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 an exchange account

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

My advice is to register an account with both Betfair and Smarkets. You can find a detailed comparison of the two exchanges in my Betfair v Smarkets guide.

Betfair are currently offering 0% commission up to £500.00 to get us started…

…While Smarkets are currently offering new customers a £10.00 bonus…

Just to let you know, betting exchanges make their money by charging us a small fee on our winning bets. Think of it as their reward for providing us with the platform to bet against other users!

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 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 we need to work with decimals.

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

Betting exchanges already display their odds as decimals, so we just need to change our odds preference to decimals at the bookmaker, which is pretty straightforward.

We can usually find the option at the top of the homepage or in the sidebar. Failing that, this can usually be changed in our account settings.

Step 4: Place our qualifying bet

It’s important to check the terms of an offer for any specific requirements before placing any bets. The terms for the Coral welcome offer state that our qualifying bet can be placed on any sport, but must be placed at odds of 1.50 (1/2) or greater.

It’s always best to place our bets on popular events that regular punters would be betting on. Football matches are usually the best option.

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 a Premier League match between Swansea and Man Utd…

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

In order to qualify for the £20.00 in free bets, we need to bet £5.00 on Man Utd at Coral. So we simply click on the green ‘1.50‘ 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 cover it, 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 worth it though, as we’ve now qualified for £20.00 in free bets!

Step 5: Extract our profit from the free bets

Our £20.00 in free bets (4 x £5.00) should be credited upon placement of our qualifying bet. It’s now 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 a Premier League match between Tottenham and West Ham…

Placing a free bet on West Ham at back odds of ‘7.00‘, satisfies our requirement for high odds 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 green ‘7.00‘ 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 no rush whatsoever with this, just take your time. Feel free to read through these guides again if need be and be sure to work through each step at your own pace.

Matched betting really is pretty straightforward once you get the hang of things.

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