I will explain how matched betting on football should be done. I will start by saying that there is almost never a good reason to lay to cover a football bet.
The bookmaker has 2 main ways of balancing his books, if he has taken too much money in bets for a selection. He can bet some of the money away on his selection at another bookmaker or he can lay the other selections.
You also have 2 ways of balancing your book – laying and dutching.
A. What is Dutching?
Dutching is when you bet on all 3 outcomes of a football match. We have a dutching calculator for qualifying bets and free bets on our website that you are welcome to use.
The formula is very simple. If you are comfortable with Excel, you could put the formula in a spreadsheet in a few minutes. That’s what I did for years.
Firstly, to demonstrate how this works (in its basic form), I will look at a couple of matches from last year. Let’s assume the qualifying bet and free bet was for the Coral Bet £5 Get a £20 Free Bet offer.
1. The Qualifying Bet
The odds for the match at Coral were:
| Stoke | Draw | Crystal Palace | |
| Odds | 2.0 | 3.2 | 3.9 |
| Stake | £5 Qualifying Bet | £3.13 | £2.56 |
We put our £5 qualifying bet on Stoke. If Stoke win, we will get £10 back including out stake. Therefore, we want to adjust our stake for the Draw and Crystal Palace to get £10 back.
The simple formula to calculate your stake is £10 divided by the Decimal Odds. Therefore, we need to bet £3.13 on the Draw and £2.56 on Crystal Palace.
So, we have a total bet amount of £10.69. Therefore, you will lose £0.69 on your qualifying bet. I will come back to this later. You will see that you won’t really lose more compared to the back and lay method.
Let’s move on to the Free Bet.
2. The Free Bet
The odds for the Free Bet are:
| Liverpool | Draw | Tottenham | |
| Odds | 2.1 | 3.4 | 3.4 |
| Stake | £22.86 | £14.12 | £20 Free Bet |
We bet our £20 Free Bet on Tottenham. If Tottenham wins, we will get a return of £48. The odds multiplied by the stake is £68. However, the Free Bet Stake is not returned.
To calculate the other stakes, I will divide 48 by the Liverpool and Draw odds.
To get the same return on Liverpool, we would have to bet £22.86. To get the same return on the Draw, we would have to bet £14.12.
In total, you will bet £36.98 of your own money. The profit will be £11.02.
B. How to Make More Money by Dutching
You will not make less money, compared to laying by dutching. I just took all 3 odds for both matches from the Coral website. You would never be betting on all 3 outcomes at the bookmaker, who gave you the free bet. You would choose 2 other bookmakers for 2 of your bets.
Therefore, in reality, you should go to an odds comparison site and choose the best 2 odds for the other 2 matches. I use Oddschecker.com. However, there are others that you can choose from.
At Coral, the total match percentage for the Stoke vs Crystal Palace match added up to almost 107%. The total match percentage for the Liverpool vs Tottenham match adds up to 106%.
In the Stoke match, you could find a few bookmakers offering 3.3 on the draw and 4 on Crystal Palace. This would bring your loss on the qualifying bet down to £0.53.
In the Liverpool match, you could easily get 2.25 on Liverpool and 3.6 on Tottenham. In this case, you would end up with £13.33 profit, compared to £13.22 using the bet and lay system.
In both cases, there was one bookmaker offering even better odds and it was possible to reduce the loss slightly more. In general, I can get a total match percentage of 103% or less by choosing the best odds at 2 other bookmakers. It is not unusual for me to get a total match percentage of just above 100%. I just picked 2 matches completely at random
, while writing this. I would usually, choose my match more carefully and work out the total match percentage, using the best odds.
In most cases, I can beat the bet and lay system for profits. However, there isn’t much in it. So, let’s just say that the basic profits are equal between systems for now.
C. The Advantages of Dutching
So far, we have decided that dutching and back and lay are equal in terms of basic profit. When you lay a bet, you don’t get any extra returns. By contrast, dutching can give you extra returns. Let’s examine some of them.
1. Use Bets 2 and 3 to Trigger Other Free Bets
When you use the bet and lay method, your lay bet doesn’t do anything more than cover your bet. By contrast, when you bet on all 3 outcomes, your covering bets can be used to trigger more free bets.
For example, in the Liverpool-Tottenham match, you are putting your free bet on Tottenham. You have to cover your free bet with a bet on Liverpool of £22.86 and a bet on the Draw with £14.12. These amounts could be qualifying bets for new bonuses. Since, you were going to bet on Liverpool and the Draw anyway, you are effectively getting your qualifying bets for free.
You don’t have to bet the whole £22.86 on Liverpool at one bookmaker. You can place a bet of £10 at 2 different bookmakers. You could bet the small change of £2.86 at a betting exchange. Let’s say that you see 2 bookmakers, with offers of Bet £10 Get £20. The £10 bets on Liverpool could be qualifying bets that trigger 2 more free bets.
When you use the bet and lay system, some free bet clubs are not worth the money and time. For example, when you have to bet £50 to get a £5 free bet, you won’t end up with a lot of profit. This is because you will lose at least a quid wagering the £50. Then, you will get around £3.50 from your free bet. All in all, you will be doing well if you can get more than £2 out of such a free bet offer.
However, if you are betting the £50 as the arms 2 and 3 of the bet on all outcomes system, you will be getting your free bet effectively for free.
2. Use Bets 2 and 3 to Bet Rollover Bonuses
Rollover bonuses are bonuses that you have to bet a certain number of times in order to be able to withdraw the bonus amount.
You can cover qualifying bets and free bets by betting on one of the other outcomes from a bookmaker account, where you have a rollover bonus.
3. Mug Bets
One of the problems with the back and lay method is that you are only betting at a bookmaker, when there is an offer involved. When you back and lay, you don’t have any other reason to place a bet at a bookmaker.
On the matched betting websites, you are advised to place mug bets and lay them off. This costs money.
When you dutch, you have potential ready-made mug bets as part of your system. In the above Liverpool/Tottenham example, you bet your free bet on Tottenham. To cover this bet, you had to bet on Liverpool and the draw. These can be your mug bets. This way, you are not just betting at bookmakers, when there is an offer. In addition, it is not costing you extra compared to backing and laying.
4. The First Leg of Your ACCA
In the Liverpool/Tottenham match, we bet on Tottenham with our free bet. Instead of just betting on the other 2 outcomes, you could use the these as the first legs of ACCAs.
You could have an ACCA (with insurance) and place one or both of your other bets as the first leg. For example, you could have an ACCA, with the first leg as the draw in the LIverpool/Tottenham match. You could have a second ACCA with Liverpool as the first leg.
Therefore, the first leg of your ACCAs are covered by your free bet and your free bet is covered by the first leg of your ACCAs. If Tottenham win, you have 2 ACCAs shooting for free bets.
Of course, if one of your ACCAs wins the first leg, you will have to cover the next matches, until you hit a loser. You should cover by dutching.
5. You Can Bet on Almost Any Match
In order to avoid gubbings, it is best to bet on matches, that are popular with UK punters. Each day, the bookmakers have one or more matches that they encourage punters to bet on. These are the main matches that I use for matched betting.
When I analyse a match, I use an odds comparison site to find the best odds for each outcome from all of the bookmakers.
When you back and lay, you need a close match between the back and lay odds. You don’t get much of a choice for lay odds as there are fewer exchanges and they usually offer similar odds.
There is no guarantee of getting good lay odds for a football match. By contrast, when you use different bookmakers to dutch, you can usually get the total match percentage down to 103% or less. You will occasionally find arbs as well.
D. Conclusions
The dutching method gives you a vast amount of flexibility. You can be extremely creative with this method.
I could have used better examples to show that dutching is just as profitable as back and lay. I just scribbled down the odds at Coral for all 3 outcomes for the purposes of writing this article. Dutching is the way to go for football. I have only scratched the surface of what can be done with dutching in this post.