The Lemon Fool

This has been mentioned on another thread and most sensible voices here have dismissed the idea but I have recently been looking at this and am about to start doing it so I will keep you updated with my progress.

I estimate I should be able to net several hundred pounds per month with very little work, that seems like a reasonable return to me in these lockdown days when I have little else to do.

I am also doing this with my daughter who is furloughed so it will be an interesting father/daughter bonding exercise if nothing else.

Nothing to lose.

John

redsturgeon wrote:I estimate I should be able to net several hundred pounds per month with very little work, that seems like a reasonable return to me in these lockdown days when I have little else to do.

It will be interesting to see how long the "free" bets keep coming in practice once the "initial offers" to sign up etc. have been used.

Will be an interesting experiment to follow.

First bets are in with Coral's and Skybet matched via Betfair.
£50 of free bets on Villa/Wolves game and Stoke/Middleboro.
Of course the games are irrelevant though.

John

I wouldn't do it. But if I did, it would be the minimum number of matched bets to unlock the free money, then block the marketing emails, texts.

Matched getting sounds like easy money, but it's to hook people in, as those with addictive personalities with get a buzz from the wins, and once the companies have your details you'll have years of emails, texts and by post, unless blocked.

fca2019 wrote:I wouldn't do it. But if I did, it would be the minimum number of matched bets to unlock the free money, then block the marketing emails, texts.

Matched getting sounds like easy money, but it's to hook people in, as those with addictive personalities with get a buzz from the wins, and once the companies have your details you'll have years of emails, texts and by post, unless blocked.

I understand why the betting companies do it, this is definitely only for those who will stick to the bet matching and not be tempted.

The companies have to abide by the normal rules re. emails texts etc and you can opt out from those, not sure if any use snail mail these days.

John

Sooner or later you'll be 'gubbed' ... bet £x and believe that you'll receive £y additional free thrown in, but where the bookie has decided that you are a existing client that no longer is eligible and withdrawn your £y 'free' additional amount, such that you're exposed on the matched/opposing bet side. More likely at a time when you've become the most greediest.

Assuming that you can play those that play others to extract maximum benefit and win is being very optimistic. Much of betting profits arise out of a drug like addition. A single win can get some hooked, and where subsequently the price paid is exceptionally high. Just say no.

1nvest wrote:Sooner or later you'll be 'gubbed' ... bet £x and believe that you'll receive £y additional free thrown in, but where the bookie has decided that you are a existing client that no longer is eligible and withdrawn your £y 'free' additional amount, such that you're exposed on the matched/opposing bet side. More likely at a time when you've become the most greediest.

Assuming that you can play those that play others to extract maximum benefit and win is being very optimistic. Much of betting profits arise out of a drug like addition. A single win can get some hooked, and where subsequently the price paid is exceptionally high. Just say no.

Possibly but that will be for a £5 or £10 bet after I have already extracted many times that.

I will let you know how I get on weekly.

If I can avoid mistakes

If I can avoid being gubbed too often and too soon.

If I can avoid the temptation to bet

then there are offers of over £700 available for introductory bets that I won't be gubbed on.

So I will take those and reappraise.

John

Your accounts will be cut fairly quickly....that is all.

I've wondered about doing this myself so I'll be interested to see how you get on.

I guess it goes without saying that you've set up email accounts just for this experiment?

Watis

Watis wrote:I've wondered about doing this myself so I'll be interested to see how you get on.

I guess it goes without saying that you've set up email accounts just for this experiment?

Watis

Yes.

John

Three matched bets today

Plus £51, no risk.

John

Best of luck John - I started doing this a while ago with Odds Monkey and it worked fine. I was advised to ‘lose’ money every now and then so that the algorithms didn’t automatically spot what was happening but I didn’t heed their advice and my accounts were closed!

Good luck! OLTB.

One week in and I am £148 up. I have been stopped from taking part in any more promotions with one site already though. All I did was sign up, do their welcome promotions and then they sent me an email saying my account had been reviewed and I was no longer welcome to take part in any offers.

John

redsturgeon wrote:One week in and I am £148 up. I have been stopped from taking part in any more promotions with one site already though. All I did was sign up, do their welcome promotions and then they sent me an email saying my account had been reviewed and I was no longer welcome to take part in any offers.

John

I'm sure you'll have come across much of the advice out there here's a few thoughts and recollections. I did my matched betting stint 7 or more years ago, I had a job where I usually worked evenings so had daytimes to put the hours in, lots of research, I used some resources on the web like Freebets4all, Oddsmonkey plus others I forget. It was mostly about taking the bonuses with plenty of companies offering hundreds to sign up with weekly £5 and £10 follow ups but there were some arbitrage opportunities too. I amassed a couple of dozen bookies, some in Australia and Germany I seem to remember. I got "gubbed" at some of the bookies but I managed to keep quite a few. I seem to remember anecdotal advice to try and look like a regular punter, use slightly larger than just the promo amount, so bet £12 on a £10 promo, don't take really long odds or obscure sports or bets like Venezuelan ladies football, in-play tennis scores etc. Watch out for quirks of rules too I think tennis had some funny variants on draws or wet weather. I still have accounts with Ladbrookes, WIlliam HIll and a few more but some of the more obscure bookies shut me down. I still take the odd bonus for big meets like the national, Cheltenham etc but the pickings seem much thinner than those back then, as are the cash out requirements. I used part of my stoozed credit card cash as my wagering float too.

I wouldn't call Matched betting "Other investing". Sorry to be a killjoy but its no different to drug dealers giving freebies to hook in kids and get them drug dependent. The principal is exactly the same and the outcome the same... the cost in human lives is too high.

fca2019 wrote:I wouldn't call Matched betting "Other investing".

Isn't it trying to exploit the foibles of marketing departments? If you bet that A beats B and also the B beats A, your net loss would be the collective profit of the gambling industry. If you use two bookmakers who offer free bets, isn't it free income at the expense of their marketing budgets? I'd agree on the risk of finding it addictive though, but to judge from the amount of TV advertising the betting firms have plenty of cash to spread around.

Just over two weeks in and just over £350 up now. We have stuck religiously to a plan and resisted any temptation to bet without laying on one of the exchanges.

The offers we are having to do now though are getting more complex and easier to make mistakes on. Probably this the the final week of the welcome bonuses then we will regroup and take stock. We have just been betting on football up to now but there are more offers in the casino type games which we may consider next.

So the three of us have taken more than £1000 in two weeks from the bookies, I am happy with that. I too am disgusted with the way the bookies prey on the weak and vulnerable but I don't see how matched betting supports that process in any way, quite the contrary.

We have to put some of our own money down to get a guaranteed return so I'd call that investing.

John

John,

is ALL the money (£350) back in your bank account?

redsturgeon wrote:Just over two weeks in and just over £350 up now. We have stuck religiously to a plan and resisted any temptation to bet without laying on one of the exchanges.

The offers we are having to do now though are getting more complex and easier to make mistakes on. Probably this the the final week of the welcome bonuses then we will regroup and take stock. We have just been betting on football up to now but there are more offers in the casino type games which we may consider next.

So the three of us have taken more than £1000 in two weeks from the bookies, I am happy with that. I too am disgusted with the way the bookies prey on the weak and vulnerable but I don't see how matched betting supports that process in any way, quite the contrary.

We have to put some of our own money down to get a guaranteed return so I'd call that investing.

John

You'll get repeat offers if you leave an account alone and come special occasions they'll be a few more Cheltenham was favourite, when I played the welcome bonuses were where all the big money was to made. Careful with the casino bonuses as I don't think there's a profit anymore following wagering requirements but there are some places that'll give you optimal blackjack plays and 5 card poker where you can get the best odds for each hand. You'll always lose overtime to the house advantage but can calculate if the play through and size of bonus generally work out or not.

Have you had any luck with finding actual arbitrage matched bets with a worthwhile profit? If you've cleared £350 of bonuses you can take back your initial stake and use the bonus money as stake money and you'll be risk free. Arbitrage I found very time consuming, without bonuses, just arb, you get a percent or less so to make money the size of the pot matters.

I've been doing matched betting for a few years now. I keep a separate bank account purely for MB transactions, as well as a dedicated email address. Despite schoolboy errors and the occasional bad luck with odds changing against me between placing the first and second bets, I'm up just over £8.5k.

It helps that I find gambling boring and am not really interested in which team wins. If I was into gambling or betting on my favourite team it might be a bit more stressful!

I find most people, despite explaining the mechanism of MB, just hear "betting" and won't believe it's a logical, mathematically driven process of cash extraction. Except the bookies. They understand all too well and I've been gubbed by a fair few, but offers do keep coming! This last year I've added casino offers to my repertoire; a bit more complex, as you're working with probabilities rather than fixed deals, but once the research is done they are easier then sports MB.

I use OddsMonkey, Team Profit (free) and Team Casino. There are lots of other sites offering similar information, but these seem pretty good. For record keeping, I use the "Ultimatcher4" spreadsheet which looks a little complicated at first, but is very useful at tracking bets across multiple bookies and working out lay bets and associated profitability, cash balances, free bets etc.

To anybody thinking of trying matched betting, I'd advise care. If you lack attention to detail, or can't afford to lose money (e.g. because of a mistake in placing a matched bet) then this is not for you. For those who would enjoy taking cash off of the industry, it can be very satisfying and more profitable than investing in the bookies as a shareholder...

VRD