Making a million from sports betting

At the beginning of the year I gave myself a minimum target to get over the £100,000 in total profit.

I don’t like to make short term targets but it seemed that this would be very doable and I just wanted some kind of monetary goal for this year.

Then in March obviously the pandemic hit and things didn’t look too promising.

Well October has gone about as well as it possibly could and it does look like that overall profit target will be reached this year. 

Let’s take a look at where the profit came from in October.

Value Betting And Arbitrage (Matched Betting)

It was sad to see the Betsafe/Betsson group leave the UK market this month. Had been finding a lot of value betting and arbitrage opportunities with them recently. They also seemed happy to take my money and I was able to get down decent amounts down.

However for whatever reason they left the UK market this month. I had a fair bit of money left in my accounts and thought It was most likely going to be a pain to get that money back.

Like I said earlier, this month went about as well as it could have. It only took a few days to get the money back in my account. Also the BML group paid out unsettled bets as winners. So I received just under £500 in unexpected profit from them.

So overall that’s pretty much the best case scenario when a bookmaker decides to close.

The majority of my value bets placed were using Trademate and Oddsmonkey. My results also include using money back on 2nd place with Will Hill and any value to be found from extra place offers.

This month a total of 354 bets were made in October.

A total profit of £1672 was made.

Learn About Value Betting And Arbitrage Below

Arbitrage Betting Guide

Value Betting Guide

Advantage Play – Casino Offers

The casino gods were really kind this month.

I visited my local witchdoctor this month and he told me to sacrifice 3 goats and a pig on day when the moon was full. That seemed to appease the gods this month and they rewarded me handily.

(Just to be clear the above is a joke, Rest assured that no animals have ever or will ever be harmed as a result of me trying to make money exploiting casino offers. Nor do I mean any offence to any practicing witch doctors. It is a noble profession and one I respect)

You can see from the graph above that the majority of October’s profit was from two big wins.

One of those wins I recorded as it happened on a bonus round, the other win was less expected.

People seem to enjoy these videos and it also helps to add some transparency to my results. If you want to view the biggest win of the month, the video is below.

This was on the slot Gonzo’s Quest slot. It was with a casino called Genesis casino that have a reputation of being difficult. However they recently had their UK licence reinstated and they paid me out in full within a few days.

During October I did 203 offers.

A profit of £3001 was made.

Learn How To Exploit Casino Offers

Casino Offer Guide

Sports Betting Results

October was a solid month in terms of sports betting.

I avoided (for the most part) betting on football and stuck with betting on MMA.

The one football bet I did make was Atalanta to beat Midtjylland in the Champions League at 1.69. A lot of people that I respect the opinion of, had this as value so I was pretty happy to take it.

My biggest winning bet for the month was a £200 stake on Brian Ortega at odds of 2.7.

Overall I made 22 bets in October.

A profit of £750 was made.

The Basketball Geek Results

After tracking results of this service for a few months and being impressed with it.

I have added it to my overall betting strategy/portfolio whatever you prefer to call it.

For this strategy I used a variable staking strategy looking to win £40. Although I do round off my stakes so its not exactly £40 every time.

After 93 bets I ended up pretty much where I started.

A total profit of £2 was made.

Not much to report here. It wasn’t a disaster by any means just a month where things didn’t get going.

Previous results with this service have been very promising and I do think long term following the service will be profitable.

Hopefully we will get some momentum going next month.

Read Our Review Of The Basketball Geek Below

Basketball Geek Review

Trading 

This month I made £216 from trading.

The majority of the profit came from this trade.

Laying Dynamo Kiev when they were leading 2-0 away at Ferencvaros. The game ended up finishing 2-2.

I have wrote about this previously but trading is something I have been doing a lot less off. 

For a long time I was content to spend long hours in front of the computer however this year I have put a lot more focus on exercising regularly. Making sure I spend a lot of time with my kids and generally just leading a more balanced life style.

So my time trading is pretty minimal and I often just get involved when I see something that looks like obvious value (in my estimation).

Thoughts Going Forward

So obviously it was really good month where I was very fortunate.

If you do stick with casino offers then you will run into these months every now and again. It is just a case of putting in the volume and going through the bad periods.

I often get emails asking if casino offers are still worth doing. 

In my opinion yes they are, just get started. As we have seen with the matched betting/poker/arbitrage boom, these opportunities don’t last forever and usually diminish with time.

Going forward I don’t really plan on doing a huge amount more then what I am already. I have added one tipster and will look to add more in the future but currently happy with the workload and profit.

In the next week I do plan on making a video on youtube as its been neglected for a little while.

If that interests you, you can subscribe here https://youtube.com/c/SmartSportsTrader

Planning to go through this year’s results and talk about where I think the best opportunities are going forward in the sports betting markets.

If you have any questions or anything you would like me to discuss.

You can add it in the comments or send me an email at [email protected]

Services Used

In this section is a list of the services that I have used this month. To be transparent I do have affiliate deals with these services. Which means should you subscribe to them through a link on this site I will receive a commission. This does not come at any additional cost to you. In fact with some of these services I have negotiated discounted prices for readers of smartsportstrader.com.

Recommended For Matched Betting/ Value Betting/ Arbitrage

Oddsmonkey Matched Betting And Arbitrage Software (Click Here For A Free Trial)

Subscription Cost – £12.50 a month (Annual Subscription)

If you comment “Smart Sports Trader” in the chat when you sign up for a Trademate Sports trial. You will get an extended two week trial and also a 10% discount off your first month.

Trademate Sports Value Betting Software –  Click Here For A Two Week Trial)

Subscription Cost – £110 a month (Monthly)

Recommended For Exploiting Casino Offers

(Readers of smartsportstrader.com can get the first month half price using the link below)

Bonus Accumulator (Click Here)

Subscription Cost – £12.50 a month  (Annual Subscription)

Results

Value Betting, Arbitrage, Matched Betting –

£1672

Advantage Play – Casino Offers

£3001

Trading

£216

Sports Betting

£750

Total Made In September

£5641

Overall Profit Since The Challenge Began

£98,933

Remaining Target

£901,067

After a really good set of results in August.

I was looking to build on this in September and try to get over £100,000 in total profit before the end of 2020.

Let’s take a look at September’s results.

Value Betting And Arbitrage (Matched Betting)

In terms of matched betting offers there is not a lot going on at the moment. Betfair exchange throw out a fiver a week and if you are not limited from Bet365 they still have the occasional decent offer.

The majority of my betting volume is in the form of value betting.

This is betting boosts, accumulator promos, extra places, single bets.

I am still betting at the exchanges where 0% throws up opportunities and also been looking at the Asian bookies and finding value.

(I have been using the Trademate Sports software this month. To gather results for an updated review of the software. This has contributed to the profits this month. It should be noted that I am running well above EV for this month and an 18% roi is not to be expected long term.)

When it comes to arbitrage I am hammering my limited accounts. Also I do find opportunities for in-play arbitrage and some small arbs between sharp bookmakers and betting exchanges.

A lot of people think that arbitrage betting is dead in 2020, however this isn’t true there is still money to be made.

I made a total of 481 bets in August.

A total profit of £2106 was made.

Recommended Services 

RebelBetting Value Betting Software (Readers Of This Blog Can Get A Free Month Trial If You Click Here)

Subscription Cost – £61 a month (Monthly)

Trademate Sports Value Betting Software (You Can Get A Free One Week Trial Of Trademate Sports If You Click Here)

Subscription Cost – £110 a month (Monthly)

Oddsmonkey Matched Betting And Arbitrage Software (Click Here For The Review)

Subscription Cost – £12.50 a month (Annual Subscription)

Advantage Play – Casino Offers

On to the casino offers and all in all, this month was pretty average.

Mecca Bingo seem to be throwing out more offers then usual which is always good to see. Cashino were the latest to leave the UK market however won’t really miss them. As their reload offers tended to pretty poor.

Here is an epic bonus I had on Rainbow Riches Cluster Magic.

Haha exciting stuff right?

That’s pretty much advantage play in a nutshell. The majority of the time its very boring and then now and again you pick up a big win which makes it all worthwhile.

This month there were a few medium sized wins but nothing of note.

During September I did exactly 150 offers.

A profit of £694 was made.

Service Used

(Readers of smartsportstrader.com can get the first month half price using the review link below)

Bonus Accumulator (Click Here For The Review)

Subscription Cost – £12.50 a month  (Annual Subscription)

Sports Betting Results

My own betting was poor this month.

It is the same pattern that rears its head again and again, make money from MMA and lose it betting pre match football.

Below are my long term stats over the last 3 years.

(No sport equals live bets in both football and MMA)

I have written previously that I should stop betting football pre match. Whilst I still had a very small positive long term roi up until this month. It’s been steadily decreasing for a while.

I don’t give football enough attention to warrant betting it and should have cut it out completely a while ago. 

It’s a tough market to beat in general and to think I can just profit from it with a very brief analysis is pretty stupid on my part.

Time to knock these bets pre match football bets on the head finally.

This month I made 14 bets.

A total loss of -£555 was made.

Trading 

Trading has been ok this month with no real standout trades.

When I see something obvious in the market, I will open up a position. It doesn’t always go to plan but over the long term its been profitable.

Unfortunately with work, family life, value betting, casino offers etc.

I don’t have a lot of time to trade.

This month I have spent time looking at automation and bot services.

If anyone has any feedback on Mercurious or Exponential bet I would love to here from you either via email or in the comments.

In total I made £102 from trading this month.

Thoughts Going Forward

A solid month where a profit decent was made.

There is a part of me that is pretty content with just carrying on with what I am doing and making between £1k-£4k a month. But there is another part of me that wants to push on and see if I can make much more.

However to do that would mean increasing stakes and taking on more risk.

When it comes to matched betting, arbitrage and casino offers, I can’t really scale these much more.

If I want to up my staking levels. I have to look at value betting, my own personal betting and adding services which make money from the exchanges or sharp bookmakers.

Which would mean taking on more risk and variance. Probably meaning that I would endure more losing months and larger swings in my profit and loss.

Something that I need make a definitive decision on………….

At the end of this month I did start following a tipster called the Basketball Geek. Having followed this tipster for a few months for review purposes (Which I will write up in the next few days). I am confident that he is profitable long term.

Although I have issues with the way they record odds and the quoted odds they use for his results are not obtainable. He is a good tipster that beats the closing odds regularly and can be be followed using Asian bookmakers (not all selections however.)

Results

Value Betting, Arbitrage, Matched Betting –

£2106

Advantage Play – Casino Offers

£694

Trading

£102

Sports Betting

-£555

Total Made In September

£2347

Overall Profit Since The Challenge Began

£93,292

Remaining Target

£906,708

(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 goals.)

June was a good month.

It seems like things are getting back to normal and the return of regular sport was a welcome one.

I did miss it, its nice to have busy Saturday’s back where I’m firing off value bets everywhere and tallying everything at the end of the day. Might be the degenerate gambler side of me that still remains but I do like having lots of action on.

Horses, football, UFC I love it when the weekends are packed.

Anyway lets take a look at the results from June.

Matched Betting – Sports Offers, Arbitrage, Value Betting

June saw the return of the Bet365 bet £50 get £50 in-play offer.

Which is one if not the best recurring matched betting offer that still gets thrown out from time to time. 

The Ascot horse racing festival was also in June and helped a poor start to the month turn around.

I made a total of 495 bets in June.

A total profit of £1247 was made.

Services Used

Oddsmonkey (Click Here For The Review)

Subscription Cost – £12.50 a month (Annual Subscription)

Bookie Bashing

Advantage Play – Casino Offers

I did nearly 100 less offers in June compared to May.

Which I was quite surprised about when I went over the results for the month.

Didn’t do many sign ups this month and the increase in sports probably was a factor.

As a result the month end P/L was solid without being spectacular.

In June I completed 145 offers.

A total profit £341 was made. 

Service Used

Bonus Accumulator (Click Here For The Review)

Subscription Cost – £12.50 a month  (Annual Subscription)

Sports Betting Results

During June I made 11 bets and made a total profit of £235.

Not much to say really other then I need to stake more on MMA betting (Which I stated in last months update but didn’t apply.)

I know that is where my biggest edge is and has been for a years. After using some of my bankroll for building work for my house. I have been overly cautious with my staking and that is something I need to address.

Misc

Looking at my day to day results and the one recorded here.

I am -£123 less, not sure why to be honest. At a guess it is probably from following a few unrecorded tipster bets.

Thoughts Going Forward

As things return to a more normal state.

I will look to resume with the services I was previously using, which were Trade On Sports and FTS Racing. Have also been tracking a few tipsters that look very promising in the past few months which should also be solid additions.

Have to admit have the kids at home 24/7 has lead to a less structured approach with my betting and trading. Personally I thrive on structure so things do seem a little scattered at the moment and is one of the reasons I haven’t done any trading.

However overall I am happy with this month’s results.

Results

Matched Betting – Sports Offers

£1247

Advantage Play – Casino Offers

£341

MISC

-£123

Sports Betting

£235

Total Made In June

£1720

Overall Profit Since The Challenge Began

£85,257

Remaining Target

£914,743

Last month wasn’t the best start to the year as a very small profit was eeked out by the end of January.

It was nice to start a new month, February was a month where I was determined to make some progress towards the £1,000,000 profit target.

Lets take a look at how things went.

Matched Betting – Sports Offers, Arbitrage, Value Betting

Its been a really good month from a value betting perspective.

Again very little matched betting going apart from the Bet365 inplay offer.

I did ramp up my sports arbitrage betting this month hammering a Mr Green account.

Didn’t land any 2ups with Bet365 which are always a good earner.

In February there were 348 matched betting offers and value bets.

A total profit of £2023 was made.

Services Used

Oddsmonkey (Read The Review)

Subscription Cost – £12.50 a month (Annual Subscription)

Bookie Bashing

Advantage Play – Casino Offers

On to the casino results.

Got to admit this month I to start to feel quite jaded about grinding out casino offers.

It just becomes pretty mindless and unfulfilling when you do it day after especially when you go through tough periods.

On the flip side though you can still a get a decent hourly return. There are people in this world  doing hard labour for much much less and I am/was probably being a bit of a pussy.

Imagine telling some poor guy working in North Korean labour camp about feeling jaded making £25+ an hour playing casino games. 

That thought quickly puts things in perspective.

In February I did 256 offers.

A total profit of £1192 was made.

Service Used

Profit Maximiser (Read The Review)

Subscription Cost – £9.60 a month  (Annual Subscription)

Sports Betting Results

Very low volume of sports bets this month. 

Which was probably a combination of being unwell for a few weeks and the fact that I can’t seem to turn this bad run around at the moment.

Only 11 bets were made in February for a total loss of -£57.

Trade On Sports

Coming up to nearly six months with the Trade On Sports service now.

Its a service that I like but my results haven’t been the greatest lately.

Lets take a look at the results from the 2 systems that I currently follow.

Staking £50 per selection

Tennis Results – 39 selections in January, a loss of -£677 was made.

Staking £102 per selection.

Inplay Football Results – 22 selections a loss of  -£248 was made.

Total – -£925

So overall I am pretty much breakeven with TOS after a really strong NFL season where a profit of £920 was made.

(Trade On Sports official results will be different to mine due to missed bets, different prices taken on tennis.)

Below are the results in graph form since starting to follow the service.

Stick Or Bust?

Despite going through a rough period of results, I still intend to stick with Trade On Sports.

My initial plan was to go with the service for a year and then reasses things.

There is a plan in place that will enable the automation of the strategies that I follow.

Which would be a big plus for me and put aside the issue of missing out on selections due to family commitment etc.

Plus I know from the excellent blog daily25 that in sports betting there will be losing periods.

Even with services that are profitable long term. That’s just the reality of betting and something you have to come to terms with if you want to win long term.

Service Used

FTS Racing

Next up is FTS racing service which provides Betfair SP selections.

I have also included Ian’s horse racing podcast selections in the results.

Not a pretty graph.

Still early days with this service but a bloodbath in February puts the service into a negative overall now.

However again my plan is to stick with it for a full year and see things out before making any changes.

I think a lot of people jump on and off services very quickly. But your never going to time things perfectly and hit the good patches of variance each time.

Just got to ride it out and look at things over the longer term.

FTS Racing Results – -£885

Service Used

Trading

My own trading this month was solid if not spectacular.

I mentioned being unwell for a few weeks and from experience have found its best to leave the markets alone if your not feeling very sharp.

A profit of £488 was made from trading.

Results

Matched Betting – Sports Offers

£2023

Advantage Play – Casino Offers

£1192

Trade On Sports

-£925

FTS RACING

-£885

Trading Results

£488

Sports Betting

-£57

Total Made In February

£1836

Overall Profit Since The Challenge Began

£80,121

Remaining Target

£919,879

Thoughts Going Forward

It was nice to get a decent winning month in after January.

Hopefully the services that I follow will have stronger months going forward, which could push me through the £100k in total profit mark before the end of the year.

Happy with the amount of volume I put in this month.

Another high point was that I had the opportunity to write an article for Asktraders.com which was really cool.

You can read that article here.

Not much else to add really my betting/trading has become pretty rigid and boring nowadays but thats probably a positive.

Listened to a few interviews with Harry Findlay this month.

Thought it was interesting as he talks a lot about getting a “buzz” from betting still.

I’ll will be honest that something that i don’t get at all anymore.

Compared to when I started and every bet seemed to really matter.

Lets see what March brings, how has your betting been going on in 2020?

Let me know in the comments below!