonus once you’ve earned £25)
  • Cashback Kings (I get a £5 bonus once 2 people have joined and earned £5)
  • TopCashback ( get a 50p bonus – woo – once you’ve earned £5)

• Think about setting up a new current account – it keeps things seperate! There are some good offers on the cashback sites.

DON’T sign-up with any bookies or betting exchanges yet! Do this too early and you risk losing either cashback, refer-a-friend offers, their standard offers, or any premium offer that they do (e.g. around key events like big horse-races).

Later, I’ll post a list of bookies, with their cashback opportunities and other offers which you can use as a starting point for your own research (the offers change all the time). Where applicable, I may recommend waiting for a big event.

This is a great time to start matched betting, as we’re coming up to the the start of the new football season. This is probably the safest place to match bets, as there are fewer complexities and variances in rules between bookies and exchanges than other sports like Tennis.