Bet matching – what it is and how you can do it

bet matching

You’ve heard your friend is up £50 on the weekend, and yet he doesn’t work weekends. How has he always had that little bit of extra cash handy for a rainy day? Turning to you, he says: bet matching my friend.

Going home, you Google bet matching and end up lost in a sea of numbers, calculators and arithmetic. You end up deeper in more words and numbers you can’t follow, such as lay betting, liabilities and wonder just how this works.

Here is a quick and easy run through exactly what bet matching is, and how you can get your hands on this fool-proof method to make money from the bookmakers.

Firstly, what is bet matching, we hear you ask? Also known as matched betting, it gives you a profit using free bet offers from various bookies, removing the gambling element associated with betting.

You’re probably aware of free bet incentives that betting providers put out to gain new customers. These individuals will usually bet away both their original bet and their gained free one, leaving them out of pocket, receiving daily emails on the latest betting odds to rope them back in. Bet matching avoids this.

Take an offer such as ‘Bet £10 and get a £10 free bet’. You’d sign up for this offer, as well as joining a betting exchange like Betfair. Finding odds across both the bookies and Betfair, you need them to be as close to one another as possible. Say Roger Federer was taking on Rafael Nadal in the Australian Open Final and the Swiss magician had odds of 2.00 at the bookies, you’d look for odds of 2.02 on Betfair.

Having found these, you place your £10 on the bookies odds of 2.00, backing Federer to win. On Betfair, you bet against this happening – Federer not to win. This is what is known as a lay bet, you are backing Federer to lose.

A matched betting calculator will work out the ideal lay stake, exactly how much you need to put on Betfair to get the same outcome whatever the result. In this case, it would be £10.25, giving a loss of just £0.25. Despite this, you’ve successfully got your free bet to use.

Using the same strategy with bet matching, you now find odds that gain you a profit, around 5.00-9.00. Finding these odds is simple with an odds matcher, and you then place the free bet of £10 on this. For example, odds of 5.00 for Gael Monfils to beat Juan Martin Del Potro.

Place a lay bet on Betfair which are the same odds as the bookies, in this case 5.00. Use the matched betting calculator, making sure bet type is ‘stake not returned’, and it will work out to lay £8.08. Accounting for Betfair commission, you will make a profit of £7.68 without even having to check the end result of the bet.

Monfils may win or lose, but utilising bet matching, you’ll always win. Game, set, match.

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