• Can You Lose Money On Matched Betting
• Betting Sites Free Bets
• Does Matched Betting Work Without Free Bets
• Matched Betting Online
• Matched Betting Guide

A qualifying loss is the small amount of money you lose when matched betting in order to unlock a free bet. It is a very small investment for a much larger financial reward. So, you lost 89p, but guess what? You now have a £25 free bet to use. We repeat the same process again, using the oddsmatcher to find us a bet. Matched betting is completely legal assuming you’re over 18! It takes advantage of a loophole between betting exchanges and bookmakers, but neither of them loses because not backing or laying elsewhere has no influence on their result from your matched bet. Matched betting.

The sign up offer mention in this tutorial is no longer available. Please use this tutorial as a reference only

First Bet Refund offers will provide you with a free SNR bet only if your first bet loses. You can still extract these for a guaranteed profit and this will show you exactly how to do it. Read on to see how they work and how you can make a profit from them.

What is a First Bet Refund?

A first bet refund means that you will receive a free SNR bet only if the first bet that you place, loses. If your qualifying bet wins, you will not receive the free bet. The SNR bet will normally equal the stake of your qualifying bet. It’s a bit like giving you 2 chances of winning from the bookmaker. If you are using these for matched betting, they work in the same way as free SNR bet welcome offers, with the exception that you need to perform a slightly different calculation for the qualifying bet.

Place Your Qualifying Bet

The first step in extracting guaranteed profit from a first bet refund is to place your qualifying bet. If you are a Premium Member of Yesbets, we will pull the best matched bets, with all the best bets and amounts pre loaded. If you aren’t a Premium Member, follow the steps below.

The first thing to do is find a close match. For this example We’ll use Dafabet, who offer a £30 free bet, if your first bet loses. You will need to open the bookmaker website (Dafabet), a exchange (Betfair) and the matched betting calculator.

For this example we’ll use the Everton v West Ham game. Fill in the odds into the calculator as shown below. This time you want to select First Bet Refund from the dropdown in the calculator.

The back odds are 1.95 and the stake is £30. The lay odds are 2.04 and it is telling us to lay £17.34 for a liability of £18.03. The bet type selected is First Bet Refund.

The first thing you will notice is that if the bet wins you will make a profit of £10.47, but if the bet loses, you will lose £13.53. This is because, if this bet wins, you won’t get a free bet, but will make an overall profit of £10.47. But if it loses, you will receive a £30 SNR free bet. You will then place this to make your profit.

Place your Free Bet

If your bet wins at the bookmaker, you are done with the offer and will have made a profit. If you bet loses at the bookmaker, you will now receive a free SNR bet, in this case £30. To extract this you will need to matched bet this £30 free bet.

Let’s use the Man Utd V Wolves game as an example. Open the bookmaker site, an exchange and the matched betting calculator again.

This time we’re selecting Wolves to win at odds of 6.50 at the Dafabet. The odds are 7.20 at betfair. Select Free Bet SNR from the calculator and enter the details. It should look like this:

You can see from the calculations that you will make £20.23 from this offer. Once you have taken off the £13.53 loss from our qualifying bet, you will end up with an overall profit of £6.70.

How Does it Compare to Premium Members?

Premium Members get access to our powerful OddsMatcher software, which finds all the best bets for you. Furthermore you don’t need to fill out any calculators, ensuring you make more profit from each offer. Let’s take a look at how you could perform using our OddsMatcher software.

Qualifying Bet

There is a Qualifying bet that our OddsMatcher has found for Wolves v Burnley (draw). This would yield a profit of £16.68 if it wins, but lose only £7.32 if it loses.

Free Bet

Can You Lose Money On Matched Betting

With the free bet, you can see that using the OddsMatcher we have found a bet on a horse race at Curragh 16:50 with Idaho to win. This would make you £24.57 regardless of the result. Overall Premium Members would have made £17.25 profit on this offer.

Matched betting is a legal way of guaranteeing a profit on a bet. Yep, there are no games here. That statement is 100% accurate.

How Does Matched Betting Work?

The days of wandering into your local high street bookmaker are gone. It’s all about the online bookies now. There are tens, hundreds, hell, even thousands of bookies trying to make a go of it online. As a result they’re all coming up with offers to tempt punters in. Many of them come in the shape of free bets.

Most people see a bookie offering a freebie and scroll past, some take the free bet and do one of two things – win and run or lose and leave. Then there are matched bettors. Matched betting utilises free bets to guarantee a profit. This is achieved by placing a free bet on one outcome and then using a betting exchange to ‘lay’ against the said selection.

The betting exchange side of things can confuse people but the best way to explain it is that you’re acting as the bookie against other punters. This means your ‘lay’ bet comes with what is known as ‘liability’. This is you covering the potential winnings of the other persons bet. Let’s simplify all of this with an example.

A Real Life Example

Man City face Arsenal at the weekend. Coral, who have free bet opportunities to the value of £20, have the draw priced at 5.00 (matched betting is always calculated in decimal odds). The Betfair Exchange offers you the option to ‘lay’ the draw i.e. betting either team will win at odds of 5.40.

Your ‘back’ stake is decided for you as it is whatever is the value of the free bet so your bet in this instance looks as below:

£20 on Manchester City to draw with Arsenal at odds of 5.00 with Coral = £80 return (free bet stake is excluded).

You then ‘lay’ the draw stating the match will not be a draw at 5.40 on the Betfair Exchange. The stake associated to the bet will be £14.95 (because of how betting exchanges work, this is actually your potential winnings – more on these calculations later) giving you a liability or amount ‘at risk’ of £65.78. Don’t worry though because, come kick off, you’re laughing:

If the game ends in a draw, you lose your liability on Betfair (£65.78) but win £80 from Coral. A £14.22 profit.

If either team wins the game, you’ve lost nothing with Coral because your stake was a freebie but you’ve won your bet on the betting exchange. Your liability is returned along with your £14.95 winnings. Exchange winnings are usually subject to a commission (5% on Betfair) meaning your overall profit is £14.20.

It’s two bets that take less than five minutes work and you’re guaranteed to make over £14.

Is it Really that Simple?

Sort of, yes. The example we’ve walked through above is the matched bet and it does give you a positive return regardless of the result but there are a few more components to consider.

Firstly, most free football bets are only awarded if you make a bet with real cash first. This is called your qualifying bet. The approach to your qualifying bet is exactly the same as your matched bet. Place your ‘back’ bet with the bookie i.e. “I bet team X will beat team Y” and then ‘lay’ off your selection on a betting exchange i.e. “I bet team X will not beat team Y”. This initial bet is placed with real money. For that reason, it is possible that you’ll lose a small amount (usually pence).

The second part of matched betting that you need to understand is how to identify an appropriate opportunity. Not all fixtures are suitable for matched betting because it’s reliant on the odds falling in a certain range.

Now, a lot of people are scared off by the fact you need to find specific games for matched betting to work. Don’t be, there are tools out there that are created with this betting strategy in mind.

Top Matching Betting Sites

There are two main companies that operate matched betting services. Profit Accumulator, who have been going since 2014, are the name that has been helping punters make money through this method the longest. Their service does come at a cost (£20 a month) but they offer a free trial and you can cancel any time. Their offering is decent too with alerts taking you to the best free bet offers, software that allows you to find the games that are matched bet opportunities by bookmaker.

Now, remember earlier when we spoke of the complicated ‘lay’ stakes? Well, to top it all off, their service also includes a bet calculator. This will give you the stakes you need to wager for a guaranteed profit for your matched and qualifying bet.

Betting Sites Free Bets

The other major name in the market for matched betting services is OddsMonkey. To be honest, their platform is very closely aligned to that of Profit Accumulator to the point where even the pricing is the same. The main difference is the fact they claim their free trial will yield you greater profit (£62 instead of £40). If you go the whole hog with matched betting that £22 extra will become insignificant with hundreds of pounds quickly racking up. I’d suggest you check both out with the free trials and opt for the service that you find more user friendly – everyone is different after all.

Does Matched Betting Work Without Free Bets

Best Bookies for Matched Betting?

On the surface of things, no. Any bookmakers with a free bet offering can be exploited for profit. That said, all of these offers come with extensive terms and conditions. It is in these terms that certain bookies make themselves more appealing to matched bettors.

Some of the big boys like William Hill, SkyBet and Ladbrokes will not limit a household to one single use of a free bet offer. This means that if you share wi-fi with someone you don’t need to worry about not being credited with an offer or, if you live with a partner or friends, you can all club together for multiple matched betting wins. Happy days.

Matched Betting Online

Some bookies though do restrict their offers to one person per house and/or wi-fi network. You can still use them for matched betting but just make sure someone else in your network hasn’t taken the offer already.

Just a quick caveat to stress that the terms and conditions do change regularly so either check them out at the time of betting, ask the company directly or hit up one of the forums operated by the two resources mentioned earlier.

Does Matched Betting Still Work in 2020?

The internet is a phenomenal tool but, boy, do you read some nonsense. There are plenty of people out there who claim that you’ve missed the boat on matched betting. It’s simply not true. Bookies will always offer free bets and whilst that remains the case, you’ll be able to make money from laying of your back bet.

The only risk to consistent matched betting is getting your account ‘gubbed’. This is where the bookie spots you’re winning too much money and limits your stake to the point of insignificance. There are easy ways to avoid this though. Continue your matched betting but avoid staking large amounts on really obscure leagues (this is a red flag to the bookies that you’re covering your bet) and, on occasion, throw on a small stake accumulator. This is a random piece of advice but to the watchful eye of bookmaker systems it will help your account resemble the behaviour of a regular punter.

Is it Possible to Lose Money When Matched Betting?

After reading all this, you’re probably fully on board. Before you take the plunge understanding the risks is an important thing to close on.

Matched betting is a guaranteed way of making money. That doesn’t mean it’s completely risk free though. The reason for that is two-fold. The first is that odds can change in an instant. It’s not that common for dramatic shifts to occur (it’s not happened to me in several years of matched betting) but it’s important to acknowledge it could happen. If you get caught by this, simply crack on as planned and know that your loss will be limited. You’ll soon make it back with the next bet as you won’t get caught out every time.

The other thing that can catch you out is human error. This is in your control – take your time when using the calculators from Profit Accumulator or OddsMonkey and double check things before you hit ‘place bet’.

It’s like that old saying ‘measure twice, cut once, win often’.

Matched Betting Guide

There you have it, your guide to matched betting.