If you are a matched bettor, you are probably doing it wrong. 

In this post, I am assuming you know how to back and lay for qualifying bets and free bets.  I will explain why this is not a value strategy.  In the next article, I will give you the simple solution.

A. The Layer Method

Let’s say that you see an offer of Bet £50 Get a £50 Free Bet. To get your free bet, you have to place a qualifying bet of £50 on something.

The Layer decides to bet on a football match and he places a qualifying back bet of £50 on Man Utd at even money. Then, he lays Man Utd at 2.1 at Betfair. Whatever the result, he will lose £3.66.

B. The Punter Method

The average punter would simply place a qualifying back bet on something he fancies. Let’s say the Punter is a favourite backer and he decides to back the same football team as the Layer. If Man Utd wins, the Punter wins £50. If Man Utd loses, he loses £50.

In other words, the average punter isn’t covering his bets.

Who do you think is getting more value – the Layer or the Punter?

C. The Layer versus The Punter

The key to work this out is to figure out approximately how much each would get back, on average. Let’s say the Layer and the Punter put this same bet on 100 times and the win/loss averages out fairly.

We don’t know what the real chances of Man Utd winning are. However, the real odds would be somewhere between the bet and lay odds.

The Layer’s loss over 100 bets is simple to calculate. He will lose £3.66 each time he bets. Therefore, the Layer will lose £366 over 100 bets.

Let’s say that the bookmakers are mean and the real odds are the lay odds of 2.1. (It doesn’t matter which odds we choose as the same person will come out the winner).

With odds of 2.1, Man Utd’s real chances of winning are 47.6% and their chances of losing or drawing are 52.4%.

Therefore, if the Punter makes the equivalent bet 100 times:
47.6 times, he will win £50 (Total: £2,380)
52.4% times, he will lose £50 (Total: -£2,620)

Therefore, the Punter will lose a total of £240 over 100 bets.

D. The Layer is the Loser

The Layer loses £366 over 100 bets, while the Punter loses £240. You should realise that, by deciding to use the lay odds as the real probability of Man Utd winning, I biased the results in favour of the Layer.

If the real odds of Man Utd winning were lower than 2.1 but higher than 2.0, the difference in losses would be even bigger.

For example, if the real odds were the back odds (2.0), this would mean that Man Utd has a 50% chance of winning. In this situation, the Punter would break even over 100 bets, while the Layer would still lose £366.

E. Backing and Laying is Buying Insurance

When you lay a bet off, you are effectively buying insurance on each of your bets.  Basically, you are buying insurance against having losing streaks.  If you didn’t buy insurance, the losing streaks would get evened out by winning streaks.  

To be fair, when you use the matched betting software, you will probably get closer bet and lay odds compared to my example.  

However, choosing closely matched bet and lay odds, will get you gubbed eventually.  If you are getting a weekly £5 free bet and you get gubbed, you will miss out on more than £150/year.    

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