BetStars Offer – Leicester City v Man Utd

Leicester City face Manchester United in the Community Shield at Wembley today and BetStars are getting in on the action! Simply place a £20.00 pre-match bet on Leicester City v Manchester United and BetStars will give us a £5.00 free bet to use once the game gets underway. Translated into matched betting terms, this gives us a guaranteed profit of £3.44 and here’s how…

Qualifying Bet:

If you’re unfamiliar with qualifying bets, please see my Qualifying Bet Strategy for a walk-through guide on how they should be done.

Qualifying bets must be placed between 00:00 on Friday 5th August 2016 and 15:59 on Sunday 7th August 2016, to be eligible.

To qualify for the £5.00 free in play bet, we must place a £20.00 pre-match bet at odds of 1.50 (1/2) or greater, on Leicester City v Manchester United, which kicks off at 16:00 today (Sunday 7th August 2016).

Having looked at the odds available, I’ve opted to place my qualifying bet on Leicester City in the Match Result market.

I like to place my exchange lay bets with Smarkets as they have great liquidity, the site is really easy to use and they only charge 2% commission in comparison to the 5% charged by other betting exchanges.

We can calculate our lay stake using my matched betting calculator…

Back Bet (Bookie)

%

Lay Bet (Betting Exchange)

%

Min £
Max £
Lay stake required: £
Bookie
Exchange
Cashback
Total
If back (bookie) bet wins
£
£
£
= £
If lay (exchange) bet wins
£
£
£
= £
Total profit: £

Optimal Underlay

Lay stake required: £
Exchange liability: £

If back (bookie) bet wins: £
If lay (exchange) bet wins: £

Optimal Overlay

Lay stake required: £
Exchange liability: £

If back (bookie) bet wins: £
If lay (exchange) bet wins: £

As you can see, the calculator tells us that our lay stake should be £20.09…

BetStars Logo

Place £20.00 on Leicester City @ 4.40 = Potential profit of £68.00

smarkets white

Lay £20.09 on Leicester City @ 4.40 = Potential liability of £68.31

Let’s have a look at our potential profit/loss for the possible outcomes…

Leicester City win + £68.00 – £68.31 = £0.31 loss
Leicester City don’t win – £20.00 + £19.69 (£20.09 minus 2% commission) = £0.31 loss

So, regardless of the result of the match, we will lose £0.31 in qualifying for our £5.00 free in play bet.

Free Bet:

Our £5.00 free bet must be used in play on Leicester City v Manchester United, which kicks off at 16:00 today (Sunday 7th August 2016).

It’s impossible to know what odds will be available until the match has kicked off but by using straightforward matched betting, we should be able to extract 75% of the £5.00 free in play bet as cash, so £3.75. If we take into account our qualifying loss of £0.31, this gives us a guaranteed profit of £3.44!

Extracting profit from a free bet can be a little tricky when betting in play. My advice is to wait until half-time to place your free bet and then lay it at Smarkets. This is simply because the odds don’t fluctuate as much as when the game is live. There’s nothing worse than placing a free bet on a market and then something happens in the game that changes the odds before you have chance to get your lay bet on! I tend to look at the correct score markets first and then if I can’t find anything suitable I move onto goal scorer markets.

If you can’t wait until half-time, you might want to look at placing it on 1-1, 2-1 or 3-1 whilst the score is at 0-0. By selecting a scoreline where both teams score, it reduces the risk of the odds fluctuating unfavourably.

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Matt Kirman - Matched Betting Blogger

Matt KirmanMatched Betting Blogger

Since 2014, I’ve blogged over £70,000 worth of profit, and made it my mission to make matched betting accessible to everyone.