I’ve been doing a few offers a week this month and gradually building up my matched betting knowledge. I’ve been using the matchedbetting.guru site and the Matched Betting for Free Facebook Group, which has been particularly helpful.
Last weekend I decided to dedicate the whole weekend to Matched Betting and I ended up making a massive profit of £25!!! Doesn’t sound like a lot, and to be honest it completely stressed me out all weekend, but I think that is because I’m still learning some of the rules and techniques.
In fact, I think this weekend I think it’s fair to say that I graduated to phase 2 of the matched betting academy:
- Stage 1 – Signing up to the bonus offers
- Stage 2 – Placing in-play bets and making the most of weekly offers
- Stage 3 – Laying off bets in an accumulator
- Stage 4 – Expanding out into other sports
- Stage 5 – Moving into trading / arbitrage
Placing In-Play Bets
I think the most stressful part of the weekend was getting used to the In-Play bets. For example Paddy Power gave an offer where if you bet £20 on a qualifying game, they will give you two £5 bets to use In-Play, ie when the game has started.
The main issue with In-Play bets is that you can’t use an odds comparison like Odds Monkey, so you have to check the odds between different bookmakers manually. That doesn’t sound too bad, but the problem is that the odds are constantly changing, so by the time you put your odds into a matched betting calculator to find the amount to lay your bet, the odds will have changed. I found this to be extremely stressful, and also meant I made a few mistakes.
TOP TIP: If you’re going to use In-Play bets then you should place your bets at half time when the odds are more stable.
Rollovers
The other thing that is worth learning is the concept of ‘rollovers’. These are the bane of the lives for matched betters as they can really spoil the amount you can extract from a free bet.
An example of this is with Bet Victor. They recently made an offer of Bet £20 and get a £10 free bet, however, you can only withdraw the free bet once you had bet 4 x the bonus amount ie you need to bet an additional £40. This means that on some offers it’s just not worth doing because the rollover just eats into the total you’ll get back from the free bet.
What odds should I place my Free Bet at?
A lot of people’s accounts were getting ‘gubbed’ or closed down this month, which happens when you bet in a suspicious way. Basically if they suspect that you are a matched better, then they will close you account immediately and sometimes even keep your balance.
For some offers I was placing my free bet of odds of over 10, so that I could extract as much as possible from the free bet. Looking back this was a little silly as it is likely to raise suspicion and after taking some advice from the Matched Betting for Free group, I found out that you should try to keep the odds to between 5 and 7, and not risk going any higher.
Matched Betting Balance Sheet
This month I’ve really struggled with understanding my finances and figuring out exactly how much money I won or lost with Matched Betting. I tried using the Ultimatcher Spreadsheet, but for some reason the numbers just weren’t stacking up so I’ve decided to go back to my own spreadsheet, where I can manually check how much I’ve won / lost on each match. In the long term I’ll probably need to switch to something else, but I think for now this will have to suffice!
LAST MONTH’S TASKS
- Complete Bet365 Offer – COMPLETE
- Place an Inplay bet offer – COMPLETE
- Get an accurate balance sheet – COMPLETE
NEXT MONTH’S GOALS
- Sign up to 3 more offers
- Continue In-Play betting
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