Matched Betting For A Living – Is It A Realistic Goal

Matched betting for a living probably seems like the ideal job for a lot of people. You get to stay at home and work exclusively from your computer. No boss to worry about, no annoying colleagues that you have to put up with.

If you are not familiar with matched betting please read this article

Sounds good right….. But is matched betting for a living possible?

Matched Betting For A Living

If you are a regular reader of this blog. Then you will know that I am currently undertaking a 50k in a year betting and trading challenge. The largest amount of profit from this challenge comes from matched betting and exploiting casino offers.

Here is a breakdown of profit made from matched betting

April Profits – £787
May Profits – £91 (made an error which cost me £330)
June Profits -£548

Here is a breakdown of profits from casino offers

April Profits – £885
May Profits – £1628
June Profits – £1108

So you can see that you can make decent money from matched betting and casino offers. However whether you could make a living from it depends on several factors.

Factors You Need To Consider

The biggest factor is how much do you need to pay the bills?

Some people can get by on a £1000 a month. For others its £5000 a month. Obviously this is the key point to consider if you were looking at matched betting full time.

How many ungubbed accounts do you have left? Do you have the resources to open more?

If you have been matched betting for a while. You will know that bookmakers don’t like it and will remove your ability to take part in promotions. After that you can use these bookies for arbing or value betting. Eventually however the well runs dry and you don’t have any more options.

Are there friends and family members that you could teach about matched betting? Perhaps take a percentage of their profits?

Job Security

You might find your job mundane and boring as hell. But is also might be very secure with a pension plan and sick pay. Matched betting for a living is quite a uncertain profession.

How long will you be able to make a living from it? Will new rules come into place which make it harder? What if bookmakers stop offering promotions?

If you do leave your job to pursue matched betting full time. Will you be able to return should things not pan out?

On the flip side though could matched betting provide you with an income that will open up opportunities in the future. With enough resources you can compound your profit over and over. This could enable to reinvest your money into pursuing a job you would enjoy.

Matched Betting Bank

Another important question to ask yourself is how much money do you have saved up?

You would need enough to cover the cost of your bills. But also have enough to spread around different bookmakers and exchanges. So that you could make the most of the matched betting offers when they are available.

It is hard for me to make an exact estimate as everyone’s situation is different. But I would say you would want to have at least enough money to pay your bills for 6 months. Then have an extra £5000 bankroll or more just for matched betting.

If you are going to take advantage of higher risk casino offers. Then you would probably want an even larger bankroll on top of money to pay the bills.

Conclusion

In this article I have pointed out some of the negative and positive aspects of matched betting for a living. If it is something you are considering my advice would be don’t rush into it.

Especially if you are quite new to matched betting it may seem like the holy grail. There is no harm in perhaps lowering your hours at work and putting more hours into matched betting. Then reevaluating your things after a few months.

Don’t get me wrong matched betting is awesome but is important to put realistic expectations on pursuing it full time. I personally know some people that do extremely well from matched betting for a living.

Could that person be you in the future? Possibly but it is important to evaluate all the factors involved before you make the jump.

If you want to make the most of your matched betting. This service gets my recommendation as the best matched betting software around.

Why Social Media Tipsters Want You To Lose

If you like to bet on sports and are on social media you will have probably noticed there are a huge amount of tipsters and challenges going on.

One of the most common challenges is to take a relatively small amount of money say £10 and attempt to turn it into a £1000. This is done by rolling over your stake with each bet until a profit of £1000 is made.

Why Social Media Tipsters Want You To Lose

Challenges like these have become very popular with a number of these pages having hundreds of thousands of followers. Now I understand why these challenges are popular its like buying a lottery ticket. You have a small initial layout with the potential for a big win. One big thing a lot of these tipsters and pages fail to mention is they want you to lose.

This is how they make money. The business model for these twitter tipsters or facebook pages is to make an income as a bookmaker affiliate. Enticing new customers and being given a share of their losses is where their profit is made. Normally it will be between 10-30% of a referred players losses.

Whilst they might “boom” every winning tip and tell you they have made thousands in the past two weeks. Over the long term they only make money if you lose. Do you really want to follow betting tips from someone that profits only if you consistently lose? Seems like that would be a bad idea.

You will consistently see these types of tipsters pushing bookmaker sign ups. Claiming big profits whilst never recording past results and highlighting wins but barely acknowledging losses.

In conclusion following these types of challenges and tipsters is not going to make you money in the long term. Possibly you could get lucky and turn £25 into £1000 or you might go on to lose £2500 by following a 100 of these challenges that don’t come off. The only people that are making money from these challenges are the guys running these twitter accounts and facebook pages. Not the people following them.

Is it possible to make money from sports betting?

So can you actually make money from sports betting?

Yes you can but it isn’t as easy as following some dude who says he will turn £10 into a £1000 in 10 bets.

It is said that only 1% of people betting on sports make a profit. If you compare the popularity of these tipsters and pages to the small amount of people following websites/blogs that give out solid sports betting advice. It’s easy to why the overwhelming majority of people lose money betting.

Social Media Tipsters — Matched betting profits from April 2017

If actually making money from sports betting and trading does appeal to you. An effective and profitable approach to take is matched betting.

I have written an article detailing how to make money from matched betting here. This approach uses bookmaker promotions to guarantee a profit. There are hundreds of these offers available and if you are looking to make some extra money this is a great way to do it. It is probably the most consistent way to make money from sports betting.

Something else you may want to consider is looking into betting exchanges and sports trading. I have outlined how betting exchanges function is this article. In general they will offer you much better odds. They differ to bookmakers as they don’t make money on player losses. Rather they take a commission on winning bets or stakes which means that they also don’t ban winning accounts.

Please share this article if you know people that are following these shady social media tipsters. So at least they become aware they are betting on the advice of people that want them to lose.

If you want to start profiting from sports betting and trading. I recommend this service which currently contributing the biggest profit in my 50k in a year challenge.

The Football Guru Review – Does It Make Money?

I have been testing out the betting gods tipster The Football Guru since the 8th of February. A total of 549 bets have be sent in this time. This is a tipster service from betting gods which focuses unsurprisingly on football.

The Football Guru focuses on the top European leagues along with English leagues. The service tips in many secondary markets alongside the more popular match odds markets.

The Football Guru Review

Updated 29/05/2018

Since the original review the Football Guru has made a few changes and has continued to make impressive profits. In the original Football Guru review it was noted that they were including the Bet365 in-play offer. On a positive note this is no longer the case.

The last Bet365 offer included in results was in April 2017.

I have continued to follow the Football Guru service after the initial review as it was a service that showed promise.

The Football Guru is a service that requires a long term approach but its overall results speak for themselves.

With the positive changes made to the service and its consistent profits over a two year period. I am increasing The Football Guru to a recommended rating.

Original Football Guru Review

Lets take a look at the most important aspect of any review, the results. Results are recorded using £10 per point with the recommended 100 point betting bank.

Key Stats

Bets	549
Total Staked	£9,557.40
P/L	£480.00
ROI	5%

Results have ended on a good note with a decent profit being made. You can see from the graph above however that this is a fairly volatile service. There are some quite large swings in the profit and loss graph.

After a profitable start with the service reaching +£371 after 260 bets. It a hit a low of -£268 by 453 bets before sharply recovering and going on to record a profit of £480 by the end of the trial.

The Football Guru advises a lot of accumulator bets. Ranging from standard trebles or fourfolds to goliath bets. You can see that this creates a lot of spikes in the profit and loss column.

I have never been a fan of high variance betting so I also recorded results without any of the high selection accumulators. Doubles were the largest combination bet included.

The Football Guru Results – No Accumulators

Although you still see the same graph shape as the initial one, it didn’t suffer from as large a drawdown. Its a much smoother looking graph.

Also removing any selections above a double resulted in increased profits, as a total of £539 was made. It does seem that should you want to, you could remove some of the volatility involved in following this service. And the service would continue to be profitable.

My plan is to continue following this service using this method.

Starting Banks

£1000 starting banks

Bank One ( Including Accumulator Bets)

£1480 (£480 profit)

Bank Two ( Nothing higher the a double bet)

£1539 (£539 profit)

The Football Guru Review – Conclusion

I like the Football Guru. It’s a service that I initially had doubts about but its results speak for itself.

The service is well run. Odds are relatively easy to achieve and often you can match or better them with betting exchanges. You receive an email everyday to inform you of the selections. One thing that I feel could be improved is the timing of these emails. Emails are not sent at a specific time so you don’t really know when to expect them.

It would be good if selections could be sent at specific time frames. Having said that odds don’t get crushed as soon as emails are sent out which is a positive.

The Football Guru tips at UK orientated bookmakers such as Bet365, William Hill, Betway etc. One bookmaker that seemed to be used very often was Betstars so it is beneficial if you have them available. However you can also follow the majority of his selections with the betting exchanges. For those people that are limited from most bookmakers.

Does The Football Guru Offer Good Value?

In my opinion at £30 a month you get your value for money. The service is a high volume one with an average of 110-130 selections a month being sent out. The in-play part of the service is also a good addition. This is in the form of a chat room where selections are sent out for live games. Normally on a Saturday when there is a busy schedule.

To conclude I will be looking to add the Football Guru to my betting portfolio. If it can continue to provide solid profits. Its relatively easy to follow, has a historic return on investment of 11% over 2000 bets and I have found the odds quoted attainable.

Having looked the Football Guru’s historic results however they do include the Bet365 bet £50 get £50 in play offer. This is the one negative point I should make about this service. As this does boost the stated roi quite a lot.

However if you remove profit made from this offer. Which was £1074 there is still a healthy profit of £2697 since the service started.

You can trial this service yourself for 30 days at the cost of £1. If you are looking for a football service that makes money long term this is one you should consider.

Click here for the official site of The Football Guru

Affiliate Disclaimer

(This article features affiliate links. This means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. I use or have used any product I review. If I recommend them it is because I believe they are helpful, useful and offer value to their customers. Please do not spend any money on these products unless you feel they will give you value or that they will help you achieve your long term goals.)

Sports Trading Exposed Review

What is sports trading exposed?

Sports Trading Exposed is produced by professional trader Tomas Paul. Tomas started trading in 2006. He states that he has made more then £250,000 from sports trading.

The product comes in the form of an ebook and 45 trading videos. The focus of Sports Trading Exposed is mainy on the horse racing markets. There is also a small section on greyhound racing.

Sports Trading Exposed Review – What Do You Get?

The book is well written, presented clearly and is quite lengthy at 234 pages. The first part of the book covers the basics of trading and how to set up your computer. Along with the the trading software you need, factors such as internet speed and latency, how betting exchanges function, lay betting etc.

Setting up Geeks Toy and becoming familiar with all of its uses is the next section that is covered. This is useful for beginners that are not familiar with API software. Money management is discussed and an overview of the UK horse racing markets is included.

How much strategy is revealed?

After the basics of trading have been explained and you become aware of how to set yourself up to trade efficiently. We move on to strategy. There is quite a lot of crossover with Caan Berry’s ebook and videos. This is not a negative thing, as they are both professional horse traders its probably expected. There are however some new angles and insights discussed in Sports Trading Exposed that I haven’t seen before.

The strategy section of this book is very thorough and contains a lot of information.

What’s included?

Scalping Techniques
Crowd Thinking
Swing Trading
Price Bands
Que Positioning
Scratching
Spikes and corrections
Support and resistance
Market making
Spoofing
Clashes
Big Races
Using Betfair graphs
Screen Recording

There is also a lot more. You have 45 example videos where Tomas explains the strategies he uses and what he looks for in the markets. (Recently Tomas added videos of trades from Cheltenham 2017)

The book covers strategies used for Uk, Irish, US and Australian horse racing as well as greyhound racing.

Sports Trading Exposed Review – Conclusion

Overall Sports Trading Exposed is an excellent resource for those looking to profit from the horse trading markets. It is a really well put together trading package.

The fact that Tomas is also trying to build a community and has a forum is a really positive factor. Learning to trade well takes time. Offering an ongoing platform to give out advice on a frequent basis is an excellent idea.

For beginners or someone looking to start trading the horse racing markets, Sports Trading Exposed is ideal material to get you started. From the videos I have seen it is obvious Tomas is an excellent horse racing trader. The way he reads the markets and his reaction time to the changing dynamics are really impressive.

Given that his community is quite small at the moment means you are going to be able to get a lot time and advice.

At £94.80 you are getting a lot of content for money. Alongside continuing support from a professional trader. There is also a 60 day refund guarantee should you feel you haven’t got enough value from this product.

Sports Trading Exposed gets a clear recommendation from me. The horse racing markets are tough to crack and no ebook or training course will make you a super trader overnight. However this trading package will give you in depth insights of a professional trader, ongoing support and show you the necessary tools to succeed in the horse racing markets.

You can check out sport trading exposed here

Affiliate Disclaimer

The Football Guru – Month 1 Results

I have had a month of selections from[af_link id=”1911″]The Football Guru.[/af_link]

With historic results showing close to a 15% return on investment. I was quite excited to trial this service.

Has it delivered any profits in the first month of the trial?

The Football Guru – Month 1 Results

Key stats

Bets	282
Total Staked	£4730
P/L	£66.8
ROI	1.4%

The Football Guru is a high volume service. At the weekend you might get as many as 10 pre match selections. Alongside the pre match selections there is also an in play part of the service. Where you might another 10-15 selections.

This means that you are staking a lot of money and the swings in your profit and loss can be quite high. I have found that the odds given out in emails are quite easy to achieve. Often also the odds given for in play selections can be bettered by using the betting exchanges.

The ROI is very small after the first month. However you really need a large amount of bets before the variance evens out.

Starting Bank

£1000

After the first month of results now stands at.

£1066.8

I have enjoyed following this service so far. It is quite unlike any other tipster service that I have followed.

Given the large amount of bets sent out. I should be able to get a large sample size of bets after only a few months. We should be able to get a good indication of how profitable this service is by then.

The next update will be around the 8th of April.

If you want more information on the Football Guru you can take a look at the official site[af_link id=”1911″]Here.[/af_link]

How to become a millionaire sports trader and bettor!

If you came to this article for a strategy that is going to make you unlimited amounts of money from Betfair. I’m sorry but you might be disappointed.

What I wanted to do in this article is address two things.

Show how easy it is to look like your staking huge amount of money on your bets/trades.
Write about why learning about the process of a good trade is more important then seeing winning screen shots.

How to become a millionaire sports trader and bettor!

In the above image there is a trade I made this morning just as an example for this article. I backed a horse called Kastani Beach at odds of 6.8 for a £5 stake. You can see that I stand to win £27.58 should the horse win and lose £5.00 if it doesn’t.

Now look what happens if I make some manual adjustments.

Now suddenly I am risking £5 to win £2700.58. If you look at the image however not much else has changed.

Only one bet has been matched the back bet at 6.8. My lay bet at 6.6 hasn’t been matched either so why has my profit margin increased so much?

How to fake a trade or betslip

The process only takes a few seconds. It is very easy to appear that you staking or winning much more then you are in reality.

1.You highlight your potential winnings.

2. Right click and select inspect.

3. Find and highlight your stake amount .

4. Change it to whatever amount you want.

That’s how easy it is to look like you are a hugely successful trader or sports bettor. You can do this on any sports book and other exchanges. Its why big green screens are not very useful unless there is some context behind them.

Why do people do this?

It attracts attention and builds social media presence. It generates more traffic.

Look at the popularity of a guy like Dan Bilzerian for example.

I have tested this myself. If I post up an article on social media with a winning trade or some profitable results attached. It will generally generate much more traffic then if I used a generic image of a football match for example.

When people see winning trades they can envision themselves doing the same thing. You see some of these fake twitter tipsters with 100k followings that offer nothing of value at all. They don’t educate their followers or provide actual profitable bets. But they post up huge betslips, funny memes and have a £10-£10,000 challenge.

If you are looking to get an insight into being a better sports trader/bettor. Follow people that actually provide an insight into the process of making good trades or bets. Ignore the big greens and winning betslips unless there is a useful explanation behind them.

Whilst I was writing my trade got matched.

Made my profit target for the day, I’m off to Monte Carlo for the afternoon on my private jet.

Looking to make money from the sports betting markets.

Check out our recommendations below.

First Goalscorer Trading Strategy – Simple Football Trading Strategy

Trading the first goalscorer what to look out for?

The first goalscorer market is one that is often overlooked by a lot of traders. It is not the most liquid of the football markets but there still often good trading opportunities to be found.

Lets take a look at two approaches you can use when tackling the first goalscorer markets.

First Goalscorer Trading Strategy – Market Maker

One approach you can use in the first goalscorer market is to offer multiple lay bets at prices below that of the bookmakers. For example lets take a look at tonight’s game Juventus vs Napoli.

This was at 09.00 this morning and the game was due to be played at 19.45.

There has been no money matched so far but as the time draws nearer to the game liquidity will increase. What you can see above however is that there is already multiple back bets available.

This means that someone or a few people have put lay bets in the market hoping to get matched.

Apart from Gonzalo Higuain all the above prices are below that of the rest of the betting market. This means that if anyone does back at these prices then the layer of these bets will be able to hedge his bet later for a guaranteed profit.

Lets take a look at how the bookies prices compare.

Arbing With Bookmakers

For example if someone matched your lay bet on Miralem Pjanic at 6.8 there are odds of 9.5 available to back at Bet365 and Betstars. This gives you an arbitrage situation.

You can either lock in your profit using bookmakers or wait till closer to kick off when the prices become more liquid and trade out.

This strategy relies on patience and hoping that a recreational bettor takes your bet or someone makes a mistake. You are more likely to get matched in one of the bigger games where there is more interest and money in the markets.

If you look at the above example I set myself up in two positions that I believe will be profitable.

Higuain is available at a best priced 4.25 with the bookmakers.

Big name goalscorers like Higuain tend to be priced much closer to the exchange price. I believe that my position at 4.8 is a value position and that I should be able to hedge it for lower closer to the game.

The second position I have put in is a lay bet on Pjanic at 7.4.

If this was to get matched I could back him at 9.5 on Bet365 or Betstars for an arbitrage bet or wait for the liquidity to arrvive and trade out at a higher price.

First Goalscorer Trading Strategy – Unexpected Starters

The second strategy that I want to outline is when the expected line up is something of a mystery. This usually happens in cup games and I will use the Sutton vs Arsenal FA cup game as an example.

Now in this game it was uncertain who would start as the main striker for Arsenal. When the team news was announced it was Theo Walcott who was pictured as a lone striker. This game was also being featured on the BBC which means there would be lots of liquidity and interest.

These are always good conditions for trading.

Given that Arsenal were priced at 1.13 and heavy favourites alongside the factors I mentioned above.

It was likely that there would be a lot of money being bet on Theo Walcott to score first. I backed the available money at 4.6 which was around £300 and then when the price shortened I layed it at 4.4.

Hedging the position for a profit across all outcomes for around £13 was an option but I choose to leave the majority of the profit on a Theo Walcott goal.

So there are a few pointers to look out for when trading the first goalscorer markets. There are often opportunities available in this market if you prepare a little and plan ahead.

Betfair Trading – 6 Tips For Beginners

Betfair Trading For Beginners

Trading on Betfair can be a very exciting prospect and there are new people coming to sports trading on a daily basis.

Here are six Betfair trading tips to help you get started on your trading journey

Trading Psychology – Manage Your Expectations

A question that a lot of people ask when first starting to trade on Betfair is “How much can I make?”

This is a question that can’t be answered. Some people may go on to make large sums of money. Whilst others struggle to make any.

If you focus on the money but ignore the process you will struggle. The main question to focus on when you start trading is “how can I make money?”

Where is the opportunity?

How do the markets functions?

Why would this be a profitable strategy?

Becoming a profitable sports trader may take some time. It is important to manage your expectations and not expect too much too soon.

Your trading psychology is likely going to one of the main factors in whether or not you become a profitable trader.

Betfair Trading Beginners — There are a lot of options when trading its easy to get confused.

Focus On One Sport

There are so many options to look at when trading on Betfair. There is in-play trading or pre-event trading for a start. Then numerous sports to trade football, tennis, cricket, horse racing, basketball, darts etc.

It can be quite tough to know where to start.

Initially you might want to look at the different sports and how the markets react. Once you have found the sport that suits your trading style its time to focus on that one.

You can see that many of the best sports traders around specialize in one sport.

Caan Berry – Horse Racing

Psychoff – Football

Dan Weston – Tennis

Be Patient

Good trading is often about waiting for the best opportunities to present themselves. You need patience in order to gain the experience to spot these opportunities. Then you need patience to be able to wait for them to appear before executing your trades.

When I was starting out on my trading journey a full time trader told me “You can’t create good trades out of thin air.” “They are either there or they are not, just try to make the most of them when they appear.”

This sounded a little funny to me at first. But the more I learnt about trading the more this type of mindset makes sense.

You can’t force a good trade. Just because you lost your last trade doesn’t mean that laying the score in an Egyptian second division game for twice your usual stake is suddenly a good idea.

Keep Learning

After a while you will start to notice recurring themes in the markets that you are trading. Reactions to certain news, over reactions in some scenario’s, under reactions in others. The sports trading markets are constantly reacting to different bits of information and you can always learn from this.

Keep records of your own trading and note the instances that move the odds.

Do these instances create opportunity?

Are they likely to occur again?

Why did they happen?

Persistence Pays Off

There are going to be times when you make a mistake, where you lose money.

When I started sports trading and betting I thought I would be successful pretty quickly. I was wrong it took me a few years before I really understood how to make money from football trading.

It was from trial and error, reading lots of blogs, recording my trades, recording odds movement and chatting on forums. Eventually I started to see repeatable patterns which were profitable and I was only able to do this through persistence.

Manage Your Bankroll

When things are going well and every trade is a green one. It can be easy to get carried away and starting betting much larger amounts then you should be.

Over the long term things are always going to go perfectly. They will be losing trades, losing days, perhaps even losing months depending on your trading strategy and variance.

Making sure you keep your bankroll in tact is another huge factor in whether or not your going to make money in the long term.

Are you currently trading on Betfair, Betdaq or Smarkets?

Have any advice for new traders?

Comment below.

Cudworth’s Racing Lays Review – Laying Horses at Betfair SP

I have had three months of selections for Cudsworth’s Racing Lays service. The service focuses on laying horses at the Betfair SP. Which is a great idea as you don’t have to worry about missing prices or getting limited from bookmakers. The lay bets are emailed on a daily basis around 12.00.

How then did the service perform over a three month period?

Cudworth’s Racing Lays Review

It hasn’t been a good period for Cudwoth’s racing lays with losses coming quite regularly. Staking to £50 liability per race the total losses for the three month period was -£449.81.

The service also added a new element during the trial with 5 point back bets. There were only three of these bets over the testing period with two losses and one win. Early days for this approach but so far they have combined for a loss of -£31.

Key stats (Set £50 liability)

Overall results

Bets	108
Total Staked	£5400
P/L	-£449.81
ROI	-8.3%

Starting Bank

£1000

Current Bank

£550.19 (–449.81)

The official results for the service use a £10 per point staking system. This means that for each lay bet they aim to win £10. This staking method is also showing losses at -£202.

Cudsworth’s Racing Lays Review – Final Verdict

Despite really liking the whole idea of the service and its approach to laying at the Betfair SP. Results have been consistently bad and the service has never really looked like making any profit. On top of that if you add in 3 months subscription at £89.85 (3 x £29.95). Then you are looking at some heavy losses over the 3 month period.

I can’t recommend this service based on the results of the trial and it falls into the category of poor value.

[af_link id=”1620″]You can visit the official site of Cudsworth’s Lays here[/af_link]

Betfair Scam – “Wallet Management”

Unfortunately scam artists are in every type of industry.

In sports trading one type of scam that is used to lure in potential victims is called “wallet management.”

What is wallet management?

“Wallet management” is a concept that really makes no sense at all.

Lets take a look at my exchanges with a so called “professional trader” that offers “wallet management”.

Betfair Scam

Basically a “Professional Trader” will approach showing you lots of nice winning screenshots and green screens. They will tell you that they are a profitable trader and are willing to offer their services.

The scam artist will ask you to transfer money to their account or platform. The scammer will then claim to use the account to make money via trading. Promising you a high percentage of the profits for doing this.

Scam artists will target someone that is interested in sports trading. They do this via social media such platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Forums and email messages are also places where scam artists might try to contact someone.

Most people will realize that any professional trader that is consistently making money from the betting exchanges won’t need any type of investment. A profitable trader can reuse their own winnings and scale up their betting. By paying out a large commission on somebodies investment they are taking that money out of their own pocket.

There is no reason for any real trader to offer a service such as the one detailed above. If anyone does approach you offering this service then be aware that it is a scam.

If you want to start profiting from sports betting and trading. I recommend this service which is low risk and consistently makes money