This page is aimed at helping you to get your head around the principles of making money from matched betting.  Everything on this site is completely free for you to use, and we’ve laid out all the information you’ll need.

OK, so what is Matched Betting?

Firstly, matched betting is not gambling, because you never ‘risk’ your money on the outcome of a particular event.  Every time you place a bet for a team to win, you simultaneously ’lay’ that bet with a betting exchange site, betting for the team to lose.

Win or lose, your money is safe.

Betting exchanges such as Betfair or BetDAQ allow you to act as the bookie, and make ‘lay bets’ – betting against a particular outcome, to effectively cancel out bets for that outcome.  So, if you bet on the event as both a punter and a bookmaker at the same time, the ‘bet’ side and the ‘lay’ side cancel each other out completely:

Outcome 1: Team A Wins

You as Punter win £20 (£30-£10 stake)
You as the Bookmaker lose £20
Net Result = £0

Outcome 2: Team A Does not Win

You as the Punter lose £10
You as the Bookmaker win £10
Net Result = £0

So how do you make money from this process?

The key is to make use of the free bets that are offered by online bookmakers, to encourage you to sign up to their sites.  This is effectively free money, which you can use to place online bets.

But free bets come with strings attached… if you win, you can’t just withdraw the money you’ve made:  it remains in your account within their system.  The idea is that you play again, and keep playing, until eventually you can withdraw the funds.  The terms vary between different bookmakers, but basically you can only get your hands on the money once you’ve gambled with it multiple times, and probably risked more of you own money in the process.

The trick, which might seem counter-intuitive at first, is to aim to lose the money.

Place a bet for something based on likely odds that you’ll lose, and at the same time, place a matching ‘lay bet‘ via a betting exchange, so that when you lose the ‘free bet’, you win the ‘lay bet’ and the winnings appear in your betting exchange account.

And that’s it. You’ve made a profit without risking your own money!

People are making thousands of pounds using this technique, and it’s actually really easy when you know how.

Calculating the Odds.

The tricky bit about successful matched betting is calculating the amount you need to ‘lay’ to cover a paticular bet, and to find matched bets with the lowest possible loss due to variations in the odds and any commission payable.

If you bet £10 on 3:1 odds to win with a bookmaker, how much do you need to lay against the outcome, at different odds, via your chosen betting exchange?  Find out using our Stake Calculator!

At Matched Betting HQ we’ve made it easy!

Simply download our Stake Calculator and Odds Converter to work out your lay bets and calculate any ‘costs’ associated with your matched bets.  And use this spreadsheet to keep a log of all your activity and record your accumulating profits.

Finding matching bets and making your calculations are the tricky bit, which make this a game of skill – but it’s not complicated really.  If you are organised and disciplined, there really is nothing to it, and by using our free and simple online tools, you’re already one step ahead!