My first shop arb experience

Bookies are very quick now to stake restrict and effecfivly ban you from the shops… i got restricted to sp from 1 paddy shop after 1 visit… last Sat … had £50ew on a 33/1 shot that was 19.0 on the exchange… it placex… collected bet and manager had been phoned by head office to say sp only on future bets
If you back pricewise horses in same shop every week you stand out … best to go to different 1 every Saturday… stakes in shops these days on horses are poor so £100 on early prices sticks out like a sore thumb… bookies will take almost anything race to race at sp… but if you only take early bird prices and on careful ew races you will get restricted…. as someone mentioned b4 try to tip £5 here and there staff are more likely not to flag you to traders. Bookies try to monitor 20% of business these days so even £40 customers can be monitored. Good luck def worth doing thou… best time is 9am till 9.15 in freds usually have 1 huge arb for you to smash

Thanks for sharing your experience Ryan. Sharbing is something I am holding in reserve once all my good accounts have gone. I think you will get different and conflicting advice from different people in a similar way to advice given to trying to avoid gubbings.

There are posts going back many years regarding sharbing over on the MSE web site, many guys over there make a living doing it, but just like match betting it has become much harder than it used to be.

I think if you live in a large town/city where the bookies are busy and there is a large turn over of staff you are far more likely to get away with things than if you visit bookies in small towns in rural areas where the staff have worked there for years and know by name all the regular punters.

I have read (I don’t know if this is true or even legal) but people they suspect to be arbing, their images are copied off the cctv and shared amongst other stores of the same company in the area. I have not read if they share these images with other betting companies, I wouldn’t have thought so but I don’t know.

I have also read that area managers will look out for slips with the same hand writing on similar type bets across shops in the same area looking out for sharbers. I don’t know how much time and effort is put into trying to catch sharbers, and from the posts so far in this thread it appears it depends what area you live in.

People who have mentioned tipping the staff if you have a big win is often mentioned over on mse and is something they definitely recommend you doing as staff (not manager) will turn a blind eye to what you are doing if it means they might make a few quid out of it.

A few of the posters on this site have mentioned doing the footie acca insurance offers in the bookies and some seem to be doing very well out of it, that might be something you might want to look at once the football season gets under way again.

Ryan, I have a look of shop experience, the main points;

Just like online you won’t be banned but you will get restricted in what you can do. There are certain shops I can’t do extra place races any more, money back offers and even comments have been made about free bets. Don’t do the dog on it and move shops like mentioned above. Doing the same thing in the same shop every time and it won’t last long. I do mug bets in the shop too.
Some shop have profiles on customers and I know one shop manager is typing in my bets to this as well as a few other customers that are sharps in that bookie.

I’ve noticed shops getting tighter too in just the last year alone. I was refused a 50 e/w bet on a 7/2 shot only 10 days ago in one high street firm. Firms also now have warnings over bad e/w races in the morning. Bets on certain events will flag up in their system sometimes.

You’ll make money doing the shops, but just like online you need to watch yourself, don’t over do it or make it obvious, and switch shops.

It’s funny that you say Coral limit to 25. I thought they had a policy to guarantee to lay to lose £2000 or something? I can google and find some articles on it but nothing recent so I guess that they changed the policy.

When I say your stake is limited – I meant at the odds u want. For example the Pricewise odds (using the Traffic Light system) may limit you to £10 (Red) – you can back more but at normal odds.
If you are a PTL customer and want to put say £100 on Barca @ 1.50 the staff will phone the traders & most likely you will get a response along the lines “£25 @ 1/2 – the rest @ 1/3”. That’s what I mean by “stakes limited”.

Tbh I rarely do horses except the early morning Pricewise ones.

However, Fred can be excellent on some of his Racing Post advert boost (located first page after middle normally).
They are often a football double boost & clearly state Max bet £100 (tho I confess I always multi-shop them – I think my record is about 37 shops two of us doing it 🙂 ).
They can last from 9:30 am (usual start of boost) right up to k.o. of first game. But you should ALWAYS check with MOS if the offer is still on.
15% profit on stake is not unusual, tho because there is no major league football atm picking have been slim.
However, if u are of the no-lay or underlay school of MB, my records show major contributions to my overall profit with Fred boosts but massive loses had I mugged them. I don’t really know what it is with Fred but relying on “value” to overcome variance doesn’t seem to work with Fred – all other bookies I would have made more not laying my bets. Maybe Fred knows something we don’t & is clever at pick his boosts.