[Wizard.]

I have been reading about something called Matched betting recently and it seems quite simple. I'm not a gambler but I do sometimes bet on reality show outcomes, and I have definitely lost more than what I have won. The way Matched Betting works is that you sign up to a bookies website and receive a free sign up offer from them, say £20. Then you also sign up to Betway Exchange. What you do is bet on a football match on the bookies website, you are betting for a team to win. Then on Betway Exchange you bet on the same time to lose, it's called "laying a bet". There are other factors involved like the odds have to be near identical, I don't fully understand it myself. But it is supposed to be a risk-free way of making money. Anyone else heard of it?

[Wizard.]

Basically I want a way of making money whilst at uni because I just worked at Tesco for 3 months and I am not applying to Mcdonalds. People are saying they have done it and earned around 1k in a month.

[Cherie]

I think 1k a month is optimistic, my son does this bet when they offer a free bet, the bookies don't do the free bet for every football game only some of the big ones, he's made some money, a few hundred, no more than that, he earns more money gaming than betting.

[Marsh.]

My god, if it were that simple to make 1k a month we'd all be doing it.

[Cherie]

Originally Posted by December

My god, if it were that simple to make 1k a month we'd all be doing it.

And the bookies would be out of business

[_Tom_]

I gave it a go a few years ago whilst I was in uni, but it was just too complicated for me and I don't think I ended up making much

You have to keep a spreadsheet so that you can track your profits. Was just too time consuming for me.

[Wizard.]

Originally Posted by December

My god, if it were that simple to make 1k a month we'd all be doing it.

Originally Posted by Glory

I gave it a go a few years ago whilst I was in uni, but it was just too complicated for me and I don't think I ended up making much

You have to keep a spreadsheet so that you can track your profits. Was just too time consuming for me.

see sweetie some people cannot be arsed. But there are calculators that can help you now and forums and other website, you just need around £100 to start with. Waiting for my student loan

[Wizard.]

Originally Posted by Christmas Sherry

And the bookies would be out of business

apparently they don't mind it, otherwise it would not be allowed. bookies still make hundreds of millions.

[Cherie]

Originally Posted by Riley.

apparently they don't mind it, otherwise it would not be allowed. bookies still make hundreds of millions.

Ask Toy Soldier he is a bookie. I think it's okay if you stick to the free bets, they just don't offer free bets very often after the first hook

[Wizard.]

Originally Posted by Christmas Sherry

Ask Toy Soldier he is a bookie. I think it's okay if you stick to the free bets, they just don't offer free bets very often after the first hook

no I wouldn't say quit your job, but who wouldn't like a little cash injection? saves me slogging me guts stacking shelves

[Cherie]

Originally Posted by Riley.

no I wouldn't say quit your job, but who wouldn't like a little cash injection? saves me slogging me guts stacking shelves

You sound like my son his excuse is he doesn't want to take a job from the pensioners

[Wizard.]

Originally Posted by Christmas Sherry

You sound like my son his excuse is he doesn't want to take a job from the pensioners

I am giving up my job to the people on JSA as goodwill

[Marsh.]

Here for me earning more money than Rob's book.

[Vicky.]

If you do it right. One mistake though could wipe out your months profits + more

[Marsh.]

Just reading up on it and a guy has made £1,200 in 18 months. Not bad, it's still a profit, but not exactly lucrative.

I imagine you need to up your stakes to win 1000's which I suppose is why gambling addiction is such a big problem nowadays.

[James]

I found with sign-up offer free bets is that they usually pay your winnings in the form of betting credits, rather than actual money.

[user104658]

Originally Posted by James

I found with sign-up offer free bets is that they usually pay your winnings in the form of betting credits, rather than actual money.

That's generally true of boosted odds, rather than free bet offers. e.g. they'll give you 8/1 on a bet that's more or less a walkover (a mismatched football game... Man City vs Chorley FC or something like that) and they'll pay the boosted winnings as free bets. Opening offer free bets you'll usually get the cash if it's just the standard odds. But remember that the stake is always deducted. That's actually a legal requirement.

As for if you can make money... less and less easy to do so, tbh. It's easy to "harvest" a free bet (stake it and place an opposing bet) and guarantee a win that will equal the value of the free bet BUT it's basically limited by how many free bets you can get hold of. You used to be able to make decent money because in ye olde days when internet gambling was relatively new, making duplicate accounts at each site was relatively easy, and you could harvest the bet and get your hands on the cash before they noticed that it was a duplicate. These days they'll flag duplicate accounts almost immediately and any funds that are in them will be frozen until you prove your identity (and that you don't have multiple accounts). You can probably get away with having two or three accounts per site per household... if you have access to photo ID for multiple people. If you have access to multiple addresses, even better.

But yeah. Basically yes it's worth doing as a one-time thing to hoover p all of the offers. It's not an ongoing money source because you'll eventually be flagged and your accounts will be blocked before you can claim the cash (and potentially you'll have a chore even getting your own real cash deposit back).

I've seen people with up to a grand "frozen" indefinitely, because they won it on a free bet on a duplicate account. Small print is a bitch .

You can also try to exploit in-shop free bets these days with over the counter accounts... a good shop team will spot you more or less straight away and tell you to **** off but... and I'm just going to be blunt here... there are a LOT of shop teams who are frankly borderline incompetent .

#insiderinfo

[user104658]

Originally Posted by Vicky.

If you do it right. One mistake though could wipe out your months profits + more

This is also true, if you make an error with your bets you can lose your own money (you do have to inject your own cash to match bets).

Most common mistake is people backing both sides of a handicap where the handicap is (for example) -10.0 rather than -10.5. The .5 takes the draw out of the equation so you only have a binary result (and you back both results). If you mistakenly back a .0 handicap you still leave the possibility of a "draw" result, in which case both of your bets are losers.

[Beso]

Dont most original bets or the free bet gained from the original bet have to be placed on odds of evens or better ts?