Matched betting is a proven way to maximise returns and extract profits from a variety of bookmaker offers. In this article, provided by the Profit Squad team, we’ll be showing you how it’s possible to use Betconnect to increase your profits even further with a few simple methods.
What is matched betting?
Bookmakers run promotions to attract new customers and to encourage existing ones to keep betting with them. These promotions usually consist of giving customers free bets when they place a bet or refunding their losing bets with free bets. It is with these free bets that we’re able to lock in a profit using matched betting strategies.
Let’s look at an example offer.
A bookmaker is offering you a £20 free bet when you register an account and place an initial bet of £20. A regular punter would place a £20 bet and hope that it wins. They may get lucky and win but they could also lose. They then receive their £20 free bet and place this on something. Again, it may win but if this bet also loses, they’ll be down £20 overall.
When matched betting, we do things slightly differently by covering all outcomes so that one of our bets win regardless of the result. We do this by placing both a back bet and a lay bet.
Back bets – This is when you are betting on something to happen. For example, Liverpool to beat Man Utd. Your bet would win if Liverpool won and lose if they didn’t. You can place back bets at any bookmaker.
Lay Bets – Lay bets are when you are betting on something not to happen. For example, if you placed a lay bet on Liverpool, your bet would win if Liverpool didn’t. ie. the match ended in a draw OR Man Utd won.
When matched betting the offer, we place our £20 back bet with the bookmaker. However, we then lay the same bet on a betting exchange. This way, one of our bets will win regardless of the outcome. We won’t make a profit from this bet and will most likely only lose around £1. However, we have qualified to receive a £20 free bet and it’s only cost us £1!
We then repeat the process of backing and laying a bet, this time using our free bet with the bookmaker. As we are using a free bet instead of our own money, our lay stake can be reduced and so we should be able to return an overall profit regardless of the result.
This may seem complicated if you have never placed a lay bet before but the process is pretty simple and Profit Squad provide full training guides and videos as well as a range of user-friendly matched betting tools to make the process quick and easy.
How to use Profit Squad and Betconnect together to make more profit
In the example above we mentioned that we would most likely make around a £1 loss on our qualifying bet. This is called a ‘Qualifying Loss’ and although this amount is usually quite small, it would be beneficial if we could reduce this even more.
We usually incur a qualifying loss because of the difference in the back odds at the bookmaker and the lay odds at the betting exchange. Bookmakers generally shave a bit off the true odds of each market which is how they make a profit. Also, betting exchanges charge a commission which is usually between 2% – 5% which can contribute to the qualifying loss.
However, by using Betconnect, we are able to eliminate the need for betting exchanges which often means that we are able to place both a back bet and a lay bet at the same odds resulting in ZERO qualifying losses. This means that we can essential receive free bets or participate in other promotions for no cost.
Here are some example offers from bookmakers for which you can use Profit Squad along with Betconnect to potentially profit from:
Best Odds Guaranteed
With Best Odds Guaranteed, if you back a winning horse in an eligible race and the starting price of your horse is greater than the odds when you placed your bet, the bookmaker will pay your bet out at the higher odds.
Example: We receive a £50 bet request for Red Rum to win the 1pm at Ascot at odds of 5/1 (6.0)
We accept this bet request on Betconnect and then place the same bet with the same £50 stake at a bookmaker offering Best Odds Guaranteed on that race.
Possible Outcomes:
- Red Rum wins – We lose £250 on Betconnect and make £250 profit with the bookmaker
- Red Rum doesn’t win – We make £50 profit with Betconnect and lose £50 with the bookmaker
In both circumstances, we will break even.
However, should the starting odds of Red Rum be greater than the odds at the time we placed our bet, we will be paid out at the higher odds if it wins. Let’s say that the odds on Red Rum when the race started were 10/1 (11.0).
Possible Outcomes:
- Red Rum wins – We lose £250 on Betconnect but make £500 profit with the bookmaker, giving us a total profit of £250.
- Red Rum doesn’t win – We make £50 profit with Betconnect and lose £50 with the bookmaker. We break even.
As you can see, there is no outcome which would result in loss and Best Odds Guaranteed gives us the chance of a potential huge profit.
Money Back if 2nd
Many bookmakers run Money Back if 2nd offers on a regular basis and we can use a similar strategy to the one above to be in with the chance of making a profit and incur no losses if we don’t.
Example: A bookmaker is offering Money Back if 2nd on the 4.00 at Cheltenham.
- We receive a £20 bet request on Betconnect for red Rum to win the race at odds of 3/1 (4.0)
- We accept this bet request on Betconnect and then place the same bet with the same £20 stake at the bookmaker.
Possible Outcomes
- Red Rum wins – We lose £60 on Betconnect and make £60 profit with the bookmaker. We break even.
- Red Rum finishes 2nd – We make £20 profit with Betconnect and lose £20 with the bookmaker. However, we receive our stake back with the bookmaker, giving us a total profit of £20.
- Red Rum finishes outside the top two. We make £20 profit with Betconnect and lose £20 with the bookmaker. We break even.
Again, there is no outcome which results in a loss and one that results in a £20 profit.
Extracting more profit from free bets
It is from the free bets that we are given by bookmakers that we are able to make an overall profit when matched betting. Therefore, the more profit we can make from these the better.
When matched betting with free bets, we generally use higher odds as they return a greater profit than when using low odds. Another factor in how much profit we will make from matched betting a free bet is how close the back and lay odds are to each other. As we’re able to place back odds with the bookmaker and lay the bet with the same or better odds on Betconnect, we’re able to extract more profit from free bets.
Example: We have a £20 free bet. The first image below shows us a typical match we would find at a bookmaker and exchange.
Bookmaker Odds: 7.0
Exchange Odds: 7.2
Exchange Commission: 5%
Total Profit from £20 Free Bet: £15.94 – £15.96
The matched betting calculator below shows us a match using a bet request on Betconnect rather than laying our bet on the exchange. We have a perfect match and pay no commission.
Bookmaker Odds: 7.0
Exchange Odds: 7.0
Total Profit from £20 Free Bet: £17.14 – £17.16
As you can see, our profit using a betting exchange would be £15.95 and our profit using Betconnect would be £17.15. That’s a profit increase of 7.5%!
Conclusion
We’ve shown in this article how by using the matched betting offers, tools and strategies at Profit Squad along with Betconnects service, we’re able to increase our profits by completely eliminating qualifying losses which gives us the chance to return a profit from a number of regular bookmaker offers.
You can sign up to Profit Squad today for 14 days for just £1. Alternatively, if you’d like a little bit longer to work your way through the hundreds of profitable offers on their site, enter the promo code CONNECT which will give you 30 days membership for just £4.99.