As the competition amongst bookmakers is so great, almost all offer free bets for opening an account. This free bet is usually in the form of ‘bet £10, get another £10 bet free’ or ‘we’ll match your first bet for free’, where you need to make a qualifying bet with your own money before receiving the free one. Most people will take the free bet and stick it on any old match or race, hoping to get lucky. Sometimes they’ll win, but most of the time this free bet will just end up back in the bookies’ pocket.
With matched odds betting, depending on the type of free bet, you guarantee that you will get at least 75% (and usually closer to 90%) of this free bet as cash in your hand. And there’s more: you can also make sure you minimise your loss on the qualifying bet, so it is possible to open accounts with multiple bookmakers, each time pocketing the sign-up bonus.
The Basics
1) You open an account at a bookmaker who offers a £10 free bet after a £10 qualifying bet.
2) You place your £10 qualifying bet, while at the same time laying this bet off at a betting exchange. This bet will lose you a few pence.
3) You get credited the free £10 bet by the bookmaker. You place this bet at the bookmaker, again laying it off at a betting exchange. You also lose a few pence on this bet, but because it was a free bet in the first place you are pocketing most of it!
‘So what?’ you may be thinking, ‘The odd £10 or £20 isn’t going to make a lot of difference to me.’ You’d be right, the odd few quid here and there won’t make you rich. But how much of a difference would £300 a month make? The mortgage? Your bills? An extra holiday each year? Because it’s money from online bookmaking it’s also tax-free, so you don’t need to worry about the Chancellor getting his grubby mits on it.
So how is it done? Matched betting combines placing a bet using a traditional bookmaker, where you bet on a positive outcome, e.g Chelsea will win against Liverpool, with placing a bet using a betting exchange, where you can also bet on a negative outcome, e.g. Chelsea won’t beat Liverpool. With this example, whatever the outcome of the match one bet will lose and the other will win: if Chelsea do beat Liverpool then you will win at the bookmaker and lose at the betting exchange; if Chelsea don’t beat Liverpool, i.e. Liverpool win or it is a draw, then you win at the betting exchange and lose at the bookmaker. By carefully calculating the amount you need to place at the betting exchange you can ensure that you only lose pennies on the qualifying bet, and pocket as much of the free bet as possible.
Confused? Don’t be, not yet anyway! This is only intended as a brief introduction to matched betting; you’ll find detailed instructions in the how-to section. For me, understanding matched betting involved a lightbulb moment - it took me a while to understand the concept behind it, but once I did it just clicked. Hopefully this site will help you get there a bit quicker.
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