Matched betting vs Gambling
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I have a spreadsheet detailing pretty much everything to do with my matched betting.
I noticed something interesting yesterday.I have made a profit of £1609.81 since I started back in October.
However I have made a lot of profit from bookies and am well down at the exchanges.So I calculated how much profit I would have if I had never laid a bet and the total is £4041.47!!!!
Now that is quite a difference!
Considering that gambling is considered to lose money in the long run I can’t get my head around the fact I could have made £4k in 3 months.
Obviously I’m not going to quit laying as I want to make a guaranteed profit. But I thought it was quite interesting.
Can anyone else calculate the same figures from your records?
The unluckiest bookie on my list is Bet365 who I have taken £1100 from!
+0January 7, 2016 at 1:31 pm
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I am definitely a hell of alot more down at the bookies (which I think helps not getting banned) but anyone who is that much up in bookies clearly sticks to short odds?
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All my free bets go on high odds stuff, and the majority do lose.
I have had some big wins recently which is annoying. I had £190 on Everton last night hoping they would not win – didn’t underlay 🙁
Also had £100 on each of the Arsenal, Chelsea, Man City wins recently
£50 bet365 offer got the draw and the 0-0 netting £560 odd on that one gameThere’s no way I would have placed these bets if I hadn’t laid them.
Just wondered what other peoples positions areI need to lose money as I don’t want to get restricted but everything I bet on wins!
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Simple stop putting £100 on the likes of Arsenal, Man City etc…..
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I think a lot of my wins at the bookies are bets i wouldnt even have considered putting on before i started matched betting so i dont think its fair at all to compare the two.
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It’s an interesting theoretical discussion to have. For some reason a few people on here seem to be under the impression that they are capable of picking losers… Yet, if you back and lay at the same odds, you have taken a competitive bet and should* breakeven in the long run.
@RyanB Why do you think sticking to short odds would lead to profiting on the bookies? Also, same question regarding City and Arsenal.+0
I know Ryan, I was just trying to do a few mug bets and hope that at least one of them didn’t win.
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Likewise I am down a huge amount in the exchange. I have taken over 3k from willhills in December alone (lots of horses winning when exploiting mbs every day) and am in profit vs almost all bookies I have an active account with, which is obiously not a good thing as if you keep taking their money an eventual account restriction is inevitable.
There is no foolproof way of ‘losing’ in the bookies to transfer winnings to the exchange, unfortunately. As we will only be backing competitive odds, for qualifying bets cash flow in (to bookies) and out (to exchange) should be at equilibrium (ignoring commission), then when you consider the fact that free bets are only credited on one side (bookie) it is unavoidable that balances will tend to accumulate in our accounts with them. It is interesting that many of our cases, the rate of cash accumulation in the bookies accounts is far higher that would be expected statistically, using the assumption exchange odds are a true representation of probability. While this suggests never laying is optimal, I can only assume this is down to variance meaning many users are up in the exchanges, however I have not seen much evidence for this.
+0£1609 wow, how have you managed that???
I have been doing this since mid December and I am about £300 up. Problem I have got, is when I had my gambling bug about 3-4 years ago 🙁 I signed up to all the major book makers just to get the odd tenner here and there, which obviously is not as beneficial as this.
+0It comes down to sample size of bets and variance, Its very easy to up a few thousand at the bookies over the course of a year even if your bets have a negative expected value. Once you have placed maybe 10,000 bets over several years will you have a big enough sample size to judge what is actually happening.
+0Surely its almost impossible to not be up at the bookies? If you assume your qualifying lay bets are marginal losers, the profit made by winning free bets every now and then will be more than enough to take us into +EV for our bookie betting?
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A hell of alot of my mug bets lose at the bookies, maybe im a natural for picking losers…(jokes)
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I agree with Ice Magic. I’ve just looked at my deposits/withdrawals with Betfair and I’ve deposited £4k more than withdrawn. Its amazing the amount of long priced horse racing winners I backed when I was arbing in the summer. 12/1, 14/1 and 20/1 weren’t that uncommon, meaning the exchange took a hammering. Whenever the pot was looking good again, along came a 16/1 winner. When does anyone ever “back” winning horses at that price?? In my 20 years gambling it never ever happened to me.
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You can guarentee when your rolling over a bonus etc when you want a horse to lose it will win, but if you ever didn’t lay it that horse would definitely lose…sods law!
+0If you’ve made a lot of high odds football bets, your winnings at the bookies will be a function of the underdogs beating the bigger teams more than usual this season. I’ve had numerous occasions where I’ve backed the smaller teams and they’ve won, hammering my exchange balance (the best example being Bournemouth beating Chelsea at about 8.0).
I can’t remember the source but I read an article that explained there’s been an unusually high amount of these such results this season.
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