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
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