Matched Betting Guide

Matched betting is the process of matching back bets with lay bets.

By covering all outcomes of an event, we are able to claim free bets and bonuses for next to nothing. We can then use the same strategy to extract a cash profit.

I’m now going to show you how to make £15.00 guaranteed profit from the Coral welcome offer.

Step 1: Open a Betfair Account

Before we can match any bets, we’re going to need a betting exchange account.

If we sign up using the link below, Betfair will give us a £20.00 risk-free bet to get us started.

Just to let you know, Betfair make their money by charging us a small fee on our winning bets, which is why they absolutely love matched bettors!

As you read through this guide, don’t worry too much about the betting exchange side of things. I’ll be explaining it all in much more detail in the next guide.

Step 2: Open a Coral account

My advice for all matched betting newbies is to start with the smaller welcome offers.

Coral have the perfect welcome offer to get us started. If we sign up using the link below and bet just £5.00, they’ll give us £20.00 in free bets!

The beauty of starting with an offer like this is that we only need a bankroll of around £50.00. Once we’ve completed our first couple of offers, our confidence will build and so too will our bankroll!

Step 3: Change to decimal odds

Traditionally, bookmakers display their odds as fractions, but for matched betting we need to work with decimals.

That’s because decimals are much easier to compare at a glance, which is essential when searching for close back and lay odds.

Changing our odds preference at the bookmaker is pretty straightforward.

There is usually an option at the top of the homepage or in the sidebar to change our odds preference to decimals. Failing that, this can usually be changed in our account settings.

We don’t need to worry about the betting exchanges as they automatically display their odds as decimals.

Step 4: Place our qualifying bet

Once we’ve signed up to Betfair and Coral, we’re ready to place our first matched bet!

We just need to check the terms and conditions of the Coral offer for any specific requirements. The terms state that our qualifying bet can be placed on any sport but must be placed at odds of 1.50 (1/2) or greater.

Football matches are usually the best option for placing qualifying bets. It’s best to stick to English footbal
l or the top European leagues as these are the markets that normal punters will be betting on.

Qualifying bets should always be placed at low odds in order to minimise our qualifying losses. It’s also important, as with any matched bet, that we look for close back and lay odds.

At the time of writing this guide, the following odds were available for Swansea v Man Utd in the Premier League…

Placing our bet on Man Utd at back odds of 1.50 satisifies the minimum odds requirement and the lay odds of 1.53 are nice and close.

We know we need to bet £5.00 on Man Utd at Coral in order to qualify for the £20.00 in free bets. We simply click on the 1.50 back button, enter our stake of £5.00 and then click ‘Place Bet.’

All we need to do now is work out our Betfair lay stake using the ‘Qualifying Bet‘ setting on my matched betting calculator…

As you can see, after entering the figures, the calculator tells us that our lay stake should be £5.07…

…So, we simply click on the 1.53 lay button at Betfair and enter our stake of £5.07.

It tells us that our liability on this bet is £2.69 and it’s good practice to check this figure against the expected liability on the calculator. As you can see, they’re both the same but for a penny (due to rounding), so we know we have entered the correct lay stake.

We’ll need to deposit enough funds into our Betfair account to cover our £2.69 liability as this is the amount we stand to lose at Betfair if Man Utd win. Don’t worry though, our winnings at Coral will cancel it out, but for a small loss.

As you can see, our potential profit or loss at Betfair for the possible outcomes are shown on the left hand side.

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

So, regardless of whether Man Utd win, lose or draw, we’ll incur a small loss of £0.19. The small loss is well worth it though, as we’ve now qualified for £20.00 in free bets!

Step 5: Extract our profit from the free bets

We’ll receive our 4 x £5.00 free bets upon placement of our qualifying bet. Now it’s time to extract our profit!

Again, it’s important to check the free bet terms for any specific requirements. As with the vast majority of free bets, our Coral free bets are ‘stake not returned’. This means that each £5.00 free bet will not be returned with any winnings. Our Coral free bets will be valid for 4 days.

The process of extracting profit from a free bet is pretty much the same as the qualifying bet we have just done.

The only real difference is that free bets should be placed at high odds in order to maximise our profit. As always, the closer the back and lay odds, the better.

At the time of writing this guide, the following odds were available for Tottenham v West Ham in the Premier League…

Placing a free bet on West Ham at back odds of 7.00 satisifies our high odds requirement and the lay odds of 7.6 are nice and close.

To place a £5.00 free bet on West Ham at Coral, we simply click on the 7.00 back button, select one of our free bets from the drop-down menu on the betslip and then click ‘Place Bet.’

All we need to do now is work out our Betfair lay stake using the ‘Free Bet‘ setting on my matched betting calculator. We can leave the ‘Stake returned’ box unchecked as our free bet stake is not returned…

As you can see, after entering the figures, the calculator tells us that our lay stake should be £3.97…

…So, we simply click on the 7.6 lay button at Betfair and enter our stake of £3.97.

It tells us that our liability on this bet is £26.20 and again it’s good practice to check this figure against the expected liability on the calculator. As you can see, they’re both the same, so we know we have entered the correct lay stake.

We’ll need to deposit enough funds into our Betfair account to cover our £26.20 liability as this is the amount we stand to lose at Betfair if West Ham win. Don’t worry though, our winnings at Coral will more than cover it.

Again, we can see our potential profit or loss at Betfair for the possible outcomes on the left hand side.

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

So, regardless of whether West Ham win, lose or draw, we’ll extract a minimum of £3.77 cash from our £5.00 free bet. Taking into account our qualifying loss of £0.19, that’s an overall profit of £3.58. Once we’ve repeated the process for our remaining 3 x £5.00 free bets, we should be looking at an overall profit of around £15.00 on this Coral welcome offer.

There’s over £1,000.00 to be made from bookmaker’s welcome offers. You’ll find them listed on my Free Bets page whenever you’re ready.

There’s no rush with this, just take your time. Feel free to read through this guide again if need be and be sure to work through each step at your own pace.

Matched betting is pretty straightforward once you get the hang of things. Give it a go, you’ll be glad you did!

In my final newbie guide, we’ll take a closer look at betting exchanges. It’s important that you understand how they work, as they are the key to the whole matched betting process.