Match Betting In The Us
Bet on the Open Championship. Held across the pond in the UK, the Open Championship has a history that can match up with any of the other majors. Sadly, due to Covid-19, the Open Championship was postponed for 2020, but returns in 2021. Nov 25, 2020 The Match will be played Friday at Stone Canyon in Oro Valley, Arizona. The first tee shots will be hit shortly after 3 p.m. Scoring will follow a modified alternate shot match play format. The Match: Champions for Change betting odds. Odds provided by BetMGM; access USA TODAY Sports’ betting odds for a full list.
How to do Matched Betting in America
Hi, my name is Luke and I teach a technique called matched betting.
I’m delighted to be here on MoneyAhoy to talk about this to a wider audience.
I’ve been doing this strategy for myself for 3-4 years now, and I’ve been teaching it full-time for around 2 years via my website Beating Betting, and the YouTube channel under the same name.
However, my main education is aimed at people within the UK. For us here in Britain, we’ve got it easy. I’ll talk about the subtle differences between the two countries — the UK and the US — and the effect it has on betting, shortly.
What is Matched Betting?
Matched betting is a low-risk form of gambling that uses simple maths to turn the odds of a bookmaker, or casino, against them. By using almost any promotion that a bookmaker offers (free bets, odds boosts and more) and combining them with a simple calculator, we’re able to work out our profit on a sporting event before the event even takes place.
I’m more than aware that it sounds incredibly scammy.
Fortunately for me, this has grown to such a level in the UK now that there is enough information out there — on reputable websites — that it’s a lot easier to prove its viability than when I started out a few years ago.
Back in the day, I used to get outright abuse on sites like Reddit for trying to show people this money-printing method.
…And considering I teach people for free, it wouldn’t be the most logical scam in the world even if it wasn’t real!
What I would say is that, if you are the skeptical type, you give this a proper look and go in as open minded as possible.
It’s an opportunity that I’m gifting to you. Why? Firstly, because someone gifted me that same opportunity and I like to pay it forward. Secondly, because I think gambling institutions are crooked and people deserve the opportunity to beat them for as much money as they possibly can.
Why is this Harder in the US?
I said earlier that I’m fortunate to have it easy in the UK.
This is for a few reasons:
The most obvious one of those reasons is that online betting is legal throughout the entire country. This isn’t the case for the US, so to do this you’ll need to be in one of the states that doesn’t have ridiculous legislation (that I’m sure will be reversed in the future).
The less obvious reason is that we have access to a type of betting site known as exchanges. As matched bettors, we use exchanges to ‘lay’ bets; to hedge, or cover all outcomes, in order to remove our risk and guarantee a profit.
In America, you’re going to need to use several bookmaker sites to cover all of the outcomes on a certain sporting event — for example, you could back one team on one bookmaker and the opposing team on another bookmaker on the ‘moneyline’ market in an NFL game.
This adjustment in strategy is known as dutching.
The final reason is that we have numerous websites that:
- Find offers to exploit on a daily basis
- List all of the terms and conditions to follow
- List the steps required to make a profit
To do this in the US, you’re going to need to do all of the above yourself. This means it will require more manual work and you’ll definitely have to use more brain power than we do.
However, because it’s so much more effort to do, it means there may also be more profit in it for those willing to put in the time.
It’s gotten so easy and accessible in this part of the world that bookmakers are reducing and removing their promotions; something that was always an inevitability once the masses figured this out.
The Basics of the Strategy
Think of this as an introduction to matched betting.
Because of the state-by-state laws, differing bookmakers, unique terms and conditions and a whole load of other things, it’s hard for me to give you more than a push in the right direction. But a push I will certainly give you.
Step 1: Find an Offer
The easiest place to start is with a sign-up offer as most bookmakers will offer them.
Let’s say, for the purposes of an example, you’ve found a site offering a free bet up to $50 if you deposit and place a bet of the same amount.
You should check the terms and conditions to make sure there’s nothing alarming (extremely high wagering requirements is one thing to look for) but most of the time they generally tend to include something simple like a rule that you must bet on odds of a certain size, let’s say it’s 1.5 — you should always use decimal odds when doing this, for the purposes of using calculators. You can easily change the odds format on any bookmaker if they aren’t currently showing as decimal.
Assuming everything in the terms looks straightforward, you can move on to the next step.
Step 2: Qualifying Bet
On this first bet, known as the ‘qualifier’, we are attempting to qualify for the free bet. As we already know, the free bet in this example is worth $50.
With this first bet, we will always lose a very small amount of money, known as a qualifying loss.
Find a team to bet on with odds of more than 1.5, as per the terms.
I recommend using the moneyline market in NFL (or other two-outcome sports, i.e. there is no option for the match to be a draw) if you’re based in America, as you’ll only need to use two bookmakers to cover all of the outcomes.
Let’s say you’ve found a team at odds of 1.9.
You now need to find the same event on another bookmaker and check the odds for the other team. Again, for the purposes of this example, let’s say their odds are 2.0.
We then use a dutching calculator (I won’t link one, but you’ll be able to find one on Google) to figure out what our stake will need to be on the second site. We already know our stake is $50 on the first bookmaker, but what stake would generate us an even return?
We input our stake and odds into the dutching calculator, and based on the information provided we learn that our stake on the second bookmaker needs to be $47.50. Our qualifying loss will be $2.50, which is quite high — you should look around to see if you can find betting options that would lose slightly less, if possible — but we’ll still be able make a reasonable amount of profit.
Step 3: Free Bet
Once we have placed our qualifying bet, we should have access to our free bet. These are usually credited instantly or are credited within 48 hours after the bet is settled.
We now need to repeat the process, but use higher odds on than previously with our free bet in order to generate more profit.
Two things to be wary of:
- Ensure you don’t breach any ‘max odds’ terms
- The higher the odds you choose, the more profit you will make, but the more money you’ll need to deposit into the second bookmaker
I recommend choosing odds between 4.0 and 8.0 on your free bet, if permitted.
Let’s say there is a team at odds of 6.0, and the second team — on the second bookmaker — are odds of 1.18.
We need to change our dutching calculator settings as we’re now only betting with our own money on the second site. Again, I won’t link a specific dutching calculator here, but you need to find one which has a ‘free bet (stake not returned)’ option.
Or, if you’re smarter than I am, you could figure out the calculation yourself to give yourself an even return regardless of the result.
The calculation on this specific bet means we use our free $50 on the 6.0 selection, and we then need to bet $211.86 on the second bookmaker selection. This generates an even profit of $38.13 regardless of the outcome of that match.
We then subtract $2.50 (our qualifying loss from the first bet) and we’ve made $35.63 in overall profit.
It’s worth noting, you can find smaller offers than this. You don’t have to go for the full $50 if you can’t afford to dutch the other side, as $200+ is a significant investment for many people.
In the UK, I recommend people start with at least £100. I’d say that you need to start with at least $120 if you’re looking to do this in America.
After the Sign-Up Offers
The sign-up offers, like the one outlined above, are the starting point for all matched bettors. They are typically the most simple offers and generally the most profitable too, but it’s not the end of the road once you’ve used them all up.
Promotions are almost always loss leaders for bookmakers, meaning they actually provide value for bettors as long as they know how to exploit it.
Any time there is a free bet offer, a refund, a significant odds boost, an extra place being offered in horse racing, accumulator (or parlay) insurance…the list goes on, there is theoretically a way you can flip it to make a guaranteed profit.
There are a whole range of questions that people typically have, and I’ve answered many of them on my website and YouTube channel already.
Match Betting In The Us States
Unfortunately, the standard of advice that I can give to Americans (or anyone outside of the UK, for that matter) is no more detailed than this guide.
As I said earlier, this is just a push for you in the right direction.
I hope you’ve found it interesting and that you can find success with it if you give it a go. Good luck!
Check out these other great MoneyAhoy posts:
Match Betting In The Us Today
*sign up for draftkings here and get an extra free $100 bet to start matched betting in the USA
What is Matched Betting?
If you’ve ever gambled before, then you know how talented casinos are at pretending to be generous. They‘ll offer hundreds of dollars in ‘bonus money’ that always inexplicably disappears in minutes.
Matched betting is simply the process of extracting that bonus money, and turning it into cash, without risking a dime. In the US, where legal sports betting is still in its’ infancy, sports books have sign up offers worth hundreds of dollars; you can make a couple hundred dollars with only a few minutes of work.
Matched Betting USA
Matched betting isn’t a common practice (yet) in America, but in Europe there’s a massive subculture revolving around it. They’ve made up a lot of their own jargon, which I’m going to ignore in this guide for simplicities sake.
Just because it doesn’t exist yet doesn’t mean it shouldn’t…
Matched betting isn’t common yet in the US, and that’s exactly why now is the best time to start doing it. You may not have realized, but since the SCOTUS decision in 2018, sports betting has been growing like wildfire. Analysts expect the industry to grow by 10x, and exist in 80% of US states by 2025. As a result, US sportsbooks have crazy introductory offers, and since no one’s doing matched betting here many of them are extremely easy to take advantage of. I’ve personally made a good amount of money through this and I’m no rocket scientist.
How does it work exactly?
Through sports betting. The beauty of sports betting is that there will always be multiple books offering similar odds for the same game (if for some reason the odds vary a lot across books this is a GOLDEN opportunity to make A LOT of money through a separate technique).
In other words, you can bet on one team with one book, and bet on the opposite team with another book. In a two outcome game like tennis (which I HIGHLY recommend starting with), where there’s two opponents and no possibility of a tie, you can place two bets in such a way that you’re not actually betting on anything at all.
Let’s do a (not so) hypothetical:
Sugarhouse has a really great introductory offer that gives you 250 dollars in bonus money just for depositing the same amount; however, you only get the winnings from your bonus money, not the money itself.
Now imagine there’s a tennis game tomorrow with odds +165 to -240 for player A against player B on sugarhouse. you place your $250 free bet on player A. Now this means if player A wins you get $412.5 dollars (remember with this bonus you only get the WINNINGS not the PAYOUT).
….Now what if player A loses?
Well that’s why you’re not done yet. Open up another browser, log into another book (let’s say resortscasino) and find the same game: player A vs player B; with this book you see the odds are +165 to -290. Now place your bet on player B, making sure that the payout if player B wins is 412.5 dollars IE the same as what sugarhouse will pay you if player A wins. You can figure this out with simple trial and error using one of these calculators. It comes out to about $307 dollars. Place your bet, and you’re done.
Now lets look at the possibilities
If player A wins, your money in resorts goes to zero, but you get $412 dollars from sugarhouse; since you only put in $307, this means you just made over $100. If player B wins, your money in sugarhouse goes to zero, but your money resorts is now $412, which means that you again made over $100. No matter who wins (and remember there’s no ties in tennis), you gain over $100. Not half bad for setting up an account and doing a calculation your 8 year old brother can do.
And in an ideal scenario you would find a game with tighter odds, and your second bet would be placed to unlock more bonus money. In other words, you can make A LOT more money from the same scenario if you’re smart about it.
A Word of Warning
Matched betting works 100% of the time only if you are 100% sure of EXACTLY what will happen in any given scenario; this means knowing how each books bonus policy works. Now lucky for us, books legally have to give us this information in their terms and conditions.
Make sure to read through the T&Cs of the bonus very carefully before you place any bets. Understand any play through requirements, and what exactly you need to do to unlock the bonus. The good news is since there aren’t hordes of people doing matched betting in the US, most offers are pretty straightforward compared to Europe, where they’re actively trying trip matched bettors up. I’ll go through how to read T&Cs in future articles, but for now, be cautious.