Qualifying Bets & Betfair Rewards
-
Hello,
I am new to matched betting and wanted to say hi. I stumbled upon this site kind of by accident when looking up some other betting related stuff and I have to say it is amazing – thank you Matt for the time you’ve taken to put all of this info out there, I’ve spent much of the last couple of days reading, learning and re-reading a lot of the content and it looks great, and definitely something I’d like to be a part of.
I was always sort of aware of the concept of matched betting but for some reason, despite being a casual low stakes bettor for many years, had never really looked into it properly. While I already have accounts with most of the major bookies, there are still plenty of sign-up offers that I will be able to take advantage of and it’s brilliant that there are up to date opportunities posted for existing customers.
I’ve started off with the sign-up offer for Will Hill with the 2 x £15 free bets. I backed Palace to win at the weekend at 1.7 for the qualifying bet and laid them at Betfair at 1.78 which results in a loss of £0.66 or £0.67.
I’ve then used the first £15 free bet to back Forest vs Chelsea at 15.00 and then used the calculator to lay £13.17 against them on Betfair at 16.00 (though I noticed a small part of my lay stake was at 15.5, is that to do with the market liquidity?).
Seems that I did it correctly as the profits hit the exchange account.
A couple of questions:
When looking for a qualifying bet, I understand that we are looking for relatively low odds where the back/lay prices are close together – is this where it’s a case of spending time to look and compare different odds to minimise your losses? Is it the case that the closer the prices are, the lower your losses should be or is there more to it than that?
I currently have a pre-existing Betfair account that I have used for this first matched bet (though I will certainly be signing up for Smarkets very soon!). I read about the option to have the basic account with 2% commission – currently I’m on the standard (“middle”) option, would it be advisable to switch if I’m not betting on there enough to receive some of the monthly perks/bonuses?
Thanks!