It’s time to get the final Blue Square qualifiers out of the way. To get the 2nd free bet you have to place 10 bets of £25 although, thankfully, you can place them all on the same event. The closest odds I could find is for Leicester to win tomorrow’s Rugby Union Heineken Cup final: the back odds at Blue Square are 1.44 and the lay odds at Betfair are 1.45. 10 £25 bets will mean a liability at Betfair of £115.71, so I’ll be temporarily tying up £365.71 (£250 + £115.71), but the bets will be settled tomorrow.
I’ll be making a bit of a loss on these qualifiers - £5.71 - but that’s to be expected. I’m looking to make an overall profit of around £13 on these qualifiers and the subsequent free bet.
Bets to be settled:
Blue Square: Leicester Tigers v London Wasps (Q) 20/05/07. Expected return £-5.71
The match is actually still on, but the first 90 minutes is over so my bet has been settled. I don’t usually watch the matches my bets are on, as I don’t have any interest in the result (I win either way), but I make an exception for the FA final. I wish I hadn’t bothered, what a boring match. Still, it won me £19.42 so I shouldn’t complain. That’s a total profit of £18.45 on my Blue Square bets.
My Blue Square qualifier has settled for the expected loss of 97p, but with their really poor odds finding a decent free bet is proving a bit difficult. Bookies may complain about betting exchanges, saying it’s unfair on them as people laying bets don’t have to have a bookmaker’s licence, but the real reason they’re losing business to them is because they are so uncompetitive.
For my free £25 Blue Square bet I have settled on Chelsea winning the FA Cup 2-0. The Betfair lay odds are 13.5 and Blue Square’s back odds are 12; as the free bet is stake not returned (SNR) this will give me a profit of £19.42, or 78%. The high odds mean I have to have £255 in my Betfair account to cover the liability, but high odds are necessary with SNR bets. It’s also only tied up for a few hours so that’s not a problem.
Bets to be settled:
Blue Square: Chelsea v Man Utd (FB) 19/05/07. Expected return £19.42
The profit figure in the right sidebar is finally off £0: my free £10 Coral bet has been settled for a profit of £9.05. Add that to the unexpected 16p profit on the qualifier and my total gain on the Coral bets is £9.21, all for about 25 minutes work.
Two bets placed today, the Coral free bet and a qualifier at Blue Square. The Blue Square free bet is very generous, £50 in total, but slightly more complicated than Coral’s. You get a £25 free bet after placing a £25 bet, and you get a further £25 if you place another 10 bets of £25.
I’ve placed my free £10 Coral bet on Yeovil to win against Nottingham at back odds of 4.334 and lay odds of 4.6 at Betfair. These weren’t quite as close as I would have liked, but it will still return £9.05 of the free £10, so my overall profit at Coral will be £9.21.
The Blue Square qualifier was a bit tricky to find as their odds don’t tend to be very competitive, but I managed to put my £25 on Filippo Volandri to beat Andy Murray at back odds of 1.73 and lay odds of 1.76. This means I will lose 97p on the qualifier, but will of course make this and more back with the free bet. I have no idea if Volandri will beat Murray, and the beauty of matched betting means I don’t care - all I need to worry about are the odds.
Bets to be settled:
Coral: Yeovil v Nottingham (FB) 18/05/07. Expected return £9.05
Blue Square: Volandri v Murray (Q) 15/05/07. Expected return £-0.97
That’s my first bet settled: Blackburn and Reading drew 3-3 so my lay bet at Betfair won (because Blackburn didn’t win). I’m now 16p up at Betfair and I have a £10 free bet in my Coral account. I just need to find another similar bet and I should be in profit by around £9.80.
Bets to be settled:
None
I managed to find incredibly good odds for my £10 Coral qualifying bet - 2.0 back odds on Blackburn to win, and 1.92 lay odds at Betfair! Why so incredible? Because if you ever find a market where the lay odds are less than the back odds then you are guaranteed to win - try it on the calculator, for every £10 backed at the bookies you lay £10.70 at Betfair, making 16p.
When the back odds are higher than the lay odds it’s is called an arbitrage and is something I’ll go into more detail on at a later date. They don’t come up too often, but when they do they are ideal for matched odds betting.
So, a very good start - I’ve actually made money on my qualifying bet, now I just need to wait for the bets to be settled. Remember, you would normally expect to lose a few pence on the qualifier, so this is unusual.
Bets to be settled:
Coral: Blackburn v Reading (Q) 13/05/07. Expected return: 16p
Most of us have had a flutter at one time or another, most commonly a few quid on the Grand National or the F.A. Cup. Some of you may have been lucky and won, but most will have lost. If you placed your bet on the internet you were probably also given a free bet as well. If you placed this free bet on a virtual dead cert you might have won a couple of quid, but most people place the free bet on an outsider in the hope they get lucky - after all, it’s a free bet so it doesn’t matter if you lose. And that’s about as far as most people’s encounters with bookmakers go.
Matched betting (or more correctly, matched odds betting) allows you to pocket the bookmakers’ free bets by laying the same bet at a betting exchange, earning you a useful tax-free income in the process. Matched betting is not gambling: you are placing bets that guarantee you a profit. For more information, read my guide to matched betting.
This site is intended to give you enough information on matched betting to allow you to start making enough to cover your household bills or pay for that extra holiday you want. I will also be writing my progress diary, so those who are sceptical about matched betting or who want to see what the potential returns are can read how I am doing. I will be spending no more than one hour a day on matched betting to show that it can be done even if you don’t have a lot of time to spare.
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