Can You Still Make Money From Matched Betting?

Nick Making Money matched betting 14 Comments

A reader asked recently whether I am still doing matched betting as I haven’t mentioned it on the blog for a while.

The answer is a qualified yes. It is qualified for two reasons. The first is that since I started matched betting around four years ago I have had my account restricted (or gubbed, as we say in the business) by many online bookmakers. That obviously makes it harder to take advantage of the offers matched bettors need in order to generate their guaranteed profits.

My second reason is that over the last two years, with many sporting events cancelled due to the pandemic, there were fewer matched betting opportunities. Thankfully that is changing now as we come out of the pandemic and normal life (more or less) is returning. Even so, bookies are more cautious and wary than they once were, and offers are thinner on the ground.

So yes, in recent months I have started matched betting again, though in a low-key way. There are only a few good online bookmakers I can now use, and I’d like to go on flying under their radar for as long as possible before they ban me!

If you are new to matched betting – or have let it fall by the wayside recently – I do still recommend it. But be aware that it may not be quite as profitable as it once was.

But first, let’s recap on the basics…

What is Matched Betting?

Matched betting is a method for making risk-free profits by taking advantage of offers made by online bookmakers.

The best offers are those made to attract new clients. Here’s an example. The bookmakers Sky Bet offer a £20 free bet for new online customers. To get this, you have to open an account with them and deposit and bet £5 at odds of evens (2.0) or better. Once you have done this, Sky Bet will immediately credit you with £20 worth of free bets.

So how do you turn this into a guaranteed profit? Well, that’s the clever bit. You make use of a website called an exchange (Smarkets and Betfair are two of the better known). These sites allow anyone to lay a bet (i.e. bet that the outcome in question won’t happen). By backing with a bookmaker and laying the same bet at an exchange you can ensure that however the event pans out, you will only make a small loss or occasionally a tiny profit (depending on the odds available).

With a normal bet this is obviously of limited value, as the two bets more or less cancel each other out. But when your first bet qualifies you for a second (and in Sky Bet’s case much larger) free bet, it suddenly becomes a lot more interesting. Here’s an example…

Let’s say Wolverhampton Wanderers are about to play Spurs in the Premier League. You can back Wolves to win with Sky Bet at 4.75 (15/4 in the more traditional but less useful fractional style) and lay them with Smarkets at 4.80. If you put £5 on Wolves with Sky Bet and at the same time lay Wolves to the appropriate stakes (something I’ll come to shortly) you can ensure that whether they do or don’t win, your net loss will be just 13p (allowing for Smarkets’ 2% commission charge)..

But now, because you are a new member, Sky Bet will give you £20 worth of free bets. You can back and lay these again to generate a guaranteed profit. For the sake of simplicity let’s say you use the same market, Wolves v. Spurs, although you certainly don’t have to. At the odds mentioned, and backing to the correct stakes, you can guarantee yourself a net profit of £15.37 either way. Subtract the 13p loss from your qualifying bet, and once the dust has settled you will have made a risk-free (and tax-free) £15.24. If your bet loses with the bookie, your profit will be in the exchange (remember, this is a free bet so it hasn’t cost you anything). If the bet wins at the bookie, you will lose money at the exchange, but your winnings with the bookie will exceed this, giving you the same net profit either way.

Those are the bare bones of matched betting. Of course, there’s more to it than that, but most matched betting opportunities boil down to this. You place an initial qualifying bet and lay it to ensure (at worst) a small net loss, and then back and lay the free bet you receive to make yourself a guaranteed profit.

• One or two people have asked me whether matched betting is legal. The answer is a clear yes. It’s fair to say the bookies don’t like it, though. And if they suspect you are doing it, they may close or limit your account. As mentioned above, this is called ‘gubbing’ and it is an occupational hazard for matched bettors. As a matter of interest, I had to change the example used at the start of an earlier version of this blog post after being threatened with legal action by the bookmaker in question.

How Do You Get Started?

You can, of course, do all this yourself, researching opportunities and comparing odds to find the most profitable matched betting opportunities. When you are starting out, though – and especially if you are new to online betting – it obviously helps a lot to get some instruction and guidance.

Fortunately there are some excellent online services that will do all this for you and provide step-by-step instructions. You can apply these even if you have never placed a bet in your life before. Here’s the service I recommend for beginners to matched betting…

Outplayed

Outplayed (formerly Profit Accumulator) is a dedicated matched betting website. You can join free initially and they will provide details of two offers you can take advantage of straight away. These should make you up to £40 in net profit.

If you wish to proceed further, you can then pay a monthly fee (currently £29.99) to become a ‘Platinum’ member and get access to Outplayed’s full range of betting offers and services. If you are interested in casino offers as well, you can sign up to their ‘Diamond’ service, which additionally gives you access to casino offers and software and costs £49.99 a month.

As well as detailed instructions on offers, Outplayed also provide various online tools you can use. Their oddsmatcher, for example, helps you find markets where the back and lay odds are as close as possible, so you can minimize your losses on qualifying bets and maximize the value of your free bets. They also have calculators, where you enter the back and lay odds and how much you want to bet at the bookmaker. The calculator then reveals how much you need to lay at the exchange to guarantee a set profit (or qualifying loss) with either outcome.

A further advantage of joining Outplayed is that you get access to the members-only community forum, where you can get any questions you may have answered by more experienced members and/or the Outplayed team.

For more information about Outplayed and its different membership levels, just click through this link [affiliate].

• If you are at all sceptical about the Outplayed service, you might like to check out the reviews on the independent Trust Pilot website. They currently average 4.8 out of 5 stars, with 90% of respondents awarding them a five star (‘Excellent’) rating. That is the highest average rating I can recall seeing on Trust Pilot.

What Happens When You’ve Exhausted the Welcome Offers?

This was something I wondered about before I started, and I know other people do as well.

First of all, it will take you quite a long time to work through all the offers on the Outplayed website. Not all are as simple and straightforward as the Sky Bet offer mentioned above, but nonetheless if you follow the step-by-step instructions they can all generate a healthy profit for you.

After that, you can move on to ‘reload’ offers. These are offers made by bookmakers for existing members to encourage them to keep coming back and using their service. Reload offers work in a wide range of ways. Some provide a guaranteed profit if you apply them correctly, while others may sometimes make a small qualifying loss but other times produce a much larger profit, generating a good net profit overall. Reload offers are also listed on the Outplayed website and updated every day.

Is Matched Betting for Everyone?

In principle anyone can do matched betting, but it is probably more suitable for some people than others. In particular, it will help if you have a small amount of capital to get started – at least £50, preferably £100 or more.

If you have less you can still do it, but it will take longer to build up your earnings. Remember that you will need money to fund your qualifying bets at the bookmaker sites and also your exchange account. You don’t lose this money – it simply moves between bookie and exchange according to how events pan out – and you can always withdraw it if required. But to operate as a matched bettor you do need to have some ‘working capital’.

Another requirement to make a success of matched betting is that you need to be organized and methodical. Matched betting is not difficult once you grasp the basic concept, but if you make a mistake it is possible to lose money doing it. Initially at least it’s important to take it slowly and steadily and follow the instructions on Outplayed (if you have signed up with them) to the letter. It helps to be reasonably numerate as well, although the actual calculations are done for you by the oddsmatching tool and calculators.

And finally, if you think you might get drawn in to gambling through matched betting, you may be better giving it a miss. This applies especially if you have ever had a gambling problem in the past. To emphasize again, matched betting is NOT gambling if you do it properly and follow the correct procedures. But if you are tempted to go off-piste and start placing random bets, the likelihood is that you WILL lose money overall.

Final Thoughts

If you are looking for a tax-free sideline earning opportunity, matched betting can certainly fit the bill. Done properly, it is risk free, and I have made around £3,000 from it myself (to date).

For reasons discussed in this blog post I don’t recommend matched betting as a substitute for a full-time job. If you need a sideline income or another string to your money-making portfolio, however, it can certainly fulfil that role. But be aware that the first few months are likely to be the most profitable. After that, as you run out of welcome offers (and are perhaps ‘gubbed’ by some bookies) it will get harder.

As always, if you have any comments or questions about this post or matched betting more generally, please do leave them below.

• This is a fully updated version of an earlier post.

Disclosure: This post includes affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, I may receive a commission for introducing you. This will not affect the price you pay or the service you receive.

Matched Betting: Get Ready for the New UK Football Season!

Nick Making Money matched betting 0 Comments

I’ve talked about matched betting a few times on this blog. To recap, it’s a way of making risk-free (and tax-free) cash by taking advantage of bookmaker special offers and promotions.

Matched betting is perfectly legal and (done properly) it’s not gambling. You can read my introduction to matched betting here, and why I believe it is such a great money-making sideline for older people here. I have personally made over £2,500 of tax-free profit from matched betting, which is why I have no hesitation about recommending it here..

While matched betting doesn’t present a source of passive income – you do have to put a bit of time and effort in, especially at first – it really is risk-free as long as you apply the method correctly. Even if you do make the odd mistake – and many people do when starting out – it may not cost you any money. Even if it does, the overall profits should quickly cancel out any losses incurred.

Since the last UK domestic football season ended it has been a quiet time for matched bettors, but with the start of the new 2019/20 season all that is about to change. The first match in the Premiership is on Friday 9th August, with the other leagues in England and Scotland starting this weekend.

To be clear, you don’t have to be a big football fan to look forward to this (I’m certainly not). No, the reason to anticipate the new season so keenly is the host of money-making opportunities it will present for matched bettors.

For one thing, the bookies will be pulling out all the stops to attract new clients and get current and former clients back onside. I expect to see a flood of offers on the football in the coming weeks, giving the potential to generate some tasty risk-free profits by applying matched betting principles.

For those who have yet to try this sideline-earning method, matched betting initially involves taking advantage of bookmakers’ welcome offers to generate risk-free profits. These offers typically entail getting a free bet when you place your first paid bet. As a matched bettor you can take advantage of this by backing one outcome of an event with an online bookmaker and at the same time laying it (betting it won’t happen) on a betting exchange.

You will therefore break even (or make a very small qualifying loss, depending on the odds) on your initial bet. But this will qualify you for a free bet from the bookmaker. And by backing and laying this to the appropriate stakes you can guarantee yourself a net profit no matter how the event in question pans out.

Matched betting really is that simple, with the welcome offers at least. However, you do need an understanding of how to apply the method and (in particular) how betting exchanges work. You also need access to calculators and oddsmatching tools to ensure you are staking correctly at the best possible odds to maximize your profits. Unless you are very confident, therefore, I highly recommend signing up to a matched betting advisory service.

I cut my teeth with Profit Accumulator and still recommend this as a great service for people who are new to matched betting.

More About Profit Accumulator

Profit Accumulator is a marched betting advisory service suitable both for those brand new to matched betting and for experienced matched bettors.

You can join PA free initially and they will provide details of two bookmaker offers you can take advantage of straight away, with in-depth tutorials (including videos) on how to do them. These offers should make you around £45 in net profit.

If you wish to proceed further, you can then pay to become a Platinum member and get access to the full range of offers and services. The latter include an oddsmatching tool and calculator for finding profitable bets to use with bookmaker welcome offers and maximizing your returns from them. And, of course, you will get access to hundreds more offers, again with step-by-step tutorials for doing them.

You also gain access to more advanced tools, including Acca Matcher, Each Way Matcher, and more. These allow you to boost your profits and continue to make money even when you have exhausted all the bookmaker welcome offers (which will take a long time!).

A further advantage of joining Profit Accumulator is that you get access to the busy members’ forum, where you can get any questions you may have answered by more experienced members and/or the team behind PA.

If you think matched betting may be for you, therefore, I highly recommend that you click through to the Profit Accumulator website to see what they offer and sign up for the free trial. By joining today you will be perfectly placed to take advantage of the flood of bookmaker offers in the coming weeks.

As ever, if you have any questions or comments about matched betting or Profit Accumulator, please do post them below.

Disclosure: As well as being a member of Profit Accumulator I am also an affiliate for them. If you join and become a paying member after following any of the links in this post, I will receive a commission for introducing you. This does not affect in any way the cost of the service to you or the benefits you receive.

Can You Make a Living from Matched Betting?

Nick Making Money matched betting 6 Comments

I’ve talked about matched betting a few times on this blog. It’s a way of making risk-free (and tax-free) cash by taking advantage of bookmaker special offers and promotions.

Matched betting is perfectly legal and (done properly) it’s not gambling. You can read my introduction to matched betting here, and why I believe it can be a good money-making sideline for older people here.

I am writing about it again now because I’ve seen a number of questions posted recently in Facebook groups and forums asking, if matched betting is so good, can you make a full-time living from it? As a reasonably experienced matched bettor myself, I thought I would share my own thoughts on this subject here.

Don’t Believe The Hype

Don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of matched betting, but it’s important to understand what it can (and can’t) realistically deliver.

It’s not hard if you search online to find people claiming to make thousands of pounds a month from matched betting. These claims do need to be treated with a degree of scepticism, however. Here are just a few reasons…

1. Some people when describing their matched betting earnings include money they make from affiliate programmes. As you may know, the main matched betting advisory services all run affiliate schemes that pay commission for referring new members. I am an affiliate myself, but I wouldn’t ever count affiliate commissions as matched betting profits.

2. The inflated earnings figures typically include money from casino offers. While there is undoubtedly money to be made this way, it is not matched betting and it is not risk-free. Casino offers are really a whole different ballgame. I don’t touch this type of offer myself, except occasionally when I am offered free spins by an online bookmaker.

3. Some of the people making big money are doing so by setting up multiple accounts, e.g. in the names of friends or relatives. They then take advantage of bookmakers’ introductory offers several times over. This is of course completely against bookmakers’ rules and regulations, and may well be illegal. It is not something I would ever advocate doing myself.

Also, despite the claims that matched betting is suitable for everyone, there are some people who probably shouldn’t do it at all. I am thinking especially here of people who may have (or develop) a gambling addiction. Matched betting itself isn’t gambling, but if you think it might draw you into it, then you may be best looking elsewhere to generate a sideline income.

There are also some people who struggle with the practical aspects of matched betting. It’s not rocket science, but you do need a basic grasp of mathematics, and to be well organised and logical. If not, there is a real risk you will get stressed out, make mistakes, and lose money as a result.

The Reality

One key fact about matched betting is that the best opportunities are presented by the introductory offers. By following matched betting principles, you can earn a genuine risk-free thousand pounds or more from these.

Once you have exhausted these offers, however, it does become more difficult (and time consuming). There are so-called reload offers, but these are typically not risk-free. An example is horse-racing refunds. This is where you back and lay a horse in a race and hope that a particular outcome occurs that triggers a refund from the bookmaker.

An example would be if a bookie offers to refund your stake if your horse comes second in a race. If the horse does come second, you get your stake money returned by the bookmaker but also win the lay bet, giving you a net profit. This type of offer can be profitable in the long run, but a lot of the time you will lose a small amount backing and laying when the refund-triggering event doesn’t occur.

For all these reasons, as you may have guessed, I don’t recommend looking to matched betting to provide a full-time income. And I definitely don’t recommend giving up your job to do it full-time. After the first month or two you will be relying on reload offers, and this is no way to generate a reliable monthly income that you – and perhaps your family – can live off.

In my opinion matched betting is best regarded as a tax-free moneymaking sideline which you can use to supplement other sources of income. If you are new to matched betting the welcome offers can also provide a quick financial boost – maybe to pay off debts or fund a holiday or other large purchase. But bear in mind that after a month or two, making money this way is likely to become a lot harder as the sign-up offers run out.

Advisory Services

I’ve said this before, but if you’re new to matched betting, I strongly recommend joining up with a matched betting advisory service. As well as providing tutorials to get you up to speed, these services provide essential online tools, including oddsmatching software and calculators. They will also alert you to a wide range of money-making opportunities, and offer support and advice if needed.

There are various advisory services you can use. I currently recommend the popular Profit Squirrel service. This is suitable both for those brand new to matched betting and for more experienced matched bettors. You can join PS free initially and they will provide details of three bookmaker offers you can take advantage of. These will make you up to £50 in net profit. If you wish to proceed further, you can then pay to become a Premium member and get access to the full range of offers and services.

• You can also pay a one-off (lifetime) fee of £250 to become a VIP member of Profit Squirrel. This will provide you with a personal matched betting expert who will identify MB’ing opportunities for you and tell you exactly what to stake and when. This may be a good choice for people who aren’t comfortable doing the maths themselves  and/or those who are pressed for time.

As ever, if you have any questions or comments about matched betting, please do post them below.

Disclosure: This post includes affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase at the site in question, I will receive a commission for introducing you. This will not affect in any way the cost of the service to you or the benefits you will receive.

MatchedBets.com – My Review Of This Matched Betting Advisory Service

Nick Making Money matched betting 6 Comments

Updated 5 April 2018:

I’ve talked about matched betting a few times on Pounds and Sense. Despite the name it’s not gambling but a genuine way of making a risk-free sideline income.

Matched betting involves (legally) taking advantage of bookmaker special offers. By this means you can generate a guaranteed profit for no risk, regardless of how the event/s you are betting on pan out.

You can read my post about how matched betting works here, and my post about why I believe matched betting is particularly suitable for older people here.

Although it’s not essential to subscribe to a matched betting advisory service, if you are new to betting in particular it is highly advisable. The service I used to recommend (and where I learned the basics of the method) is Profit Accumulator. More recently, however, a range of rival matched betting services have launched, and Profit Accumulator have arguably failed to keep up with the best of them.

Today I thought I would take a look at one of the newer kids on the block, MatchedBets.com. I was kindly given complimentary access to this service so I could see what they have to offer for myself. Here’s what I found…

First Impressions

The first thing you notice when you log in to the MatchedBets.com website is the bright – some would say garish – colour palette (see example below). Pastel blues, greens and pinks are particularly dominant. I can’t say I’m a huge fan of this myself. It’s readable enough, but makes it look like a site aimed at children. Personally I’d prefer to see something a bit more restrained and professional looking.

The main navigation menu is at the top right of the screen (see below). If you hover the cursor over Offers or Tools, a sub-menu will appear. It’s all quite logical and intuitive. I’d like the menu to be a bit more prominent, and it goes askew on the Information Centre page, but those are minor criticisms.

As with all matched betting advisory services, the site is organized into a number of sections. The main ones are listed below:

• Information Centre
• Offers
• Offer Calendar
• Odds Matcher
• Acca Backers
• Horse Racing Matcher
• Calculator
• Support Forum

I’ll look at each of these in a bit more detail below.

Information Centre

This is the training area of MatchedBets.com. It is neatly and attractively set out. There are 43 articles in all, covering everything from basic principles of matched betting to how to take advantage of price boosts and acca insurance offers.

The articles consist mainly of text and screen captures, with videos also used in some cases. I found the articles clear and well written. While I am already familiar with the basics of matched betting, I found some of the articles (e.g. on how to remove the iesnare tracking software used by bookmakers from your computer) genuinely eye-opening.

Offers

This is divided into seven sub-sections, as follows:

• New Customer Offers
• Existing Customer Offers
• Accumulator Offers
• Free Bet Clubs
• Enhanced Odds Offers
• Casino Offers
• Bingo Offers

These are all pretty self-explanatory. In New Customer Offers, for example, all such offers are listed in order of expected profit, the highest first (see below).

Clicking on Instructions takes you to detailed instructions on how to apply the offer. These generally include a short video plus written instructions. Again, I thought these were very clear, and I like the way the key points of each offer are set out in checklist form at the top of the page.

Offer Calendar

This is a great feature of MatchedBets.com, and one I definitely prefer to Profit Accumulator (where you have to find the relevant topic on the forum). Just by visiting the Offer Calendar page you can see all the day’s recommended offers, along with the expected profit and a link to full instructions for doing them.

Odds Matcher

Of course, every matched betting service needs an odds matcher tool, which helps you find the best bets for matched betting offers. The one on MatchedBets.com is certainly bright and cheerful!

As you would expect, you can filter results according to sport, odds (minimum or maximum), start time, odds percentage, and so on.

One feature I particularly like is that odds are shown in real time, so you don’t have to keep refreshing the screen. This also avoids the situation that can occur using other odds matching software (e.g. on Profit Accumulator) where the information frequently lags behind, so you think you have found a great match only to discover it has already gone.

Acca Backers

As mentioned in this blog post a few months ago, accumulator offers are a particular favourite of mine. These are where you take advantage of bookmakers’ offers to refund your stake if one leg of your accumulator loses. This gives punters an in-built edge and means they should enjoy steady profits so long as they back and lay appropriately.

MatchedBets.com accumulator software offers four different ways to make money from accumulator offers: Lay Sequential, Lay at Start, Lay With Lock-In, and No Lay. All four methods are explained in the Information Centre, mentioned earlier. This is more advanced than other platforms’ accumulator tools, which typically only offer three options.

As you may have noticed, on MatchedBets.com by default you see all four types of offer listed according to their expected value (average profit generated). However, if you prefer one particular type of acca (e.g. Lay With Lock In, which I prefer personally) you can set the filter to show only this type.

Horse Racing Matcher

This is the latest addition to the suite of tools on offer at MatchedBets.com. It is provided for use with horse racing offers, e.g. your money back if your horse is second to the SP favourite. By careful backing and laying you can generate a good return when a refund is triggered and a small qualifying loss otherwise, hopefully producing steady profits overall.

The Horse Racing Matcher is still in Beta at the time of writing, but appears to be working well. As with the Odds Matcher and Acca Backers, the odds in this software tool automatically update when they fluctuate on betting exchange and bookmaker sites.

Calculator

This is another standard feature on matched betting service websites, but the one offered by MatchedBets.com is undeniably impressive. Although it looks simple at first sight (see below), it is actually a very powerful tool.

As well as standard matched betting calculations for qualifying bets and free bets, you can use it to calculate bonus on win, bonus on loss, enhanced odds as free bets, and several more. Pretty much any bonus situation is therefore covered. You can also use the calculator to work out what to do in the event of incomplete lays, and if you want to overlay or underlay a bet.

Forum

Likewise, every matched betting service needs a forum, where members can ask questions, share offers and opportunities, or just discuss anything matched betting related (or otherwise).

The MatchedBets.com forum is neatly set out and works well. It isn’t as busy as some forums, as MatchedBets.com is still fairly new and building its membership. There is plenty of good content, though, and staff are usually around to assist as required.

Another thing I should mention is that MatchedBets.com has a bet tracker tool that tracks all your betting activity automatically. It keeps keeps track of profits and bet details and displays them in your account. This makes it easy to keep track of your bets and profits, and does away with the need to maintain your own spreadsheets (although personally I still like to do this!).

One final comment is that the site is fully mobile optimized – so if you like to bet on your smartphone, you should find using MatchedBets.com a pleasanter experience than with some rival services.

Pricing

Joining MatchedBets.com currently costs £15 a month or a best value £119 a year (rising to £149 a year on 1st May 2018). That is cheaper than most other services, e.g. Profit Accumulator currently charge £17.99 a month or £150 a year. You can also sign up for a free trial, which includes access to three matched betting offers that should generate around £50 in net profits for you.

Closing Thoughts

Overall, I have been very impressed with MatchedBets.com. In my view it is a leading contender among matched betting advisory services, and I now prefer it to Profit Accumulator. Its main rival is probably Odds Monkey, another service of which I have heard good reports, although I haven’t yet had the opportunity to try it myself.

My only slight reservation about MatchedBets.com concerns the design and especially the colour scheme. Personally I would like to see this tweaked a bit so it looks less garish and more professional. That’s just my personal opinion, though.

If you are thinking of giving matched betting a go, or looking for an alternative platform once your existing advisory service subscription runs out, I strongly recommend checking out MatchedBets.com. They are adding new tools and features all the time, and joining now will ensure you have access to these at no extra cost.

As ever, if you have any queries about MatchedBets.com or matched betting generally, please do post them below.

Disclosure: This review includes tracked affiliate links. If you click through and sign up with the service in question, I will receive a commission for introducing you. This will not affect the service you receive in any way.

Matched Betting: Prepare for the New Season!

Nick Making Money matched betting 2 Comments

I’ve talked about matched betting a few times on this blog. To recap, it’s a way of making risk-free (and tax-free) cash by taking advantage of bookmaker special offers and promotions.

Matched betting is perfectly legal and (done properly) it’s not gambling. You can read my introduction to matched betting here, and why I believe it is such a great money-making sideline for over-sixties in particular here.

The summer is typically a quiet time for matched betting, but come next month (August) all that is going to change. I am, of course, talking about the start of the new UK domestic football season!

To be clear, you don’t have to be a big football fan to look forward to this (I’m certainly not). No, the reason to anticipate the new season so keenly is the host of money-making opportunities it will present for matched bettors.

For one thing, the bookies will be pulling out all the stops to attract new clients and get current and former clients back onside. I expect to see a torrent of offers on the football especially in the next few weeks, giving the potential for some tasty risk-free profits by applying matched betting principles.

Also, once the football starts again, there will be many more opportunities to profit from one of my favourite matched betting techniques, Acca Insurance. This involves taking advantage of the offer by several bookies to refund a football accumulator in the form of a free bet if you have one losing leg. By judicious staking you can guarantee yourself a set profit on many such bets.

Finding accas that will work with this method and calculating the required stakes isn’t easy if you are working alone. I therefore recommend using my favourite matched betting advisory service, Profit Accumulator. They recently added a tool called Acca Catcher to the range of resources on offer to Platinum members.

Acca Catcher will find accas with insurance for you, show you how much profit they can generate, and reveal exactly what you need to stake on them and when. My recent blog post on How to Profit from Acca Insurance with Acca Catcher explains how this works in some detail. I have made hundreds of risk-free pounds using this technique and looking forward to making much more once the new season starts.

More About Profit Accumulator

Profit Accumulator is the marched betting advisory service I use myself and recommend to others. It is suitable both for those brand new to matched betting and for experienced matched bettors.

You can join PA free initially and they will provide details of two bookmaker offers you can take advantage of straight away. These should make you around £45 in net profit. If you wish to proceed further, you can then pay to become a Platinum member and get access to the full range of offers and services. As well as Acca Catcher (mentioned above), these include an oddsmatching tool and calculator for finding profitable bets to use with bookmaker offers and maximizing your returns from them.

A further advantage of joining Profit Accumulator is that you get access to the members-only forum, where you can get any questions you may have answered by more experienced members and/or the team behind PA.

If you think matched betting may be for you, I therefore highly recommend that you click through to the Profit Accumulator website to see what they offer and sign up for the free trial. By joining today you will be perfectly placed to take advantage of the flood of bookmaker offers likely to appear in the next few weeks.

As ever, if you have any questions or comments about matched betting or Profit Accumulator, please do post them below.

Disclosure: As well as being a member of Profit Accumulator I am also an affiliate for them. If you join and become a paying member after following any of the links in this post, I will receive a commission for introducing you. This does not affect in any way the cost of the service to you or the benefits you receive.

Matched Betting: How to Profit from Acca Insurance

Nick Making Money matched betting 0 Comments

I’ve mentioned matched betting a few times on Pounds and Sense. It’s one of my favourite income-generating sidelines.

To recap, matched betting is a risk-free money-making method that involves (legally) taking advantage of bookmaker special offers. By this means you can generate a guaranteed profit for no risk, regardless of how the event/s you are betting on pan out. You can read my post about how matched betting works here, and my post about why I believe matched betting is particularly suitable for over-sixties here.

In my post today I want to talk about a matched betting technique I’ve been using with considerable success recently. This is profiting from acca insurance. Obviously, for the benefit of those new to betting, I need to start by explaining what an acca is.

What Are Accas?

The term acca is short for accumulator. It is a set of bets (usually four or more) where every bet has to win in order for the acca to succeed and generate a profit. That means accumulators are typically quite risky bets. When one succeeds the returns can be substantial, however, as your winnings are calculated by multiplying all the odds together.

Normally if one leg of an accumulator fails, the whole bet is lost. However, a number of bookmakers offer something called acca insurance with football bets. In this case, if one leg of your acca lets you down, your stake is refunded, generally as a free bet to the same value as the original. By laying off some (or all) of the bets in your acca – and staking carefully – you may be able to take advantage of the ‘added value’ from the insurance to guarantee yourself a profit.

As we shall see there are various approaches you can use, but my clear favourite is the Lock In method. This guarantees a set profit however many legs of your bet fail, from none to all five.

Of course, this profit is less than you would get from a winning accumulator that you didn’t lay off, but as I said earlier accas are risky bets. Using the Lock In method all but removes the risk of losing money (in theory you could still lose if the lay odds on later legs move massively against you, but that is highly unlikely – and much more often the odds actually move in your favour).

Finding accas that will work with this method and calculating the required stakes is not easy if you are working alone. I therefore recommend that you use my favourite matched betting advisory service, Profit Accumulator. They have recently added an online tool called Acca Catcher to the range of resources on offer to Platinum members.

Acca Catcher is an amazing tool that will find accas with insurance for you, show you how much profit they can generate, and reveal exactly what you need to stake on them and when.

About Profit Accumulator

As I have mentioned on Pounds and Sense before, Profit Accumulator is a membership website that provides in-depth tutorials on how to apply matched betting strategies to make money. They also provide special ‘oddsmatching’ software to find suitable bets and calculators to work out the necessary stakes (which is of course crucial).

In recent months Profit Accumulator have added a number of new tools to their Platinum Membership. These include Match Catcher (a tool for those doing horse-racing refunds) and Dutching (a tool for finding arbitrage opportunities among two or more bookmakers). I’ll talk about these in future posts.

As mentioned above, however, the tool that I want to focus on today is Acca Catcher. I will reveal how this works below, though to get full details I highly recommend signing up with Profit Accumulator and watching the training videos they provide.

Using PA’s Acca Catcher

Here is a screen capture of the page that opens when you log in to your Profit Accumulator Platinum account and click on Acca Catcher in the Oddsmatching menu. Obviously, by the time you read this, the accas shown will have changed.

Acca Catcher shows a number of accas you can use with this method. By default they are arranged in order of EV, which stands for expected value. This is a measure of how profitable they should be, so the larger the better is the rule here. As you can see, the top one listed here (with the highest EV) Is with William Hill. This is often the case, as William Hill have the most generous terms and conditions and allow you to stake up to £50 per acca (some other bookies limit you to £25 or less).

The QLoss figure stands for qualifying loss. This only applies if you use what they call the Normal method. In this case you stake in such a way that if you end up with exactly one losing leg in your acca you get a free bet (from which you should be able to generate an 80% profit) and with any other outcome a modest qualifying loss. Using this method, on average you should make a profit equivalent to the EV shown. This is typically slightly higher than the profit available using the Lock In method, but of course it is only an average, and some of the time you will lose money.

Personally I prefer the certainty of the Lock In method even if it might be marginally less profitable overall. You may see this differently, of course.

The other things shown on the opening screen are the actual games in the acca, the total back and lay odds, and the start and end dates of the acca.

One other thing you will notice to the left of each acca is a small calculator icon. This is very important, as if you click on it, it will show you everything you need to know in order to extract a profit from the acca in question. So let;s see what happens when we click on the first of the accas shown…

Note that by default the ‘Normal’ button is selected at the bottom left. As I prefer the Lock In method, however, I have switched it to that.

The calculator now shows you the acca bet you have to make and the first lay. Note that while you place all the back bets together in your accumulator, using the Lock In method you place the lay bets sequentially. This is necessary as the required stake can change depending on whether each leg wins or loses (and after two losing legs with the lock-in method you stop laying).

If we were doing this bet, then, our first step would be to place a £50 acca bet at William Hill containing the five bets shown. We would then lay off the first leg using a lay stake of £47.67, exactly as shown in the calculator.

Once the match has been played and the result is known, we then return to the calculator and click on the green tick on the right if the result was as forecast (in this case a win for Manchester United) or the red tick if it wasn’t (a draw or away win). The calculator then shows us the lay stake we need to place in the next leg (see below).

So we now place a lay bet of £73.26 on Manchester City. This process continues until we reach the end of the acca or there are two losing legs, whichever comes first.

Let’s say for the sake of argument the middle leg of the acca loses but all the others win. The final calculator screen will look like this:

As you can see, because one leg lost, the acca doesn’t pay out and you have made a net loss on it. However, you qualify for a £50 free bet on the acca insurance. By backing and laying the free bet using standard matched betting technique (and the free calculator on Profit Accumulator) you should be able to extract around £40 profit from the free bet. In the example above, as the calculator says, you would therefore end up with a net profit of £9.12. Give or take a few pence, your net profit would be just the same if all five legs won or none of them.

More Acca Insurance Tips

I have set out above the basics of how matched betting with acca insurance works. As I said earlier, I highly recommend watching the training videos on Profit Accumulator to see exactly how it works step by step. Assuming you are a PA Platinum member you can also play about with the software to your heart’s content without spending any money until you are confident with it. Here though are a few more tips to help you on your way…

• Bear in mind that if you can get better odds than those shown in the calculator, the net profit will be boosted. I find that often as a match gets closer the lay odds will go down, making your bet more profitable. You can enter the new lay odds manually and the lay stakes and profit figures will be automatically adjusted.
• Sometimes Acca Catcher shows lay odds from Betfair, other times from Smarkets. I use the latter as much as possible, as their fees are lower and it simplifies matters to lay all your bets in one exchange. In any event, it is often worth checking the other exchange, as you may be able to get a better price there than the one shown on the calculator. Exchange prices change constantly, and if there is plenty of time before the next leg you may want to try entering a lay bet lower than the current offer price in the hope that it will be matched subsequently.
• As mentioned above, an alternative to the Lock In method is the Normal method. With this you aim to have exactly one losing leg in your acca in order to qualify for the refund. With any other outcome (no losing legs or two or more) you suffer a small qualifying loss. With the Normal method, as soon as you have one losing leg in your acca, you stop laying. With the Lock In method, by contrast, you don’t stop laying until you have two losing legs.
• Another option on the calculator is ‘Lay All’. This is where you lay all your selections at the same time (obviously before the first leg starts). This method only works when all the selections are available at extremely short odds (generally no higher than 1.20). The profits vary according to how many legs win – typically you will make a decent profit if all legs win, but if one loses you will make a very small profit or break even. With two or more losing legs the winnings increase again, but at such short odds this is obviously rare. I haven’t bothered with the ‘lay all’ method myself, but the option is there if you want it. It does have the obvious attraction that you can do all your backing and laying at once.
• One thing to watch with accas is that you don’t have more than one ending on the same day. In the case of William Hill (and some others) they will only give you one refund per day – so if you have two accas ending the same day, each with one losing leg, you will only get one refund. That would leave you with a net loss on the other acca, of course.
• As you may gather, I’m a big fan of William Hill, not least as they allow you to stake a generous £50 per acca and have this refunded as a free bet if one leg loses. Using the Lock In matched betting method, I would generally expect to make a minimum of £10 per William Hill acca. I therefore highly recommend using William Hill with this method, but would also advise placing other ‘mug’ bets with them to try to reduce the risk of having your account restricted (or gubbed, as matched bettors say). You can lay off your mug bets to minimize your losses from them.
• Different bookies have different rules about accas, e.g. Ladbrokes only allow insurance up to a maximum stake of £25 and a smaller range of national leagues is eligible. Other bookies specify minimum odds for each leg of your acca, e.g. with Paddy Power the minimum is 1/5 (1.20 in decimal format). Acca Catcher from Profit Accumulator should incorporate any such restrictions into its recommendations, but it never hurts to check if you are uncertain.
• When entering results in the calculator, remember that the outcome that counts is the one at full time (90 minutes). Some cup and international matches have extra time if the teams are drawing after 90 minutes, but the result after extra time isn’t relevant for acca betting purposes.

Good luck with your acca insurance bets. If you have any comments or questions, as ever, please do post them below.

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Two More Reasons for Matched Bettors to Sign Up With Profit Accumulator

Nick Making Money matched betting 2 Comments

I’ve talked about matched betting a few times on Pounds and Sense. It’s one of my favourite methods for making a sideline income.

For those who may not know, matched betting is a risk-free money-making method that involves (legally) taking advantage of bookmaker special offers. By this means you can generate a guaranteed profit for no risk, regardless of how the event/s you are betting on pan out. You can read my post about how matched betting works here, and my post about why I believe matched betting is particularly suitable for over-sixties here.

Although it’s not essential to subscribe to a matched betting advisory service, if you are new to betting in particular it is highly advisable. The service I recommend is Profit Accumulator.

About Profit Accumulator

Profit Accumulator is a membership website that provides in-depth tutorials on how to apply matched betting strategies to make money. They also provide special “oddsmatching” software to find suitable bets and calculators to work out the necessary stakes (which is of course crucial).

Profit Accumulator have also just added two new services to their Platinum Membership. Previously these were only available to people playing an extra fee of around £15 a month for Platinum Plus membership (in addition to the normal Platinum members’ fee). The services in question are Acca Catcher and Match Catcher.

These two services are both aimed predominantly at people who have completed at least some of the introductory offers and are now looking to diversify their matched betting income.

Acca Catcher is designed to help members profit from refund offers on accumulators. In these you select four or more events to bet on and all must result as predicted for the bets to succeed. Some bookmakers have an offer where if one leg of your accumulator fails they refund your stakes. By carefully calculating your stakes you may be able to guarantee a set profit however your bet turns out. Acca Catcher takes you step by step through finding and exploiting such opportunities, showing you exactly how much to stake and when.

Match Catcher is software that helps users capitalize on horse racing refunds. Again, some bookies offer refunds if a horse you bet on comes second (sometimes third as well). If you can get a close match between the back price and the lay price of such a horse, you can stake in such a way that you only make a very small loss whatever the outcome, and in addition get the refund when your chosen horse comes second or third. With racing refunds you won’t win every time, but overall you will make a steady profit.

At the time of writing Profit Accumulator Platinum Membership costs £17.99 a month, including these two additional services. You can also take out an initial free trial membership which includes two offers that should make you up to £45 in tax-free profits.

In my view if you are looking for a tax-free way to supplement your income, matched betting via Profit Accumulator is well worth considering. You can make over £1000 quite easily by doing the bookmaker welcome offers. After that there are so-called reload offers made by bookmakers to existing clients, and you can now also use Match Catcher and Acca Catcher to help you take advantage of racing refunds and accumulator offers.

If you have any questions about matched betting or Profit Accumulator, please do post them below and I will do my best to answer them.

Note: As per my disclosure statement, I should like to make clear that as well as being a member of Profit Accumulator I am also an affiliate for them. If you join and become a paying member after following any of the links in this post, I will receive a commission for introducing you. This does not affect in any way the cost of the service to you or what you receive for your money.

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