What Is Gubbing

A gubbing is a restriction imposed on your bookmaker account by the bookmaker. An account can be partially or completely gubbed.

A partial gubbing still allows you to use your account, but you may find:

• A limit set on your maximum stake; and/or
• A restriction or limit set on the number or type of offers and promotions that you are allowed to do

A complete gubbing restricts your account entirely, rendering it practically unusable!

Once your account becomes gubbed, you may receive an email like this:

Why Bookmakers Gub Accounts

Bookmakers are here to make money. They employ traders to monitor and evaluate customers’ betting patterns to decide who are profitable and unprofitable to them. Those who are deemed unprofitable tend to find themselves eventually gubbed!

Matched betting is a perfectly legitimate strategy – the issue however, is that bookmakers don’t like it because they believe that matched betting impacts their bottom line, where they will lose money or simply breakeven to those who matched bet with them. Generally speaking, matched betting is a strategy that evens the playing field between the bettor and the bookmaker. Matched betting, similar to card counting, is recognised as a perfectly legitimate strategy – casinos simply don’t like card counters as its harder to profit from them over the long-term. Bookmakers much prefer to accept bets from punters, i.e. people who bet for fun, bet without a strategy and/or knows very little about sports or betting in general.

It is important to realise that getting gubbed is a natural result of long-term matched betting. Getting gubbed is inevitable but also extremely random – some people can get away with doing obvious matched bets for a long period of time without receiving any restrictions, whilst others can win a few sizeable bets without any strategy whatsoever and get gubbed within a week of opening their account!

Steps To Avoid Getting Gubbed

Although gubbing is inevitable, there are certainly steps that you can take to stay under the bookmakers’ radar, to keep your account healthy and enjoy longevity with the bookmaker. You want to make it appear as if you are simply a punter in order to stay under the radar of the bookmakers’ attention:

• Stick to high profile games. When you bet on high profile games such as the Premier League, Champions League, UEFA etc, your bets are much better concealed among the millions of other bets that are placed on those games because they are the most common and popular games to bet on. However, if you bet on much smaller games, e.g. the Japan J3 League, then your bets will stick out like a sore thumb, making it easier to spot by the bookmakers!
• Bet with round numbers. For example, bets of £5, £10, £15, £20, £30 etc draw less attention than bets of £5.65, £11.97, £23.15 etc
• Keep your bets consistent and increase or decrease your bet size gradually. If you are going to bet on the same games/matches/races on a regular basis, try to keep your bets consistent, e.g. £10 per game each week. If you are going to increase or decrease your bet size, make it gradual, e.g. an increase from £10 to £20 draws a lot less attention than an increase from £10 to £100!
• Don’t do every single offer or promotion that is available. Doing every offer or promotion that comes along will certainly draw unwanted attention, so don’t be afraid to miss a few every now and then
• Don’t always deposit and/or bet the minimum. If the offer is ‘Deposit £5, Get £10’, try to deposit £10 instead. If the offer is ‘Bet £10, Get £20’, try to bet £15 instead. Don’t be afraid to deposit or bet slightly more than is required every now and then because it won’t make a big difference to your QL, but depositing and/or betting the bare minimum all the time will likely draw unwanted attention because it will obviously appear that you are doing it just to receive the free bets and bonuses
• Do occasional mug betting. Mug betting is simply placing a matched bet without qualifying for a bonus or offer, or placing a matched bet on a game/match/race that is not part of any promotion. The idea is to show bookmakers that you are not always betting to qualify for a bonus or offer, making it appear like a normal bet that a typical punter would make. Don’t be afraid to throw in a few mug bets occasionally. When mug betting, simply bet and lay in the same way as you would for a qualifying bet
• Play a few low-risk casinos. This is simply a recommendation, but punters are known for dabbling in casinos offered by bookmakers, so if you play casinos occasionally, this will help to reinforce your image as a punter in the eyes of the bookmakers
• Do not arb! An arb is where the back odds are higher than the lay odds, creating a guaranteed profit. Odds that create an arb will show an arb rating of 100% and over – it is best to avoid these! Punters are typically not aware of how close or far away the back odds are from the exchange odds. More often than not, they would bet on back odds that are far away from the exchange odds. Arbing is matched betting on arb ratings of 100% and over; which although creates a guaranteed profit regardless of the outcome, it draws unwanted attention with the bookmakers very quickly! Bookmakers don’t like you creating guaranteed profit from arbs, so they keep a close eye on the exchange odds and adjust their own odds accordingly to avoid this! If you arb too frequently, bookmakers can easily determine that you are not betting like a punter and will gub you very quickly! So if your account is still healthy, we recommend to avoid arbing altogether!
• Do not bet too close to 100% arb ratings too often. This point is similar to arbing. If you are frequently matched betting on back odds that are too close to the exchange odds (say between 95% to 100% arb rating), over time this would likely raise red flags for bookmakers! Don’t be afraid to bet on arb ratings of 90% and below every now and then
• Pace yourself. We all want to make as much money as we can in the shortest amount of time possible; however, there’s a difference between short-term profit and long-term profit. Not all bookmakers are created equal and certainly some bookmakers are more lucrative than others. Bigger brand bookmakers tend to be more lucrative than smaller, independent bookmakers, as far as their offers and promotions are concerned. Over the course of your matched betting journey, you will come to understand which bookmakers are the most lucrative for you and therefore would want to preserve your accounts with those particular bookmakers for as long as you can – the last thing you’d want to do is ruin those ‘golden goose’ accounts! So even though you’re profiting most from those golden gooses, it’s important that you pace yourself, i.e. take a more conservative or selective approach when completing offers, rather than maximising every offer available, because those golden gooses are worth more to you over the long-term than the short-term. For example, if you thrash as many offers as you can find with a golden goose, you may potentially make between £50 to £400 with that golden goose over the course of 1 to 2 months before eventually getting gubbed, ruining your chances for future profits! On the other hand, let’s say you only focus on a few select key offers with a golden goose every week or every other week worth £20 per week; your potential profit over the course of a year with that golden goose is between £520 to £1,040 (£20 per week x 26 to 52 weeks), whilst still preserving your account for the next year! How you pace yourself is entirely up to you and will depend on each bookmaker account. Hopefully, you can now understand that with all bookmaker accounts, especially the golden goose accounts, it is far better to take a long-term approach rather than a short-term one in order to benefit from a steady income stream, as well as maximise your overall profit potential!

There are of course no guaranteed ways to avoid getting gubbed. We don’t know for sure how bookmakers actually assess individual accounts. There’s no exact science to avoid getting gubbed. Punters themselves are not immune to getting gubbed either but if you stick closely to the above guidelines then your account is more likely to enjoy gub-free longevity!

What To Do When Gubbed

Once the inevitable happens, no need to panic because:

• All the money in your bookmaker account can still be withdrawn to your bank account. Bookmakers cannot withhold your funds simply for taking advantage of their offers and promotions
• There are plenty of other bookmakers available to move onto, and with that, plenty of other opportunities to build your income! The gambling market is very competitive and bookmakers are incentivised to make offers and promotions available regularly that you can take advantage of! Refer back to our list of Welcome Offers to see if you have missed any bookmakers to sign up to
• There is still life after gubbing! Once your account becomes gubbed, our matched betting strategy changes and that’s when we can start to turn our attention to arbing – we will discuss arbing in more detail in a later section!

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