In this section, we’re going to show you how to place your very first matched bet and guarantee yourself a profit!

At this stage, you should have already signed up to a bookmaker and betting exchange. But if you haven’t done so already, go back and sign up to a bookmaker and betting exchange account before proceeding further.

In this example, we have already signed up to Betfred and Smarkets.

Understanding The Conditions

Before placing your bet, you need to make sure you understand the conditions of the offer beforehand. Each bookmaker has their own set of conditions to qualify for their offer. Make sure that you read the terms and conditions beforehand.

Here, we’ll be using the Betfred ‘Bet £10 Get £30 In Free Bets’ offer as our example. You may recall this offer from our previous matched betting demonstration. This time, we’ll be going over this in more detail.

When reading the terms and conditions, you need to understand the key information for completing the offer. Here are the key information for completing this Betfred offer:

• Qualifying Stake: You need to bet at least £10 to unlock £30 in free bets
• Number Of Bets: This offer only applies to your first bet
• Minimum Odds: The bet must placed at odds of at least 1/1 (2.0) or greater
• Sport: The bet can be placed on any sport
• Time/Date Of Payout: Free bets will be paid out within 10 hours of settling your first bet
• Restrictions On Free Bets: Free bets can be placed on any sport. Free bets expire after 7 days of receiving them

The above information are correct at the time of writing.

Odds Display

Before you start, make sure that the odds display is set to decimals (e.g. 2.0), not fractions (e.g. 1/1). The odds display can usually be changed on the main page or within the settings page. If you cannot locate where to change this, contact the bookmaker’s support team for help.

Guide To Profiting From Matched Betting

The basic matched betting strategy consists of two steps: 1) the Qualifying Bet, and 2) the Free Bet. Let’s guide you through these steps in more detail!

Step 1: Placing The Qualifying Bet

In order to receive £30 in free bets, we need to first bet £10 of our own money. Once we placed our £10 bet, we will then qualify for and receive £30 in free bets after our bet is settled. The Qualifying Bet consists of two opposing bets: a back bet and lay bet – click here for a more detailed explanation of these bets.

As our first step, we need to make a selection to place our £10 back bet on. To keep things simple, we like to bet on football, specifically on a major league game. We recommend sticking to major league football matches for now, e.g. Premier League, EFL Championship, English League 1, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, World Cup, Scottish Premiership, Spanish Primera Liga, German Bundesliga I, Italian Serie A, French Ligue 1 etc.

Here, we selected the Spanish Primera Liga and chose to place our £10 back bet on a draw at back odds of 3.75 (remember, we need to bet at least 2.0 or greater as per the requirements of the offer) for Real Betis vs. Villarreal.

After we placed our back bet at the bookmaker, we then go the exchange and locate the exact same bet (i.e. draw for Real Betis vs. Villarreal) to place our lay bet. We can see that the lay odds for a draw is 3.85 (the blue boxes are the lay column) – click here for a more detailed explanation of back and lay odds.

In order to know how much to lay, we need to use the free Matched Betting Calculator – click here to open the Calculator.

We make sure that ‘Bet Type’ is set to ‘Normal’, then we enter all the key figures we have so far. As you can see from our calculation below, a bet of £10 at back and lay odds of 3.75 and 3.85 would require us to place a lay bet of £9.74. You can also see from our calculation that a lay bet of £9.74 would give us £27.76 in liability. You may recall in the previous section, ‘Betting Exchange Sign-Up’, that we recommend depositing at least £50 to sufficiently cover your liability – click here for a more detailed explanation of liability.

So now we place a lay bet of £9.74 on a draw at 3.85 for Real Betis vs. Villarreal.

The reason we place opposing back and lay bets is so that:

• They cancel eachother out once the bets are settled
• We don’t need to worry about the outcome of the match
• We lose the minimum amount of our money whilst qualifying for the bonus, in this case, the £30 in free bets

The discrepancy between the odds at the bookmaker and exchange means that we will make a ‘loss’ regardless of the outcome of the match. However, this loss is relatively minor and is a necessary cost in order for us to qualify for the free bets – this is known as a ‘Qualifying Loss’ (QL). We typically consider a QL as a cost than an actual loss. The QL is a necessary cost to unlock a profit in Step 2.

As shown above, the bookmaker and exchange odds on a draw for Real Betis vs. Villarreal are 3.75 and 3.85 respectively. This discrepancy will, of course, result in a QL. You can see from our calculator below that the discrepancy between these odds will result in a QL of -£0.26. This loss will occur regardless of the outcome of the match – this is further explained in the profit breakdown below:

• If the match ends in a draw, we will win our bet at the bookmaker, i.e. £27.50, but lose £27.76 at the exchange, resulting in an overall loss of -£0.26. Remember, the £27.76 is our liability – click here for a more detailed explanation of liability
• If the match does not end in a draw, we will lose our £10 bet at the bookmaker, but win £9.74 at the exchange, again resulting in an overall loss of -£0.26. The £9.74 is our lay bet, i.e. someone else’s stake that we had accepted and will win if our lay bet wins – click here for a more detailed explanation of a lay bet and returns

Simply put, regardless of the outcome of the match, our back and lay bets cancel eachother out, resulting in the same minor QL.

Our Qualifying Bet enables us to qualify for the free bets whilst keeping our loss to a minimum.

In this process, it does not matter to us whether the match ends in a draw or not. Nevertheless, you can see here that the match did indeed end in a draw and so we won at the bookmaker but lost at the exchange!

Now that our bets are settled, we should receive £30 in free bets at the bookmaker within 10 hours as per the terms and conditions of the offer! If you don’t receive your free bets or bonus within the stipulated time frame, we recommend contacting the bookmaker’s support team for assistance.

Step 2: Using The Free Bet

Step 1 was about qualifying for the free bets; Step 2 is where we make our profit!

Once we have received our free bets, it is a simple case of repeating the same process as Step 1, but this time using our free bets instead of betting with our own money. Much like the Qualifying Bet, unlocking guaranteed profit from free bets consists of two opposing bets: a back bet and lay bet – click here for a more detailed explanation of these bets.

So just like before, we need to make a selection; and again, to keep things simple, we are going to bet on football. We have a quick criteria when it comes to making a selection with our free bets:

• Ideally at least odds of 5.0 or greater; and
• Must be a major league football match, e.g. Premier League, EFL Championship, English League 1, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, World Cup, Scottish Premiership, Spanish Primera Liga, German Bundesliga I, Italian Serie A, French Ligue 1 etc

We can certainly use our free bets on other sports like horse racing, but at this stage we want to keep things simple and stick to football.

Our criteria helps us to maximise the value of the free bets. Our ideal target profit for free bets is approximately 70% to 80% of its value so:

• For a £20 free bet, we ideally want to unlock approximately £14 to £16 cash profit
• For a £10 free bet, we ideally want to unlock approximately £7 to £8 cash profit
• For a £5 free bet, we ideally want to unlock approximately £3.50 to £4 cash profit

When done correctly, it is not possible to unlock 100% of the value of free bets, because free bets are not real cash and hold no cash value, and so our calculation takes this into account – click here for a more detailed explanation of free bet returns.

The above criteria isn’t strict but is simply a quick rule of thumb to guide you in the right direction; however, we may not always be able to find a major game offering the odds we are looking for, in which case, odds of at least 4.0 would still be sufficient to enable us to hit within our ideal 70% to 80% target profit range. And so, you can see here that we have selected a draw at 4.0 for Borussia Mönchengladbach vs. 1899 Hoffenheim.

Our free bets are now available for us to use; so this time, instead of placing the bet with our own money, we have selected to use £10 in free bets in the betslip. With this particular offer, you can select any free bet amount up to £30; we simply chose to bet £10 to keep things simple. The free bet amount you’re allowed to place can vary with each bookmaker/offer. Some bookmakers/offers allow you to place any free bet amount up to a maximum amount (which is the case in this example), whilst others only allow you to place fixed free bet amounts.

After we placed our free bet at the bookmaker, we then go the exchange and locate the exact same bet (i.e. draw for Borussia Mönchengladbach vs. 1899 Hoffenheim) to place our lay bet. We can see that the lay odds for a draw is 4.2 (the blue boxes are the lay column).

In order to know how much to lay, we once again open the free Matched Betting Calculator.

We make sure that ‘Bet Type’ is now set to ‘Free Bet (SNR)’ to account for the free bet. SNR stands for ‘Stake Not Returned’, because you don’t receive the cash value of free bets as part of your winnings – click here for a more detailed explanation of free bet returns. And just like before, we enter all the key figures we have so far. As you can see from our calculation below, a £10 free bet at back and lay odds of 4.0 and 4.2 would require us to place a lay bet of £7.14.

You can also see from our calculator that a lay bet of £7.14 would give us £22.85 in liability. Make sure that you have sufficient funds in your exchange account to cover the liability – click here for a more detailed explanation of liability.

So now we place a lay bet of £7.14 on a draw at 4.2 for Borussia Mönchengladbach vs. 1899 Hoffenheim.

Because we are now using a free bet, the discrepancy between the odds at the bookmaker and exchange now enables us to guarantee a profit, regardless of the outcome of the match. Here, we are guaranteed an overall profit of £7.14 – this is further explained in the profit breakdown below:

• If the match ends in a draw, we will win our bet at the bookmaker, i.e. £30, but lose £22.85 at the exchange, resulting in an overall profit of £7.15 (we tend to account for a few pennies difference). Remember, the £22.85 is our liability – click here for a more detailed explanation of liability
• If the match does not end in a draw, we will lose our £10 free bet at the bookmaker (in other words, we lose no money because we only staked the free bet and not our own cash in this step), but win £7.14 at the exchange, resulting in an overall profit of £7.14. The £7.14 is our lay bet, i.e. someone else’s stake that we had accepted and will win if our lay bet wins – click here for a more detailed explanation of a lay bet and returns

An overall profit of £7.14 clearly falls within our ideal target profit of 70% to 80% of the value of our £10 free bet!

Regardless of the outcome of the match, both our bets cancel eachother out, resulting in the same overall profit!

Again, in this process, it does not matter to us whether the match ends in a draw or not. Nevertheless, you can see here that the match did not end in a draw and so we lost at the bookmaker but won at the exchange!

Our net profit from this matched bet is £6.88 (£7.14 overall profit – £0.26 QL from Step 1)!

And because we had £20 in free bets remaining (remember, we received a total of £30 in free bets), we simply repeated Step 2 and placed two more free bets at £10 each, giving us a further guaranteed profit of £7.69 and £8.02!

Therefore, our total net profit is £22.59 (£22.85 overall profit – £0.26 QL from Step 1)!

Not bad for a total of less than 20 minutes work!

All of our calculations shown above factor in 0% exchange commission – that’s because as OddsMonkey Premium members, we benefit from 0% commission on Smarkets. However, if you are using a different exchange or are not yet an OddsMonkey Premium member, then you are likely to be paying commission on your winning exchange bets, and so your calculations would need to factor this in.

Factoring Commission

Rinse & Repeat

Now that you have placed your first matched bet and made your first guaranteed profit, you can repeat this process with the other two bookmakers in our initial list. Simply return to the ‘Bookmaker Sign-Up’ section, select the remaining bookmakers from the list, rinse and repeat the process and make yourself another guaranteed profit!

Bookmaker Sign-Up

If you have already completed this process for all of the bookmakers from our initial list, then we’re just getting warmed up! There are plenty more bookmakers with plenty more offers available! And in the next section, we’re going to show you how to complete these other Welcome Offers and continue to build guaranteed profit along the way!

Welcome Offers

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————

 

Return To
Placing Your First Matched Bet

 

Return To Home