Matched Betting Guide | House of Resell | House of Resell: Your Ultimate Reselling Destination

What is Matched Betting?

Matched betting is a risk free way to make money betting. It uses a simple mathmatical strategy, which allows you to covers all outcomes of an event. This therefore means that, before an event has even started, you know exactly how much your profit will be regardless of the outcome (win, loss or draw). No previous sports knowledge or insider sports knowledge is required, and therefore anyone can get started, the only catch is you do have to be atleast 18 years old.

How does all of this work?

Many bookmakers have sign-up offers to entice you to sign up. This could be an offer such as "Bet £10, get a £20 free bet". These offers, we call "sign-up offers".

Usually events in sports have 3 outcomes, a win, a draw or a loss. Each result will have different likelihoods of happening which is reflected in the odds that are offered. Because most events have 3 outcomes, we use ‘betting exchanges’. With regular bookmakers, they allow you to place a bet that something will happen. However, unlike the traditional bookmakers, betting exchanges also allow you to bet on something that won’t happen.

As an example, you place a bet for the home football team to win a match at the bookmaker. On the exchange, you then place a bet for the home football team not to win the match. This therefore ensures that all outcomes are covered, as the not to win bet covers both a loss and a draw.

It is true that newbies can find betting exchanges daunting at first, as it can become difficult to understand, which is completely normal. Once you get past this learning curve, it becomes second nature.

Understanding betting exchanges

Betting exchanges have one difference from bookmakers. Betting exchanges allow people to exchange bets. Instead of betting against the bookmaker, you bet against other people on the exchange. Betting exchanges allow members to propose a bet that they want to place, if another member is happy to take that bet, your bet will become ‘matched’. The second member in this case, plays the same role as a bookmaker does.

In matched betting terms, when we say we have placed a ‘back’ bet, it essentially means that you are backing a team or want them to win. Whereas when we say, we have placed a ‘lay bet’, this means we want the team to lose or draw. These are two concepts to get familiar with as the software that you will be using will use some of these terms. On the exchange sites, you will mainly be placing just ‘lay’ bets on the exchange.

If the ‘back’ user’s bet comes in or wins, the ‘lay’ user will have to payout their winnings, just like a bookmaker would do. As an example, if the ‘back’ user places a £10 bet on Manchester United to win at odds of 3.0, the user on the ‘lay’ side will pay the ‘back’ user £20. In matched betting we speak as the £20, is the ‘lay’ users liability. Liability is the amount they could lose if the outcome does not go their way.

When you bet at the bookmakers, you always are on the ‘back’ side of the bet, with the bookmaker paying out if you win. When you are on the exchange you are on the “lay” side of the bet, where you will play the part of the bookmaker. Doing this, and using this method allows you to cover all outcomes of a certain event, by only using two bets, even if there are more than two outcomes.

As an example, when we look at a football match, there are 3 possible outcomes of a game. This includes, home win, draw or away win. If you ‘back’ the home team on the bookmaker this covers the home win outcome. You then place a ‘lay’ bet on the home team at the exchange. This means that you are betting on the home team to not win, which therefore covers the draw and away win outcomes.

Smarkets and Befair exchanges are two most used exchanges in matched betting. These are the two that I would recommend to use and have low commission and also are easy for beginners to navigate around. Betting exchanges do take 0-5% commission from the user who wins the bet. This is how betting exchanges make their money! Betfair exchange usually is 3- 5% and smarkets is typically 0-2%.

Sign up offers are the best way to start with matched betting. These are offers that bookmakers offer you when you are a new customer to their bookmaker (e.g. SKYBET offers bet £10 get a £20 in free bets). There are lots and lots of these offers, therefore we can capitalise on this via matched betting, so we can lock in profits! All sign-up offers will be put in 💰 ⁠ ┇signup-offers (channel), so make sure to complete all of these before signing up to any bookmakers. This channel will also be regularly updated as new offers come out.

Profit through reload offers

After you have completed all the signup offers with bookmakers, the profit does not stop there. Bookmakers will continue to email or text you with more offers or there just may be offers advertised on their social media, which is what we call "reload offers". These are offers that are giving from the bookmakers to existing account holders. Reload offers can actually be equally as profitable as signup offers, if you learn how to profit from them. It is very possible to make £1000 a month from reload offers.

Use the same method to cash-out these bets that you used for the sign- up offers, it's the same process. All reload offers will be posted in ⚡ ⁠ ┇reload-offers (channel) so make sure to check this regularly.

Profit through 2UP offers

The 2UP offer is a fantastic way to make some more money in matched betting without it taking up too much of your spare time. This guide will give an explanation as to what they are and also how they work. Any ⚽ notable 2UP Offers will be pinged in ⁠ ┇2up-offers (channel)

What are 2UP offers?

Bet365 and Paddy Power offer the 2UP promotion on football games. When you place a pre-match bet on a football team to win and they go two goals up or ahead your bet is paid out immediately.

E.G. You place a bet on Manchester United to win, they go 2 goals ahead before half-time, you would have won your bet regardless of what the final score ends at.

https://extra.bet365.com/promotions/en/soccer/early-payout-offer

https://promos.paddypower.com/promotion?promoCode=2UPWIN1920B2

How do you profit from 2UP offers?

It is important to note that 2UP offers are not completely risk free as they are a speculative type of offer as you risk a small loss for a big profit. There can be some really good value in 2UP offers, and with the correct strategy you can win big over the long term.

When you back a team on Bet365 or Paddy Power pre match you will have access to the early payout 2up offer. As we are match bettors, we lay the team as well to ensure that all outcomes are covered before the game even starts.

TSo to clarify this, let's say we put a bet on Cardiff to win against Leeds in the FA CUP.

We backed Cardiff with £100 at odds of 4.5 and the exchange odds to lay Cardiff (not to win i.e draw or lose) were 4.6. It is important to note that you should use the early payout calculator for this offer, as it is specific to the type of offer. Let's see what this looks like on the early payout calculator.

How did this bet go?

So as you can see from the calculator I was required to lay an amount of £98.25 on the exchange to lay Cardiff. This means that if the offer does not come off we would lose £3.70, but if it does we could make £446.

So the game began, and Cardiff went 2 goals ahead, great!! We got paid out early from Bet365. But what we now need to happen for the lay bet to win as well is for the game to end in a draw or for Cardiff to lose. The reason for this is because the lay bet is betting for a team not to win. Therefore, from the 2up offer, we can win both bets if the result goes our way.

Cardiff vs Leeds was a great example. So as mentioned previously, Cardiff were leading 2-0, and Leeds managed to equalise just before the final whistle to make it 2-2. This meant that, firstly we gotpaid out early from Bet365 and after that we won the lay bet on the exchange because Cardiff did not win the game.

As you can see below, the profit on this game was huge, but remember 2up offers come at a small risk!

Profit through extra place offers

Extra place offers are bets we place on horse racing!

Extra places are one of the best offers there is in matched betting for making money. However, it can be a difficult concept to understand, but once you do understand it there is a lot of profit to be made. Any notable EP 🏇 offers will be pinged in ⁠ ┇extraplace-offers (channel)

The extra place offer works slightly differently to a normal matched bet (which has 2 bets, a back bet and a lay bet). In extra place offers we have 3 different bets. 1 back bet with the bookmaker and 2 seperate ones with the betting exchanges.

Back bet (bookmaker bet)

EThe back bet we place on the bookmaker is not the normal back bet we place with other offers, instead this bet will cover the horse to win and also each way runner up places which the bookmaker has specified beforehand.

It is also important to note that with each way betting, whatever your stake is, when you click each way, the stake doubles.

As you can see, this bet is paying 4 places.

Once you have placed your back bet, we can move onto the two lay bets.

Extra place calculator

Once you have found the lay odds for the horse (horse not to win and the horse not to place in top 3) in our case. You always want to lay the place above whatever the bookmaker is paying, e.g. Bet365 is paying 4 places so we lay top 3 places.

Once you have found these odds, simply insert them to the extra place calculator attached below to know how much to lay for each bet. If you are subscribed to Outplayed, they have this built in, under each way calculator. https://matchedbettingblog.com/each-way-calculator/

Lay bet 1

The first thing we have to place a lay bet on is the horse not to win, which you can find an example below (blue square). Use the amount said in the calculator to lay this bet.

Lay bet 2

Now you need to place your lay bet for the places, in our case we are laying the horse for the top 3 (essentially meaning betting on the horse not to place in the top 3 places).

Outcome

It is important to note with extra places that there will be a small qualifying loss, however the profits over the long term are worth it with the right strategy. If subscribed to Outplayed, they have an extra place catcher, which finds close odds for every horse in every race on that day. I highly recommend getting outplayed, as you will save so much time using the software compared to manually searching for extra place offers.

So the outcome of this bet, is that it may not come off, and as a result you will lose your qualifying loss. However, if the horse finishes in 4th position, this means that you would win your Bet365 bet for each way, you would also win your lay bet for the horse not to win as they came 4th, and also you would win the not to place top 3. As a result, you would win all 3 bets.