just learned about this on another thread and have been looking into it. seems guaranteed money, altho maybe not much.

whats the reality? make a few quid then run out of new bookies so no more free bets?

I’ve done this a number of times over the last decade (once for myself and then helping friends).

Reality = if you have a basic, but steady grasp of simple betting procedure and numbers then you will make a few hundred quid without much effort at all. if you are prepared to invest a wee bit of effort, you’ll make closer to £1k.

The most significant risk is human error. If you make a mistake on a large lay and don’t get it fixed in time then it’s game over (potentially). This is completely avoidable, just don’t make mistakes 🙂

The other risk, which is only a problem if you are trying to squeeze every penny out of every bookie, is getting “gubbed”, e.g. a bookie limiting you or refusing to pay out. This is mainly an issue with less reputable foreign bookies, however some of the big guys have been known to do it too. I’ve been through the process 10 times now and never had any problems.

Slow, careful, methodical = easy money.
Careless = bye bye float.

I tended to use horse racing almost exclusively for many reasons which will become apparent as you go through the process (time, profit etc), but i would NOT advise it as the safest way to MB. The risk is much higher, but as you get better at the process that risk is easier to mitigate. I was able to do all the major bookies in about 4 weeks, spending about 30 minutes each evening doing it.

Remember, it is entirely legal, you’re not doing anything wrong, just betting on the same event at two different bookies. In many respects the bookies actually like you, since you’re often betting on silly odds horses in an effort to win at Betfair, so you’re desperate to lose your cash with them.

I’ve been through the process 10 times now and never had any problems.

So do you do the rounds of all the online free bet deals once, close the account then wait a few months(years?) open new accounts and start over?

So do you do the rounds of all the online free bet deals once, close the account then wait a few months(years?) open new accounts and start over?

No. never use the same details twice. this is crucial. the bonuses are for new customers. They are perfectly entitled to withhold any winnings if you try to claim a new member bonus twice.

Even more importantly is if they think you are duping them – so absolutely positively do not bet from two accounts on the same computer/IP address (e.g. you and your girlfriend). They will wait for you to win big and then refuse to pay out, meaning you lose your entire lay bet effectively.

Stay within the terms of their bonus and you will be fine. Try to take the piss and they will wipe you out. Do not get greedy.

Helping friends is one thing, opening accounts in friends names to bet for yourself is entirely different. The line can be blurred but you must remain on the correct side of it.

As peterfile’s post.

The most important rule of matched betting is, dont **** up.
The second most important rule of matched betting is, dont **** up.

You get the idea.

And x2 on horse racing, if you’re a daytime kind of person, definitely.

If you want avoid getting gubbed, sometimes its best not to take the “obviously brilliant” odds. You can get flagged up quite easily if you routinely take the bets where the bookies have overvalued things a bit. Do it too often and they’ll limit you.

Five years ago there were tons of offers, easily £3k within the UK. Times have changed a bit, offers are tougher to fulfil, less profit now, but still worth doing.

I reckoned it paid about £25 per hour of effort. Which is pretty damn good for a part time second job that doesn’t require moving from the sofa.

If you want avoid getting gubbed, sometimes its best not to take the “obviously brilliant” odds. You can get flagged up quite easily if you routinely take the bets where the bookies have overvalued things a bit. Do it too often and they’ll limit you.

Absolutely.

Also, if you try to take a bet which has great odds, then the bookie tells you that the odds have changed and you cancel the bet and take something else, be careful! It will be obvious you are hunting good odds and are potentially MBing.

Oh and definitely start with UK bookies, they’re well regulated and don’t refuse payouts.

Some countries (jamaica, gibralter) aren’t.

As others have said, start off small, £10-£20 offers and stick to something like football. Horse racing isn’t too badonce you’ve got a good grasp of what you’re doing (unless you don’t keep an eye on the time and the race starts before you’ve laid your bet off 😀 ).

After a while you don’t look at it as money, it’s all just numbers on a spreadsheet and you’ll be placing 2 large on the outsider in the 2nd division Mongolian slug racing…..

the other big advantage of horse racing is that the bets get settled pretty quickly.

I rued the day I placed a £400 bet/lay on the outcome of the NBA season – about 2 days after the season had started.

I made my £35 alright but by crikey that was a long wait…

So, am I right in thinking the aim is just to pocket the free bets?
Do you have to spend £ before receiving the free bets?

So are we talking about just using free bets to lay off against each other and then watch you “float” build or is actual real money required at the start?

Depends on the bookie, usually you will have to place a qualifying bet, which will mean using your own funds to bet and lay. The free bet will be released (no, you can’t just withdraw it 🙂 ) you will then be able to place the free bet and lay it off with your own funds. Again, depending on the bookie you will then be able to withdraw or you may have to roll the freebet value over a number of times.

Again, depending on the bookie you will then be able to withdraw or you may have to roll the freebet value over a number of times.

This.

More and more of them are sticking new terms and conditions in to stop you withdrawing a quick win. Typically something like

You will need to play through your deposit and bonus three times prior to making a withdrawal.

Be careful with the smallprint.

…..and before you start a new bookie, make sure your float is big enough to cover the qualifier, freebet and wager requirements.

A new bookie started up a few years ago, £250 freebet but with a large wager requirement (£2.5k), I won all my bets bar one, and ended up with nearly £10k in the bookie before I could withdraw, that one focused my mind a little 😀

jesus flicker, that’s a serious brown trouser moment!

richmtb

basically yes

the simplest offers usually go “make one bet, get a £xx bet free” – they’re gold dust

you’ll need to use your own cash to make the first bet (and matching lay) – in an ideal world these two things will perfectly cancel out and you lose (and gain) nothing.

then you use your own cash to make the lay for the free bet, trousering the value of the free bet in the process, which is where the magic happens

so, in our ideal world, yes you’ve used your own money, but, you’ve got it back again after each bet/lay settles.

in the real world, each bet/lay will cost you a bit, because the bookies odds are just never that good (if they were, they’d never make any money). I’d always aimed for under 5% loss. You can take longer / search for better / etc, but how much that is worth to you is your call.

more common with offers, is to find that you need to turn over the free bet value a given number of times, and of course each time you incur a small loss – careful planning is required to make sure an offer is worthwhile.

incidentally, to avoid gubbing, it probably helps to avoid signing up to

1) the bookie
and
2) matched betting internet forums

with the same username

Such is my knowledge of betting I’d probably struggle to find my way into a bookies let alone actually place a bet but I have to say i’m intrigued by this, but I get the impression this is a process only workable for those who know what they are doing? Sounds complex. Still interesting none the less.

When I started I’d never stepped foot in a bookies or placed a bet online. Had absolutely no idea what I was doing, so I read and reread the guides on Money saving expert. Started with a £50 float of my own money, within a week I’d made over £50, withdrew my £50 and continued using the money I’d made.

Start small, simple bets with well established UK bookies, and be prepared to put the time in reading up and undertanding it all. Don’t rush in and try to grab the bigger value free bets straight away, you will make a mistake at some point, best to do it with £10 than £100+.

Did it for about 3 years and made about £4K.

Easy money but the reloads + bookie offers were drying up.

All done over the internet BTW, didn’t involve a visit to a bookies.

You will need to play through your deposit and bonus three times prior to making a withdrawal.

I used to do it, and the last time I looked it was 7x to 10x to get your ‘free’ bet out, rendering it too slow for me.

Used to pray that the bet would lose to avoid those wagering requirements 🙂

hmmmm…. wondering whether ive missed the boat then really, if the good offers are already starting to dry up. also i had (have) an account with loads of bookies from fixed odds on the football, around 5 or 6 years ago. would they be wiped now, or would i still be a customer, so no free bet for me.

thanks a lot, all very interesting.

as flickers post, I’d never laid a bet before doing this

take it slow, read the guides, start small.

having a go at this using this ‘how to’.

opened accounts at paddypower and betfair, but got as far as choosing a bet. the guide says i have to choose the lay bet in the red box, not the blue on betfair. so the odds on something not happening.
i can only see green boxes, betting on 1, 2 or X, no lay bets.

anyone care to advise me on what im maybe doing wrong here?

thanks

with football surely a game ends as draw at some point and you lose both bets

Am I missing something here?

Am I missing something here?

I’d guess if you lay team A (as opposed to back team B) and its a draw then you win because team A never won?

Am I missing something here?

yes

the fundamental difference with “laying” a bet is that you are accepting someone elses bet

i.e.

you do two things:
1) bet £10 on team A winning
and
2) you accept someone elses bet for £10 on team A winning

anyone care to advise me on what im maybe doing wrong here?

you’re not in the “market” section of betfair

i can only see green boxes, betting on 1, 2 or X, no lay bets.

anyone care to advise me on what im maybe doing wrong here?

Without having access to BF, it sounds like you’ve got it set on BF’s odds rather than full market. Look for an option on the prices screen which say something like “view full market”

gotcha, sussed it thanks, i needed to choose ‘exchange’.

do i have to be careful with the terms and conditions about how many bets i have to have before withdrawing? if i place this one bet and it goes to plan, what are the implications of having to do 3 bets say before withdrawal? could i lose on those, or is it still a way of increasing winnings before withdrawal and moving on to the next bookie?

gotcha, sussed it thanks, i needed to choose ‘exchange’.

do i have to be careful with the terms and conditions about how many bets i have to have before withdrawing? if i place this one bet and it goes to plan, what are the implications of having to do 3 bets say before withdrawal? could i lose on those, or is it still a way of increasing winnings before withdrawal and moving on to the next bookie?

The T&Cs will be specific about what you need to bet.

Normally it will be something like:

£50 free bet once you bet £50.
So you’d need to bet £50, which releases your bonus, then bet the bonus.
If it has no work through (i.e. how many times the t&c’s say you must play through your deposit/bonus before being able to withdraw) then you could simply withdraw immediately after betting your £50 deposit and £50 bonus.

However, most bookies have some sort of work through, say 3 times your deposit + bonus, so in that case it would look something like this:

Deposit and bet £50
Bonus is released, bet £50 bonus.

Now, either you lost both bets at the bookies (woohoo!) and you can just walk away with nothing further to do.
Or, you won one or both bets at the bookies, leaving a positive figure in your account.
You will need to complete the work through (i.e. place total bets to the value of 3 x your deposit + bonus) before you can make a withdrawal.

Clearly, if your next bet is the entirety of your balance, and it loses, then your busted and can walk away happy. But if it wins, you’ve got to keep betting until you’ve completed the workthrough.

Normally, the only real drawbacks of having to complete a work through are the additional time it takes to bet/withdraw and the cost of the work through (you’ll normally lose a few quid per bet overall, so the more bets you place the less profit you make overall for that bookie). The additional concern (which is less common, but a serious risk) is that the bookie doesn’t pay out your winnings. This is most MBers nightmare, but is fortunately pretty uncommon.

The key thing to be aware of here, is that you have sufficient funds available to keep topping up your betfair account so that you can keep betting, so that you can complete the work through and withdraw all your money from the bookie.

thanks, im getting it a bit better now. am i right in thinking then that its always better to lose the ‘bookie bet’ than the betfair bet then? lose the bookie bet and walk away, and your betfair balance will keep growing, and can be withdrawn at any time?
and thinking about it, theres prob more chance of losing the bookie bet anyway? as youre betting on a win, whereas theres 2 possible other results with betfair?

Generally yes. If you lose at the bookie then you’re not hit by “any wins must be played through 3 times before withdrawal” type clauses. (Although some bookies do roll-over these conditions but they’ve in the minority).

and thinking about it, theres prob more chance of losing the bookie bet anyway?

Depends on the odds 🙂

The only time you want to win at the bookies is if there is a need to make multiple bets before releasing the bonus.

For example, PP offered £30 for making 5 x £30 bets (up to a total of five times, so £150 bonus). It was quite useful to win the occasional bet so that you had enough money in your bookie account to keep making the qualifying bets without having to continually make more deposits. Handy, but not essential.

Obviously, you’re more likely to lose on a 20/1 shot than an odds on favourite. BUT, your 20/1 shot will occasionally come in, leaving a MUCH higher amount in the bookies, which could cause you some cashflow problems.

If you have a big bank balance, high odds are almost always the way to go (for profitability and ease of busting out). But be very very careful if you have limited funds available.

just going through t&c’s on paddypower. says ‘The Cash Out feature will not be available to use with your free bet.’

does that have any implications? will i never be able to withdraw the money?

its starting to look like a minefield out there, but if i can get my head round it ill give it a bash. if its too complicated it may not be worth the hassle.

also wondering how people make big money with this……

just following the example in the ‘how to’, once the initial bet is made, you get say a £20 free bet, and the example made £15 on it. if you did this round all the bookies, youre never going to make that much really are you? a few £15s? yeah, better than nothing but a lot of faff (and chance of getting it wrong) for not much gain? or am i underestimating how many bookies there are and hteres hundreds of em? 😀

EDIT: was sort of expecting the profit you made from one went to the next and accumulated, but thats not the case. youre doing the same thing from scratch with each bookie yep? so a few smallish gains?

just going through t&c’s on paddypower. says ‘The Cash Out feature will not be available to use with your free bet.’

Have you checked what the Cash Out feature is? It sounds like some form of taking partial profit in play, which is completely irrelevant.

Big money is made by doing some big offers and lots of smaller ones.

Some of the bigger bookies offer £100 to £200, more offer £30-50 and lots offer £10-30. It doesn’t take long to hit £750 to £1000. Your operating costs are pretty much zero, it takes little skill and not a lot of effort. Have you found an easier way to make money, if so i’d like to hear it 🙂

Wait to do the bigger bookies around key sporting events, then buy the racing post, they often have bumper offers on for things like the start of the footie season or big horse meets

yeah, worth trying probably. dont mind losing a little on a gamble if its not what it seems, but i spose im scared of thinking ive done ok, then find out my moneys locked in the account and i have to use it on 4 more bets for instance before i can withdraw it, or some other such loophole.

Bigger signup offers used to come around when big sporting events were on e.g. Royal Ascot, I *think* Ladbrokes used to have a £200 freebet for some of such events. Worth doing the research and deferring some bookie signups until the big signup offers.

Edit:

Yup, Lads was £200

From my records:

05/01/08 Ladbrokes Q 1.8 1.8 200 -4.48 Mallorca v Barca
05/01/08 Ladbrokes Free 9 8.8 200 173.88 Fulham v Bristol Rovers

1st line is my qualifier bet (it was a “bet £200, get a £200 freebet offer”) and I “lost” £4.48
2nd line is the freebet which I extracted £173.88 from the £200, so a £169ish profit for sitting infront of a PC for a few mins 🙂