In this post, I explain how you can get your 2-up bookmaker offers for virtually nothing. That’s if there isn’t a free bet involved. If there is a free bet involved, you can get your 2-up offer for free. Whether or not there is a free bet involved, you can also generate a huge amount of money in totally free mug bets.
The date that I made this part of the video is Saturday 11th August 2018. It is early in the morning one day before the match between Arsenal and Man City.
The website that I am on is oddschecker.com. I do all of my matched betting manually. In other words, I don’t use software.
What I do is look for the 3 best odds at different bookmakers.
So, I’ve stopped the video. The best odds for Man I mainly do my matched betting on big football matches and horse races. If I bet at the smaller horse race meetings, I pick horses that I think normal punters would bet on.
The reason I go to all of this trouble is because I don’t want my accounts restricted by the bookmakers. I have been very successful at avoiding restrictions.
I use a method called dutching wherever possible. So, let’s look at this match. It’s the big match of the weekend and it takes place tomorrow on Sunday the 12 August 2018.
City are 1.95. You can get 1.95 that at Bet365 and Betfred. I’m choosing Bet365 over Betfred because of Bet 365’s 2 up offer. This gives added value. The best odds for the draw are 4.1 and you can get that at MarathonBet and the best odds for Arsenal are 4.1 and you can get that at BetVictor.
So, let’s put the information into the dutching calculator and see what we get.
A. Using the Dutching Calculator
You can find this dutching calculator on my website. So, I put the names of the teams in and the odds. I’ve just put in a stake of £100 for Man City. The calculator tells us how much we need to bet on the draw and Arsenal.
1. The Total Match Percentage
The first thing I look at is the total match percentage. This is an indicator of how much you will lose in the dutching process. If the total match percentage is 100%, you shouldn’t lose any money. The higher the number is over 100%, the more money you will lose. I look for matches where I can get a total match percentage of 100-101%. You can usually only get a total match percentage this low on big matches where there will be a lot of money traded on the markets.
Anyway, you can see that the total match percentage is 100%. However, our loss is 12p. Therefore, the total match percentage can’t be exactly 100%. If it was 100% exactly, there would be no loss. So, the total match percentage must be a tiny bit lower than 100%. The calculator has rounded the total match percentage up – right.
So, if you calculate this with a normal calculator. So, if you want to turn decimal odds into a percentage, you do 1 divide the odds and multiply this by 100. I use the reciprocal function, the one over x and add the odds up. Then, I multiply this by 100. You get a number a tiny bit over 100%. This explains, why we lose 12p.
2. 2-Up Offers
So, let’s say that you want to place a bet of £100 at Bet365 for their 2up football offer.
A 2 up offer, in case you don’t know, is an offer where if your team goes 2 goal up, you get paid out straight away. When this happens, what people usually do is wait for the score to reach 2-1 and then cash out. That’s if you are backing and laying. With dutching, you have a lot more options with 2-ups. But that, a whole video in itself.
So, I choose Bet365 for the 2 up offer. If I had a free bet to use up at BetVictor, I could include it here. I would have to calculate how much the free bet is worth in real money.
3. How to Turn a Free Bet into a Stake
So, the formula to turn a free bet into a stake – well let’s, say you have a £5 free bet. You multiply the 5 by the (decimal odds – 1) and then divide this number by the decimal odds.
So, I get the calculator out and multiply 5 by 3.1, because 3.1 is the (decimal odds – 1). Then I divide by 4.1, which are the actual odds.
So, we make £3.78 from the free bet. This means that your real money stake can be reduced by £3.78 at BetVictor. So, you only have to place a bet of £43.90 on Arsenal. Obviously, you don’t want to bet a strange amount. Therefore, I would bet £40 at Bet Victor and £3.90 at the exchange.
Without the free bet included, we are making a 12p loss from the whole dutching system. So, we minus 12p from that number from £3.78 and this means that we get £3.66 for the free bet and we get a shot at the 2 up offer for free. Now, £3.66 is 73% of the free bet, which is pretty good. Now, the guys that take a subscription for their software say that you should make 80% from free bets. So, £3.66 is 34p less than 80%. However, most of them talk about doing mug bets, which will cost more than 34p.
However, we are not just placing an isolated free bet at Bet Victor, we are placing £40 of our own money as well. This makes it look as if you are committed and believe in your selection. Effectively, your £40 real money bet is a “mug bet” that is free mug bet because it also doubles up as a covering bet.
Ok, Man City won 2-0 and we never got anything from the 2 up offer. However, you get the idea that we got a free shot at the 2 up offer.
4. Advantages of Using this System
a) Your mug bets are free since they double up as covering bets
b) You get the 2 up offer for free if you have a free bet
c) You get the 2 up offer ridiculously cheaply, if you don’t have the free bet
You will usually find matches where the total match percentage adds up to around 100% on mainstream events. Therefore, you won’t get your bookmaker account restricted for betting on weird stuff.
If you are just betting the minimum as qualifying bets and just placing your free bets and laying them, your activity at the bookmaker will be low. Therefore, you might not get offered the personalised free bets that that are offered to someone who bets £40 and upwards. For example, a high roller, who bets in the £100s or £1000s isn’t going to be impressed by a £5 bet. Therefore, the bookmakers are likely to offer bigger free bets to such players.
Ok, £40 is not massive. However, it is likely that bookmakers personalised offers, that you get via email, are matched to the level of stakes that you appear to be betting.
2 Up Offers in 2024 – Update – May 2024
The days when you could get close odds matches between the bookmaker and the betting exchange are long gone. Is there any way of making money from 2 up offers in 2024? If you are using bookmakers, my answer to this question is “NO”.
A lot of things need to occur for you to win a 2 up. There are 2 main criteria:
The team that you back has to go 2 goals up.
The losing team must score at least one goal before you can make a profit.
If you team doesn’t go 2 up, you aren’t even in the game.
If you have bet on a strong favourite, such as Man City, you may have a good chance of getting into the game. However, you don’t have a strong chance of the underdog making a comeback.
If you have bet on the outsider, you have a poor chance of getting into the game. However, if you get into the game, you have a strong chance of winning your bet. This also depends on how much time is left in the game. For example, if the outsider goes 2 up in the first half, the favourite has plenty of time to turn the game around. By contrast, if the outsider scores goes 2 up in the 80th minute of the game, the outsider does not have a lot of time to score goals.
So, why not just trade on Betfair when the outsider goes 2 up? For example, you could just back the draw when the outsider is 2 up. You still won’t be getting value if you used this method blindly.
However, you have a lot of information by the time the outsider goes 2 up. You can potentially use this information to make more informed decisions. ,