PROVIDING YOU WITH ALL THE BEST BETS
"Bankroll” is a term often associated with playing live or online casino games. Poker and Blackjack players will tell in husky tones of a bankroll necessary to beat the House (even though the House always wins). In matched betting “Bankroll” is a term we need to use slightly differently.
Unlike poker or blackjack, matched betting is not gambling. Matched betting, if done properly and consistently, can guarantee both short-term and long-term profits. Which is about as far away from gambling as we could hope to get.
But, as with casino table games, matched betting does require a bankroll to begin with. Albeit a much smaller one. We can start our back betting and lay betting matches with as little as £40. Using the example Yesbets provides to get us off and running, we can make £15 in 15 minutes with the Coral sign up bonus offer, matching those back bets with lay bets at the Betfair betting exchange.
But what happens then? If all has gone swimmingly, all our profits will be now be in Betfair and our Coral account will read a big fat zero. Nil points. Now, like Dion’s eponymous Wanderer, we move on to the next sign up bonus offer from the next bookmaker. Ladbrokes? William HIll? Paddy Power?
The Choice Is Yours
You see, the curve in matched betting is a steep one. While we can begin matched betting with only a small outlay, we do have to continue to put small amounts of money into the various bookmakers in order to scoop their free bet bonuses that deliver the biggest guarantees and highest profit margins.
The Yesbets Matched Betting Guide uses BetFred as an example. In the example, we need to place a £10 bet at BetFred in order to land £30 in free bets as a return.
We back and lay all the bets, hoping our lay bets win to ensure that all our profit zooms into the betting exchange rather than sitting tied-up in our bookie accounts. Not only does this allow us to match bets with higher odds matches, but if we have nada in our bookmaker wallets the bookies are also more likely to send us extra free bets offers. These are offers personal to us and we won’t find them elsewhere, like on the Yesbets Reloads page.
They might offer a little £5 here, an extra £10 there. But if every one of the hundreds of bookies sends us an extra £5 free bet every week… well, you do the maths. But, as you will have noticed, while there are profits to be made matched betting does require an initial investment.
But, in smarmy business parlance, the ROI (return on investment) in matched betting is so attractive that any initial investment on our part is well worth it. Going back to the “£15 in 15 minutes” Coral example. £15 return from a £40 outlay. This amounts to a 37.5% ROI. In plain and simple business terms, that is a whopping percentage. Can you name a single bank that would guarantee you that kind of interest?
Building A Bankroll From Nothing
Now, it is possible to start matched betting without free bets. But you will still need funds to bet with. You still have to play with something. You can’t say to a bookie, “Let me place this bet with an IOU and, if it doesn’t come in, then I’ll give you the cash.” Imagine the looks you’d get in the betting shop. You’d get laughed out of the place.
Fortunately, online betting means we don’t have to meet people face to face. Which probably accounts for a large part of its popularity. Instead we can munch profitable bites out of bookmaker’s own bankrolls from afar.
Some bettors do seek to match bets for instant profits without the need for the free bet bonuses from bookmakers. Such bets are called arb bets, where we back higher odds at the bookies than we lay at the betting exchange.
But, let’s be honest, why would you? The Yesbets tips and advice pages suggest that placing consistent arb bets is a sure fire way to get you gubbed at a bookmaker, or have your accounts restricted.
Of course, other bookmakers are available, but most of them monitor betting exchanges closely. Arb bets are often only possible with certain bookmakers who may not be fully on top of the exchange odds but they sure will be on top of you if they notice you placing arb bets on a consistent basis. (No, not like that.)
Move On To Reloads
Once we have cleaned up all the sign up offers on the table from all of the various bookmakers, we can move on to reload bonuses to build our bankrolls. Reloads are our bread and butter, our meat and drink, our balls into the corridor of uncertainty.
Now, seeing as football has overtaken horse racing as the UK’s number one betting choice, I’d recommend that you stick to football betting. If only for the sheer number of reloads that bookies haul our way during the season.
Hit the ponies in the big race meets like Cheltenham, Aintree and Ascot in the spring and summer, but stick to footie when the season is off and running. There’s so much action that we can pretty much place matched bets every day of the week. This high turnover of games makes for a high turnover of matched bets which translates to quick building of bankrolls.
The more we bet, the more we get. And the quicker the turnover the better. With Premier League betting offers and Championship matches on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, plus League Cup and European action in midweek, before we know it we can be eating through the reloads like a squirrel let loose in a peanut factory.
Now, this won’t eat into our day. Actually, placing one reload takes a matter of minutes. But, the bigger our bankroll, the more reloads we can place. The more reloads we place, the bigger our bankrolls. This is business. Business is business and business must grow.
Quite how much we want it to grow is up to us. Fancy quitting your job to earn a living from matched betting? It’s possible and people do it. It can be a delicate balancing act, but the more we have in our exchange accounts the more reloads we can take advantage of.
And then maybe, just maybe, in a season or two we be can placing our matched bets on the English Premier League from our infinity pool in Nice. And wouldn’t that be nice?