In the world of sports betting the art of arbitrage involves wagering on both or all sides of an event with the right combination of odds and stakes in place to make a profit whatever the outcome of that event.

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The principle of arbitrage is ‘sure betting‘, supposedly with minimum risk (for the seasoned arbitrageur) and long-term, guaranteed profits.

Surely this is the closest you can come to attaining the “Holy Grail” in betting? Or maybe not?

Despite the apparent rewards on offer the number of worldwide professional sports arbitrageurs is in the low tens of thousands, not more. In comparison, the German stock market employs over 3,200 staff, whilst one of the largest providers of automated arbitrage services, RebelBetting has even fewer subscribers than this number (as we write).

So, why such a relatively small group of customers taking advantage of the so-called ‘guaranteed’ gains averaging between 1.5% and 3.5% per bet (a typical ‘arb‘ provides around 2.5%), with perhaps 15-25% potential profit on the capital employed each month? That’s a far higher reward than any bank, building society, or share dividend offers!

Is Arbitrage legal?

There is no question that arbitrage is legal because the arber is simply exploiting price differences in the market, effectively buying and selling (bets) as any trader does. There is nothing illegal about this.

However, it is understandable that bookmakers are not fond of arbers. Every company has the right (even arbitrarily) to decide who their customers should be and many bookmakers prohibit arbers from their books. As soon as suspicion is aroused bookmaker accounts are quickly limited or even closed.

High Capital Requirement and Personal Characteristics

Successful arbitrage betting ultimately guarantees small returns but the sacrifice is that the process requires large funds. The money is tied-up in the venture for a potentially long period of time.

Pursuing an average 2.5-3.0% profit per betting round and targeting a return of 15-25% of the capital employed per month, the ‘arber’ needs, for example, a starting bank of at least 25,000 € in order to make 5,000 € profit per month.

Wow! A lot of money required at the start to make it worthwhile, and entering the arbitrage arena on these terms will be impossible for many.

Of course, arbitrage betting is a pretty safe investment, but in addition to substantial funds it requires not only great expertise but also some strong personal characteristics to make it possible at all:

• Many time-consuming calculations must be performed. Ouch, lots of maths!
• Clear and complete records of every transaction must be kept. How boring!
• Discipline and consistency has to be maintained at all times. Far too unsocial!

And lastly, a really stable, reliable and fast internet connection is essential, without any limitations to any bookmaker or exchange worldwide.

However, the average punter is perhaps not such a ‘professional’ investor, but bets for fun and/or the excitement of watching an event knowing that money is riding on the outcome. Of course, he hopes to profit from the wager but his are gambles, not investments. Is that the reason why there are so few ‘arbers’ out there and active in the market?

The Case: Match abandoned in the second half

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When this article was originally written, our last bet of the day was ‘laying’ Mallorca in their La Liga trip to Granada. Before retiring to bed, we checked the score, 2-1 to Granada, with around 30 minutes to play.

Upon checking our Betfair account the following day we were concerned to find the bet had not been settled!? A quick search confirmed fears that the match had been abandoned.

Usually, it’s fog or a floodlight failure, or where the match officials are concerned, a pulled groin muscle, an errant or out of control flag, a clumsy fall, or a slide-tackle from an over-enthusiastic defender.

But no, bizarrely, this abandonment was caused by a flying umbrella, which struck a referee’s assistant in the face and drew blood from his cheek.

After the referee had called a stop to the game the manager of Granada explained in the press conference that it was an unfortunate ‘accident’ and that the poor youth in the Granada section of the crowd was still holding the handle as he was arrested by police.

Much sympathy for the scarred linesman, his apparently innocent assailant and other fans deprived of the result, but where did this leave our bet? We were now in the land of limbo and searching through Betfair’s Terms and Conditions.

Which rules apply?

Like all UEFA leagues, we knew La Liga was faced with 3 options for concluding the affair:

1. replaying the whole match;
2. arranging for the last 30 minutes or so to be played out (probably behind closed doors); or,
3. as it was a Granada fan to ‘blame’, awarding of the match to Mallorca with the customary 3-0 score line.

But how are bets affected by these options and what is the range of different terms and conditions employed by the bookmakers and exchanges in such situations?

Ensure that abandonment and postponement rules are clear before betting

When betting you need to ensure that abandonment and postponement rules are clear especially before embarking on strategies such as cross-market trading, arbitrage or accumulators.

No two bookmakers’ Terms and Conditions are ever identical and for arbitrage or trading it is better to use markets with similar rules for postponement and abandonment or, to know the rules instinctively before making bet selections which could otherwise be detrimentally affected by things such as inclement weather.


The next page concentrates on the different attitudes taken by bookmakers and exchanges…

If you are serious about making money from matched betting then you will need to be completely familiar with the range of transactions required in different situations. For example, the free bet you are trying to liberate could be a stake-returned or stake-not-returned offer, or it could be straightforward bonus cash added to your opening deposit. However the incentive is structured, you are going to need to calculate without fault the various stakes required for both the bookmaker back bet and the betting exchange lay bet in order to convert the myriad freebies into hard cash without risking anything.

There are various tools freely available across the Net and every matched betting connoisseur will have their own personal favourite. We prefer the ‘KISS’ philosophy (Keep It Simple, Stupid) when approaching anything for the first time and our preferred matched betting calculator is in our opinion both the easiest to operate and visually speaking, the easiest to understand at a glance when perhaps speed is of the essence.

The specialist matched betting site, Freebets4all.com, offers a couple of invaluable tools; we’ll describe their ‘Automatcher’ in Part 5, but for now we will limit our discussion to their matched betting calculator.

This is a powerful tool requiring minimal input. The most important thing to remember is to check the correct type of bet at the top of the calculator. Then it’s just a question of filling in the 4 blank fields.

The ‘Stake in bookmaker‘ is the ‘initial’ or ‘qualifying’ bet exposure or, the value of the free bet you are trying to cash-in with a profit bet.

The ‘Back odds‘ are the bookmaker odds for your chosen event and at which you are going to place the ‘Stake in bookmaker’.

The ‘Lay odds‘ are the betting exchange odds for the same event found in sites such as Betfair, Betdaq, Smarkets and WBX.

The ‘Exchange commission‘ is the charge levied by the betting exchanges for the privilege of using their trading platform. Betfair and Betdaq tend to charge 5% unless qualifying for lower rates through bonus points or special event offers (Betfair ‘premium charges’ are discussed here). Smarkets is currently offering its service for just 2% commission (although you pay a fee every time you deposit with a card). WBX’s rates vary between 3 and 5% depending upon market strength and loyalty factors.

Once you’ve populated all the spaces check again that you have the correct type of bet and press ‘calculate’. You will then receive a screen that looks something like this (Click to enlarge; opens in a new tab):

Freebets4all Matched Betting Calculator Screenshot

The screenshot shows an ‘initial bet’ or ‘qualifying bet’ example, a transaction you will invariably need to perform many times with different bookmakers in order to earn their free bets.

In this example, say we need to make an initial bet with our own money before we can obtain a 100% matched deposit free bet. In this case the free bet we are going after is to the value of £25, which means we need to ‘bet through’ our initial deposit of £25 before the bookmaker credits our account with a free bet of the same amount (i.e. ‘matched’ deposit).

Of course, we want to cover the bet so that no money, or as little as possible, is lost in order to earn the free bet for nothing. The calculator shows that our chosen stake of £25 placed at odds of 3.2 wins a total of £55. If we consequently find odds to lay the same outcome in a betting exchange of 3.15 then the calculator tells us to ‘lay’ at a stake of £25.81. The liability of the lay bet is shown as £55.49, which will be covered by the £55 won with the back bet (net loss £0.49).

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With the exchange commission rate set at 5%, a net £24.52 (£25.81 less 5%) will be won if it is the lay bet which wins; the back bet will lose £25 (net loss £0.48).

So, as you can see, whichever bet wins, a small loss will be incurred in order to ‘earn’ the free bet, which we should certainly expect to cash to the tune of at least 75% of its amount.

With the aid of Automatchers (see Part 5), it is sometimes possible to find situations where backing both sides of an event in the fashion described above can lead to a profit. This is called arbitrage or an ‘arb’. This is icing on the cake helping to maximise the amount to be made from all of the free bet transactions.

Whichever type of bet is chosen, the most advantageous outcome always results from finding lay odds as far below the back odds as possible.

We advise you to play around with the calculator and practice with it until employing it in your first matched betting transaction with real money. There are others to be found in the Net but this one provides everything we need in a simple and easy to understand format, which we have not seen elsewhere.

Go To: Part 3: Matched Betting Check List
Go To: Part 2: Preparation for Matched betting
Go To: Part 1: Introduction to Matched Betting

In this section of our matched betting tutorial, we look at some of the essential things you need to know and be in control of when you sit down and begin playing with real money together with some recommendations from our own experience.

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1. Before opening a new bookmaker account:

• Is the bonus restricted territorially? In other words, are you resident in a country where the bonus is not applicable and therefore wasting your time opening the account?
• Do your homework: Is the firm reputable? Use a review site such as www.sportsbookreview.com and get an up-to-date appraisal of the company you are about to hand over your hard-earned money to; search for any negative comments online about the bookmaker in question and if in doubt, kick it out.
• Choose a different username and password for every account for your own security and record this information manually (i.e. not on your computer).
• Some bookmakers are linked, such as bwin, Gamebookers and Partybets, or Tipico and Sportingbet, and we recommended concluding each transaction involving a franchise bookie before moving onto another member of the same franchise (i.e. keep a low profile and don’t play with more than one company in a group at a time).
• Read through the terms and conditions of the cashier process (what methods do they accept; what is the minimum deposit and withdrawal amount; are there any charges for deposits/withdrawals which will ameliorate the benefit of the bonus?)
• If you can, copy and paste the terms and conditions into a document and save it for possible future dispute resolution. If the T’s and C’s can’t be copied for some reason, open a Word document, use the PRTSC function on your keyboard (near the ‘F’ keys), go into the Word document and press the keys CTRL and V together to copy the screenprint you have just performed into a saveable format.

2. Read through the terms and conditions of every bonus or free bet offer in minute detail:

• Is a bonus code required (from elsewhere in the Net) or is it a deposit bonus or a free bet to be ‘earned’? Some codes are freely given on the bookmaker’s own site whilst others are available on affiliated sites elsewhere on the Net. In our experience, the affiliate codes usually promise greater riches than the bookmaker’s own basic bonuses, but usually the terms are far more complicated and require you to bet higher amounts of money or more frequently in order to earn the bonus. It’s all a ploy to maximise the income of the affiliate and sometimes what they promise isn’t quite what transpires. If in doubt, stick to the bookmaker’s offer.
• What exactly do you have to do to ‘earn’ the bonus?
• Is it a ‘stake returned’ or ‘stake not returned’ bonus?
• Is there a limit on the number of days you have to deposit the qualifying stake into the account after registration?
• What is the time scale in which to place my qualifying bet and subsequent ‘free’ bet?
• What are the minimum odds the bookmaker requires each bet to be made at (differs wildly from bookmaker to bookmaker)
• Copy and paste the terms and conditions into a document and save it for possible future dispute resolution.

3. Before placing any bets:

• Ensure you are logged into both the bookmaker and betting exchange sites simultaneously and have the chosen event ready on both sites for a fast transaction even if liquidity is good at the exchange (to reduce the chance of the lay odds from rising and reducing your eventual profit from the transaction).
• Use a matched betting calculator to work out the lay bet stake required for either the qualifying or profit bet, whichever it may be.
• Before placing the bookmaker bet check the liquidity in the exchange: is there enough money being offered in the exchange to lay-off 100% of the back bet at or close to your desired price?
• Always place the bookmaker bet first.
• Place the bookmaker back bet and quickly refer to the matched betting calculator to check the lay stake required and also the liability it will generate.
• Place the lay bet quickly and leave both receipts ‘open’ on your screen until you have recorded the bets in your spreadsheet.
• Always leave plenty of time before the kick-off in which to correct errors.
• Check both the bookmaker and betting exchange bet logs to ensure that everything is in order before leaving the sites.
• Check the bet logs again.

4. Advanced:

• If you are entirely happy and comfortable with the concept of ‘arbing’ then this is a process you may find faster and more financially strategic to extract money remaining in your bookmaker accounts rather than withdrawing it back to your credit card, e-wallet or bank account. Receiving money back in the bank account takes anything between one and five working days, which of course, places this sum into limbo. Arbing the bookmaker balance until the bookmaker bet eventually loses is more efficient as the cash effectively just transfers instantly into the betting exchange float, along with added profits. If you are not happy with ‘arbing’ or waiting for a suitable opportunity, then go along the withdrawal route.
• There are some very good in-play opportunities to achieve chunky price differences between the bookmaker’s live odds and those in the betting exchange. However, we would advise only ever performing this type of transaction at half-time in a game, giving yourself plenty of time to make the transaction comfortably, as anything else is in our eyes equivalent to gambling, which is not what matched betting is about.

In the coming parts, we will explore the constituent elements of the matched betting process including matched betting calculators and automatching sites, which are invaluable in saving time and making the whole business as efficient as possible.

Go Forwards To: Part 4: Matched Betting Tools: Calculators
Go Back To: Part 2: Preparation for Matched betting
Go Back To: Part 1: Introduction to Matched Betting

Before you begin learning the matched betting process, please familiarise yourself with the following preparatory steps:

Step 1

Before you set-up any new gambling accounts, we advise you to acquire a new email address and use it as the sole portal for all your betting correspondence. create a different folder within that account for each betting company and file all emails like you are running a business, just in case you need to refer back later for dispute resolution. It also keeps things clean without inter-mingling your personal life with your betting activities.

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Step 2

Keep an Excel spreadsheet of all your individual bets to stay focused.

This will also help you to see patterns making the whole matched betting process quicker as you get used to it, and it will ultimately provide you with a ready and up-to-date record as a summary of earnings.

It is always wise from a records perspective to have everything neat and tidy and readily available should you have to provide evidence in a hurry to Inland Revenue of untaxed revenue appearing in your bank accounts. This is not a joke.

Step 3

The saying ‘money begets money’ is important as you will need money in order to enter the matched betting arena. The bonus bets on offer are usually provided in the currency of your country of residence and for English speaking and European countries, the main currencies are GBP £, USD $ and Euros €. You will need an internet bank account with a Visa or Mastercard attached and at least 100 units of credit in your local currency. You will be using this account to make the initial betting account deposits and to facilitate withdrawal of winnings for recirculation into other new betting accounts and into the betting exchange float.

Importantly, ensure that the bank account you choose does not make a charge for gambling related transactions; check your terms and conditions. Some online banks do charge which in turn reduces your profit and means you will effectively be working hard for your bank for free, adding to their already enormous wealth with no real control over just how large a slice of your profits they might filter away from you.

Step 4

You will need an e-wallet such as Paypal, Neteller and Skrill (Moneybookers), as for some bookmakers, this will be the only method of deposit and withdrawal possible from your country of residence.

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Step 5

You need to understand the difference between a back bet and a lay bet, including the ‘watershed’ at which they cancel each other out. If you don’t, then our article here may help.

You will need to understand the fundamental difference between a bookmaker and a betting exchange. At the former, you can only place back bets but pay no commission on winnings; at an exchange you are betting against other people like yourself and can place both back and lay bets but, the exchange takes a percentage of your winnings for providing the trading platform.

Basically, backing an outcome means you are betting on something to win, whilst laying an outcome means you are betting on it to lose.

Step 6

Before you sign-up to any new betting account, check out online cash-back sites that usually have connections with some gambling related companies. This means that signing-up through their links might actually mean you receive cash-back on your deposits, thereby augmenting your matched betting income.

Again, most gambling affiliates won’t tell you this because they would rather you used their links to sign-up. In the UK, www.topcashback.co.uk and www.quidco.co.uk are the two market leaders in this field. As we write, Quidco has links to over 90 different bookmaker and betting exchange accounts (under the ‘Entertainment’ category and then the ‘Gambling’ sub-tab)

You may find other cash-back sites, but read their terms and conditions very carefully. These two have been in the market many years and have kudos but recent history is littered with several examples of similar firms and start-ups which didn’t stay the course. The golden rule here is that once you have reached the withdrawal threshold in your cash-back sites, please withdraw the money immediately!

Step 7

Before you open any bookmaker accounts, you will need one or more betting exchange accounts in order to place lay bets. The largest and most popular in the world is currently Betfair, which also has the greatest spread of markets, the highest liquidity to ensure your stakes get matched, and the easiest layout and user interface. Betdaq come next in the pecking order, and then an interesting, newly developed company, Smarkets. Whether WBX gets off the ground is open to question at the moment.

We recommend you definitely use Betfair and perhaps one of the others. In any case, you will need a minimum of 200 currency units in each exchange account you decide upon. This money is the betting exchange float.

As you go after the larger bonuses, you will find that a larger float is necessary in order to maximise and convert them into as much hard cash as possible.

Coming up in Part 3…

The next part of this series provides a check-list of things you need to be aware of during the matched betting process.

We will then move onto the actual nuts and bolts of matched betting and detail the different strategies you will need to master in order to place successful qualifying bets, stake not returned free bets, stake returned free bets and understanding deposit bonuses and when and when not to treat them as stake returned free bets.

Lastly, there will be an ever-evolving list of examples as Soccerwidow moves from one offer to the next attempting to earn as much hard cash from the free money on offer. The traps and pitfalls will also be highlighted to help you not to fall into them.


Go Back To: Part 1: Basic Knowledge
Go Forwards To: Part 3: Matched Betting Check List
Go Forwards To: Part 4: Matched Betting Tools: Calculators

Many online bookmakers and betting exchanges try to entice potential new customers into registering and betting with them by offering free bets and sign-up bonuses.

Some of these firms continue to offer periodical incentives during the lifespan of the customer’s account (even if they don’t continue betting regularly), whilst others have numerical points and/or loyalty schemes in place triggering further bonuses when betting turnover targets have been reached.

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This series of articles concentrates only on free bet bonuses and how to convert them into cash. This can be achieved with no risk involved only if the mechanics of each bonus are fully understood and the matched betting process is followed flawlessly by the bettor. Of course, there is a risk of financial loss when human error creeps into the equation and needless mistakes are made.

Matched betting is a science and requires precision in the same way that a master chef needs just the right balance of ingredients to make the perfect dish. The principles of matched betting can just as readily be used to release mid-term bonuses, also as straight cash.

In the United States, matched betting is called ‘double betting’ and effectively the principle is simply that; betting on both the ‘win’ and ‘lose’ outcomes of a chosen event using the particular free/bonus bet mechanism of any given bookmaker which, in turn, guarantees the transaction returns a profit. This could be interpreted by many as a ‘loophole’ but nevertheless it is a completely legal activity and most bookmakers also do not have a problem with it.

The lure of a free bet or a bonus is of course just a basic marketing ploy to encourage the bettor to play in the first place, and at its worst it becomes a lasso snaring him/her into regular betting with that firm. This is when the free bet ‘bait’ becomes a worthwhile investment from the bookmaker’s perspective. It should be noted that the average amount most bookmakers are prepared to spend is around GBP £300 in order to obtain a new sign-up because in the long-run they always get their money back…and usually more.

The concept of obtaining profit from betting just on the basic two possible outcomes of an event, in other words, ‘win’ and ‘lose’, may be difficult to grasp at first but please be assured it is completely logical. There are many Web sites purporting to teach matched betting and all of them tend to say that it is a source of easy, free money. Soccerwidow agrees that this is free money of sorts, but the applications involved are sometimes long-winded, time-consuming and intricate, and importantly, also differ from bookmaker to bookmaker.

For the beginner, it’s definitely not as easy as many sites make it out to be and thorough practice is needed on paper before even committing to your first monetized matched betting transaction. Again, be assured that one slip can cost you dearly, perhaps the equivalent of a handful of other matched bet offers wasted in order to retrieve the losses from a flawed transaction, or maybe worse, an irretrievable depletion of the betting ‘float’. At very best, a mistake will cause just a small, but annoying loss and of course, a wasted profit opportunity.

This series of articles will teach you to avoid all the negatives and help you build up a nice nest egg within a relatively short period, enough perhaps for a luxury holiday in 6-months’ time, or maybe you are just keen to create a bigger war chest with which to hedge/trade? Whatever your reasons, Soccerwidow will provide the basic training necessary to fully grasp the concept of matched betting and will explore in detail each bookmaker’s bonus offer showing how to cash the free bet, and pointing out the pitfalls and traps to be wary of along the way.

The first piece of advice on this subject is to use each bookmaker’s account purely to extract the free money on offer and not for regular ‘gambling’.

Once the initial free bet extraction is performed you may choose to leave the account dormant (it won’t affect your credit rating), until such a time as you are contacted about further free bet offers, which some of the bookmakers make periodically (usually on special occasions or big matches such as ‘El Clasico’, the Champions League final, the English FA Cup final, et cetera).

However, if you prefer, email customer support asking them to close down your account as soon as your initial matched betting win is secured. It’s your call. They will not be offended and this of course will prevent you from ever being tempted to ‘gamble’ unnecessarily, thereby undoing all the good work you will have performed during the matched betting exercises.


Go Forwards To: Part 2: Preparation for Matched Betting
Go Forwards To: Part 3: Matched Betting Check List
Go Forwards To: Part 4: Matched Betting Tools: Calculators