Business Secrets of the Pharaohs

I have decided to make this thread for several reasons. Matched betting sites are everywhere, they are all exact replicas of each other and are profiting from showing the basics to newcomers. Of course, the most recent case is Oddsmonkey jumping on the bandwagon – they had a great site and offered a unique odds searching service, but ruined it by relaunching as a matched betting site (offering nothing new). The other main reason is that this noticeboard has become slightly disillusioned with the quantity and speed of restrictions/bans.

My opinion is that you are wasting your time tackling low return offers (and I will show you why below). I think the root of the problem may be that people often see matched betting as an investment of capital: “Oh, you can make £1000s with only a £200 starting bankroll”. That’s not quite true; you are also investing labour, and tackling low return offers results in an extremely low effective wage. Feel free to disagree, but I know that you can make more than Matt’s hypothetical profit of £13k (taking over two years) in as little as one month.

I will attempt to break this thread into parts to make it easier to read over time, by revealing bookmaker weaknesses and inefficiencies.

1. A topical site at the moment is Bet Bright. People are complaining of being restricted after attempting a couple of offers (win or lose). I signed up to Bet Bright several weeks ago and was banned within 3 days. How much did I make from them? £600. Bet Bright are extremely inefficient at pricing place markets for horse racing. They seem to price their place markets close to the off, with odds often being completely different to exchange odds. A few examples: I got several hundred pounds on (5 / 3.9), (3.3 / 2.7), (2.6 / 2.3)… The list goes on. If you pick your timing and don’t rush, you will certainly make a decent profit.

2. Unibet/888/32Red/Stan James. Discussed before, but worth pointing out. These sites are extremely slow to update horse racing odds close to the off… I have no idea how they make a profit on these markets, especially as the odds move so rapidly on horses when the race approaches. A few people found the Unibet inefficiency last month and abused it in a suboptimal manner. They were betting at odds of 7 / 6 etc. and for small amounts. As with every bookmaker and their weakness, don’t rush it. Wait for the optimal moment and go big. There are times when I found 3 / 2.5 on these sites, with max bets of hundreds of pounds.

3. BetFred / Totesport. I see the price boosts/pushes have become quite popular. The max bet is usually £100 on these offers, but depends on the status of your account. Why bet £100 on a great offer once every few days when you can bet hundreds of pounds on one offer? In order to do this, you need to double the boosted selection with other outcomes (e.g. low odds football matches). You can then lay off the second leg as usual – yet you’ve achieved a large exposure on the boost/value. I once effectively got £700 on a BetFred boost, when the odds were 3/2.7.

I will continue to contribute to this thread with more inefficiencies when I have time. Perhaps others could contribute with their findings, but I doubt this will happen. When you find an inefficiency it’s quite tempting to keep it to yourself as you know it will disappear when it becomes public knowledge.

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MarkCorrigan
17

May 19, 2016 at 9:36 am

New to matched betting?

My Matched Betting Academy is the best place to get started. Learning the fundamentals takes 10-15 minutes and you’ll make £15 in the process.

Learning the fundamentals takes 10-15 minutes and you’ll make £15 in the process.

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Tony 18 May 20, 2016 at 1:52 pm

Thread continues to deliver :D

50 kudos points Mark

#BestThreadOnHereInAges

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FoG_BLoG 61 May 20, 2016 at 2:05 pm

Has anyone ever come across this? Is it still possible to make money this way or have the markets evolved?

“The Longshot Laying System

Most punters avoid laying longshot horses at big prices. They know these horses are almost certain to lose, yet sooner or later they fear that a 100/1 horse is going to romp home, wiping out weeks of profitable betting at a stroke.

And yet, the stats clearly show that if you want value as a layer, laying outsiders is the way to go. Why? Well, exchange prices broadly follow those of the bookmakers, and it is well-known that bookies’ prices are more ‘unfair’ for outsiders than they are for favourites.

Most people want to back favourites and other highly fancied horses, so the bookies have to offer reasonably competitive prices for these animals. By contrast, they can (and do) get away with offering prices that are far shorter than they ought to be for outsiders.

Want proof? Well, the Flatstats website (www.flatstats.co.uk) checked the performance of all horses priced at 40/1, and above, on the all-weather from 1993 onwards. There were 4,894 horses starting at such prices, and of those only 16 won. That’s a success rate of 0.33 per cent or, to put it another way, a shock result once in every 306 bets. The longest winning run (for a layer) was 1,450 bets!

Flatstats also worked out that the true chance of a horse starting at 20/1 winning was actually 40/1. The true chance when starting at 33/1 was 84/1, and the true chance when starting at 50/1 was 383/1. All these figures refer to races on the all-weather, but there is little doubt that they would apply equally on the flat or jumps.

etc etc”

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Tony 18 May 20, 2016 at 2:14 pm

Have often thought about this approach myself FoG, particularly at quieter times like those we are experiencing just now.

I keep fairly meticulous records of every bet I make, so I know for a fact that the logic holds true, yet i just can’t bring myself to expose £100’s in liability ‘just in case’. My bankroll is not large enough to do so at this stage, but I suppose if I applied my old world poker bankroll management strategies then I could trial it with lower stakes and see how it went.

If it was that simple though, everyone would be doing it and raking it in ;)

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patrick
Blocked
13 May 20, 2016 at 3:31 pm

Tony you have hit the nail on the head – indeed everyone would be doing it.

In fact I did something very similar about 5 years.

I would lay horses at 30/1 or over for £5 a go.I built up a fund of about £2,000 over a few weeks but then lost most of it when a few of the nags won.

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Tony 18 May 20, 2016 at 3:59 pm

Yeah, it sounds a lot like those “back a 1/10 shot” strategies that you hear and read about. Back over 0.5 goals and after 90 days of reinvesting the profits you will have £50k! ;)

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kjillman 1 May 20, 2016 at 4:27 pm

Guys i tried this at horses over 30/1 £5 a time about horse 21 got hit for £165 .

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patrick
Blocked
13 May 20, 2016 at 5:28 pm

The other important thing to remember is if a horse is 40\1 at the bookies at will be nearer 60\1 on Betfair for the lay.
For example in the next race ,Cork 5.35, Frankie Cloud is 33|1 at the bookies but 50\1 to lay at Betfair and that is 2 minutes before the off.

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John W 4 May 21, 2016 at 8:49 am

Great post Mark, thank you.

I’m interested in putting into practice your suggestion of combining price boosts with other low odd selections (that we can lay off) which would permit higher wagers. However, whenever I come across these boosts they tend to be only available for a limited time, so I always feel that I’m against the clock, so there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of time to consider and plan.

Do you have any advice on what to do in these circumstances, or is it a case that I simply need to be quicker :)

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Ultraviolet 0 May 21, 2016 at 10:48 am

Have the matches ready first
Euro 2016
15th June France @ 1.20 v Albania
21st June Northern Ire v Germany @1.22

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Dave_Jones 12 May 21, 2016 at 10:48 am

I think Patrick has hit the nail on the head though with this system. There is usually a big difference between the back and lay odds when it comes to the long shot horses. I have not studied this in any detail though, and perhaps at times the back and lay odds tighten up.

Big problem with all these laying systems though, as others have mentioned, is that one or two loosing bets at the exchange can wipe out lots of the winning bets. This can be fairly hard to deal with even if overall the system might be profitable.

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FoG_BLoG 61 May 22, 2016 at 1:12 am

Kyle Lowry tonight. 1.8 under 20.5 on sky and 1.8 over 18.5 on paddy. 19 or 20 I win both. Effective odds 8.0…. Probably decent.

Nah probably not clear enough. Last so many games he is scoring avg 19.2 but it’s all over the place with standard deviation 8.3…. So maybe 1 in 11 chance so not worth 7/1…

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MarkCorrigan 17 June 8, 2016 at 10:59 am

After seeing several questions raised in the May Profit thread, I thought I’d bring this back up. Hopefully more people are willing to share their findings.

I thought I’d reveal a bit more information about Bet Bright. Their place odds are still highly exploitable. Before being restricted, I bet a total of £12,000 with them, and made a profit of £1,800 (15% return). If you use exchange odds to derive implied probabilities, this wasn’t above the expected return.

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perrybhoy 1 June 8, 2016 at 4:38 pm

Hi Mark Reading your post at the begining of the thread you said that you made £600 with BetBright and were banned after 3 days.
“I signed up to Bet Bright several weeks ago and was banned within 3 days. How much did I make from them? £600”
And above post you state “Before being restricted, I bet a total of £12,000 with them, and made a profit of £1,800 (15% return).”
So which is it? I find it hard to believe that you bet £12000 in 3 days. Something is just not quite right here. This post seems to say to me look how smart I am ,making all this money. But I do not think you have.

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perrybhoy 1 June 9, 2016 at 11:33 am

Hmmmm, no response ,so it was total B.S.

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Starlord 1 June 9, 2016 at 11:59 am

Corrigan just got owned!

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