Could footy accas be the solution to a dry month of matched betting?
Well, after completing a lot of the sign up offers and also being gubbed from a few bookies, I've noticed 2 main things recently from reading a lot of the matched betting communities out there:
- There are a heck of a lot of gubbings going on
- There are very few decent offers around at the moment
A lot of people have put this down to a post-Cheltenham clear-out, but a lot of people are also saying that matched betting is dead and is nothing like it used to be. To be honest I'm finding it all a bit more time consuming than I would have hoped, and even though there is money to be made out there, you still need to put a lot of hours in.
Claims of people making £500 - £1000 per month, are now looking to look at little exaggerated to me, unless of course, you are spending hours in front of your computer trying to squeeze every penny out of every offer available.
With this in mind, this month I thought I'd take a look at a couple of other options where people have been claiming big winnings as well:
Accumulator Generator
If you don't know, the basic concept of an Accumulator or footy acca as it is commonly known, is that you place a bet on a series of events happening, and if they all win, then you receive a multiple of all of the odds combined and usually make a big profit if it comes off.
However, if any of the legs of your accumulator loses, then you lose all of the bet. Typically footy accas are anywhere between 3 to 6 legs (matches), and obviously the more legs there are the more you can win, and the easier it is to lose.
Most bookmakers now offer something called 'Acca Insurance', which means that if one of your legs loses, you would be entitled to a refund of your initial stake, which is where a matched bettors radar starts flashing!!!
Bookies love Accumulators, because they always have an edge over the punter and most of the time the bet will end up losing. Basically, the table is weighted even more in the bookies favour for Accumulators than on single bets.
However, Accumulator Generator is a bit of software that scans the different bookmaker's offers out there and provides a combination of matches, where you are likely to make a profit, by taking advantage of the Acca Insurance refunds.
In the screenshot below, you can see a list of all of the footy Accas that were available on a certain date, and in the 'EV' column you can see the estimated value of the Acca. This shows you how much you would make from placing a £50 bet on the Acca, but generally you're looking at a £10 return for every £50 spent.
The idea is pretty simple... put an Acca on with the bookmaker, then just lay off each of the legs of your bet after each match finishes.
There is a screen in Acccumulator Generator dedicated to each Acca that you put on, as you can see below, and the system is also clever enough to give you reminders of when you need to put your next bet on.
After each match finishes, you put in the result, and then add in the lay odds of the next leg in the sequence and the Accumulator Generator software will automatically provide you with the lay stake required.
There are a number of different tactics that you can use but the easiest is back, lay and hope technique. This is where you put the selection on at the bookies, then you lay one match at a time, and stop laying as soon as you have lost one match.
• If you win all of your matches in the accumulator then you will make a small loss
• If you lose more than 2 legs in the accumulator you will make a small loss
• If you lose only 1 leg, then you will qualify for the Acca insurance and this is where you make the profit.
What Does Accumulator Generator Cost?
At the time of writing the cost is £148.99 + VAT, or you can sign up to a £1 trial for 14 days
Is Accumulator Generator worth the Money?
I used Accumulator Generator for a 30 day trial period, and came to the following conclusions:
YOU NEED LOTS OF TIME
Most of the techniques used by Accumulator Generator, mean that you have to wait until the match has finished to place your lay bet. Games can be finishing at any time of day or night, as a lot of the matches will be in different locations around the world. What this means is that you constantly need to be aware of when your next match is finishing, because if you don't lay one of your legs you can ruin your accumulator.
For some people this may be fine, but for me I found that this ended up affecting my free time, and meaning I always wanted to be near to a computer so I could place the lay bets easily and ensure I had internet connection. I can see that if you had a lot of Accas on all at once and you dedicated a weekend to this, then it may be worth it, but overall I found this a bit of an inconvenience
THERE'S AN INCREASED RISK OF GUBBINGS
Now, I don't know if this was just a result of the post Cheltenham gub-a-thon from the bookmakers, but every day I was hearing about people losing their accounts (primarily William Hill) after they had been using Accumulator Generator.
It seems pretty obvious to me that this would happen. If there are lots of people putting bets on the same random matches then this is going to send signals to the bookies, that something is a bit fishy, and I'm pretty sure that any matches that the Accumulator Generator was throwing up, would bring up some kind of flag at the bookmakers HQ.
There do seem to be a lot of people that have signed up to Accumulator Generator so I fear that it has just become a victim of its own success and now is a quickfire way to get a gubbing.
YOU CAN MAKE A TIDY PROFIT
I think again, the golden rule with Accumulator Generator is not to overuse it and you will probably be ok.
If you stay away from the highest Estimated Value footy accumulators, don't always bet the maximum stake, only play a few accas a week and don't bet on really obscure games, then you're less likely to get flagged up.
I can see that the temptation would be to put loads of multiple Accas on with different bookies each day, and the individual profits would start to add up, but in my opinion you're probably going to lose your accounts pretty soon, unless you've had your account for a long time with a track history of betting on Accas.
Sports Arbitrage
Whilst we're in this dry patch of matched betting, with lots of gubbings going on and not a lot of offers that were particularly appealing, I decided to branch out and try my hand at Sports Arbitrage.
To be honest, I just fell into this more by accident and out of boredom than anything else.
For those of you who don't know much about this either, the principle of sports arbitrage or 'arbing' is pretty simple:
Place a bet at one bookmaker for certain odds
THEN
Lay the bet on a betting exchange at lower odds.
I was just checking out some odds on oddsmonkey.com because I needed to use up one of my free bets, when I noticed there were a lot of bets that had ratings of around 110% , like in the example below:
I'd never looked at the highest rated bets too much previously because I was guessing that if you place too many bets with these high ratings, you're likely to get your account flagged.
However, as I'd recently been gubbed by the likes of Paddy Power, Bet Victor, Stan James and Coral, I thought there is no harm in placing a few bets on these accounts.
Depending on the size of the arb I thought this could bring in a few useful extra quid, as using the oddsmatcher software they were quite easy to find and put on although didn't bring in groundbreaking returns as you can see in the example below:
Can you make money from Arbitrage betting?
Well, in my brief foray into sports arbitrage this month, I would say that there definitely is money to be made from this, however, you need to consider the following items:
YOU NEED TO BE QUICK!
I was using the free version of MBassist or Oddsmonkey as it is now, which refreshes its odds every 30 minutes. Unless you are using some kind of paid software, which updates as soon as an arb is found, then in a lot of the cases, by the time you get to put the bet on, the odds in the exchange have changed and there is no longer an arb available.
YOU'LL PROBABLY GET YOUR STAKES LIMITED
So, my little experiment was going along swimmingly well, until one of the bookmakers (Stan James) started limiting my stakes. In fact they limited them so much that it was pretty much impossible to put a bet on any more.
YOU RISK LOSING YOUR ACCOUNTS
Yes, the bookies are actually quite clever, and anywhere they notice they may have a disadvantage, then sooner rather than later they will catch on to you an close your accounts.
From what I have read, the same can be true for arbs.I'm not 100% sure how they find out, but I imagine that most bookies are aware of when an arb is taken, so if they see this behaviour repeatedly on your account, or a flurry of bets at a certain time, then they are likely to either limit your stakes or close your account.
I'd only recommend doing this occasionally and spread out across your various bookmaker's accounts, and definitely don't overdo this on accounts you want to keep.
However, if you've been gubbed already, then you may as well make the most of it and take them for every penny you can get.
The ironic thing for me is that since I’ve been matched betting, the accumulators I’ve been placing have been winning all legs (I’ve only received one refund so far!) With William Hill, that’s not a bad thing because they pay 10% bonus on winnings for 6-leg accas but of course, matched betting winnings are tiny compared to ‘what you could have won’ just from gambling on accas! I’ve yet to place a £50 acca so keeping things small and hopefully, ungubbed!
I use too accumulator methods and have made more from using the method you have described, ie laying each leg – I do have to make sure the matches take place when I can actually lay the bet and having several accas on the go can be quite stressful!
As a member of Profit Accumulator, I also have access to a ‘Lay All Calculator’, where you place your accumulator and then lay all the legs off in one go. This method requires really tight and low odds (of less than 1.20, maybe the odd 1.25) but means that you can have matches overlapping or happening at the same time, plus you don’t have to worry about missing off laying off any legs. I’ve had mixed success with this one, but I’ve only tried a few so far.
I’ve done a few arbs recently but don’t want to make a habit of it.
Ha Weenie, I think you should give up matched betting and be a tipster instead!!! Have you been using Accumulator Generator to find your accas or have you been doing that manually? Sounds like you should use the ‘Advantage Play’ mode that they recommend in Accumulator Generator, where you don’t lay any bets.
Instead they provide suggested accas that have the best odds selected for you, which means you have more chance of winning. The strategy here is just to keep on adding accas and over a period of time you usually come out on top.
As for arbs, I think you are right to tread carefully as Big Brother is watching you!!!
I don’t use Accumulator Generator – either I check the forum to see if anyone else has posted any close matches or I find my own manually. The latter is more time consuming as you can imagine but if I don’t find any quickly, then I don’t do them.
As for being a tipster, I dread to think of how much I lost over the years during my mug-betting days!