How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Ever y Time

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time CONTENTS ABOUT THE AUTHOR INTRODUCTION: Welcome to arbitrage CHAPTER ONE: How do odds work?, what are arbitrages, why do they occur, and how long are they going to be here? CHAPTER TWO: Tricks and tools for picking the perfect arb CHAPTER THREE: Easy staking for maximum profit CHAPTER FOUR: Let's get down to business! CHAPTER FIVE: Arbs in-running CHAPTER SIX: Something special - creative arbs CHAPTER SEVEN: Spread betting arbs CHAPTER EIGHT: The empire strikes back CHAPTER NINE: Taking evasive action CHAPTER TEN: Welcome to the organisation INFORMATION SITES: A selection of information websites BOOKMAKERS DIRECTORY: A listing of bookmakers ARBITRAGE CALCULATOR: User guide FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mr. X For over 20 years, Mr.X has been employed to `set odds' by some of the country's leading High Street and offshore bookmakers. His information, analysis and experience have made them millions of pounds profit his number-crunching regularly beats the industry standard `return on investment'. But now, he has decided to help serious investors, like you, take advantage of a little-known form of trading - one that results in regular, nil-risk, guaranteed profits. Because he is still active in the bookmaking industry, however, he has asked that his identity remain secret. Mr X is an òdds compiler', and as you progress through his professional secrets and tips, you'll realise just how important this strange group of people are to your àrbitrage' profits. With Mr.X to guide you, you have an expert uniquely qualified to tell you exactly when, where and how the bookmakers go wrong - and exactly how YOU can take advantage INTRODUCTION Early morning. The sun creeps in beneath the curtains and lights your bedroom with the colours of a new day. Outside, the birds are squabbling over their summer nests. The fragrance of flowers drifts in through the open window. No reason to rise straight away, because you are part of the world that lives life at its own pace and follows its own plan. No train timetables. No motorway driving. No boss. No stress. No compromises. No spending your life making money for someone else. No thanks. You have joined the select group of men and women who have opted for a better way to live and work, who are fully in control of their finances and their lifestyles too. All this is within the reach of anyone who wants it, and can be achieved in a very short time, by following the instructions in this book. Perhaps, for the moment, you don't want to strike out in a new direction, you would just like to supplement your present income with another, and that's fine too. You can work as little or as often as you wish and make extra money as you need it, but I warn you, this is exciting, satisfying and remunerative. The aim of this book is to put into your hands all the information you need to begin your career as a sports arbitrage dealer, straight away. Which means that, every time you trade, you will always make a profit, and never a loss. You will never suffer a market slump, you will never pay `Brokers fees, and you will never pay tax on your returns. Because, unlike the stock market, the sports arbitrage market never has a bad day. Dealers only make money, they never lose. In the few days spent studying this book, you can learn what it took me five years to discover, sometimes by trial and error. There is no substitute for experience, and when you share mine, you'll have access to the knowledge gained in concluding thousands of successful arbitrage deals. If you put this knowledge to use, and follow my step-by-step instructions, you will achieve outstanding financial success. Exactly how much you earn will depend on how efficiently you run your business. Once the level of your financial investments has reached my recommended and very attainable targets, then your profits will largely depend on using your knowledge and skills to best effect - not on how much cash you have in the bank.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time And every one of those skills can be acquired by reading the following pages. Do you remember being told at school that if you worked hard you would be successful? Well that's only a half-truth. I know lots of people who work very hard and aren't successful at all. The secret is to work hard at the right thing. And if you work hard at this, you will be successful. You can't fail to be. Here's a promise. If you follow the path laid out here, within 14 days you will be making profits from your own sports arbitrage trading. And if you invest a reasonable amount of time in your business, within another thirty days you will be a better dealer than the majority of those already earning their living by it. Making profits at sports arbitrage isn't difficult, once you know how. We're not talking rocket science, but this is a craft with its own secrets, skills and fast-tracks. Put these together and you'll net regular and often large sums of money. The key is to know where to look, when to look, and how to take best advantage of the many opportunities you will find. This book is an instruction manual of how to make substantial nil-risk profits from a specialized and lucrative area of investment. So lucrative, that it can truly be described as a twenty-first century goldmine. Does that sound an extravagant claim? The Californian Gold Rush began when one man had the curiosity to look where others had walked by. Soon, he was joined by thousands. Everything that you need to know will be found in the next ten chapters. Put my strategies into action to earn a life-changing income, without even having to leave your home. Which means that while you are building a bright financial future, you can enjoy the flowers in the garden as well. CHAPTER ONE Something Odd For You The odds that a bookmaker offers are simply his opinion of how likely, or unlikely, a team, player, or horse is to win any given event, expressed in figures. Odds can be represented in various ways, but they are all easy to understand once you know the format. Here are the main kinds you are likely to encounter. The Fractions Many bookmakers work in 'fractional' odds, i.e. 7/4, 15/8, 3/1 etc. This format has been used in the UK since betting began. To understand how it works, we'll take it to pieces and put it back together again. The rule with every fractional odd is that the top figure is your profit, and the bottom figure is the stake required to win that profit. Therefore... An odd of 15/8 gives a profit of £15 for every £8 staked. Or An odd of 2/1 gives a profit of £2 for every £1 staked. `You win what's on the top if you stake what's on the bottom'

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time Odds are flexible things and you can stake whatever you want on whatever outcome you choose, and working out your return is just as simple ... if you have The Arbitrage Handbook. On page oyu’ll find a comprehensive list of nearly all the odds used by bookies. To work out how much your return is on any bet requires one quick calculation. Just multiply your stake by the Èuro Decimal' odd that corresponds to the ÙK Fractional Odd' in question. If you have £,25 on an 11/8 chance ... simply look up that odd in the table under the column headed ÙK fractional'. Move across to the column adjacent, and there you will see the decimal equivalent ...2.37. Multiply your stake, £25, by 2.37 to give your return, £59.25 To calculate your profit on the bet, deduct the £25 stake from the return of £59.25, which gives you £34.25. Decimals Many bookmakers, particularly on the Internet, use the Decimal or Euro Decimal format. (It's the same thing, just called two different names.) Non UK European bookmakers have always shown their odds in this way, and there is a lot to be said for it. Once you know the drill, it's very easy to use, and it allows bookmakers to offer tiny gradations of odds not always possible with the fractional system. Prices will be chalked up in the following way... 2.50, 2.37, 34.00 etc The first thing to remember is that when a bookie betting in decimals offers 2.50 on an outcome, he has included your returned stake in this figure. So if you have a pound on a team at 2.50 and they win, £2.50 is the total amount that you will pick up. Since your bet was a pound, you have made one pound fifty profit, which in fractional terms, means you have backed a 6/4 winner. The quick way of converting a decimal price into a fractional odd, is to simply deduct 'I,' from the decimal figure. So a decimal price shown as 4.00 isn't 4/1, it's 3/1. The decimal price 8.00 is actually 7/1. Remember, 4.00 and 8.00 and every other decimal odd contain your returned stake. To work out your return on a decimal bet, use the same process we used for fractions, multiply the Euro Decimal by your stake. So, ten pounds on a 3.00 shot will return you 30 pounds. To find your profit, deduct your original stake of ten pounds, and you have a profit figure of twenty pounds. US Odds The Americans use a totally different system. US lineage or odds are always calculated using a base figure of 100, and they look like this: + 300, + 400, -500 etc If the odd has a `+' sign in front of it, it shows your profit for every 100 staked. It's what a British bookmaker would call òdds against'. So £100 at + 300 would give a profit of £300. Your total return would be £400 including your £100 stake.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time Or $100 at +500 would give a profit of $500 and a total return of $600 including your $100 stake. If the odd has a'-' sign in front, it represents how much you need to stake to make a 100 profit. Our British bookie would call these bets 'odds on.' So a price of -200 means that you have to stake 200 in order to make a profit of 100. Let's say you placed 200 pounds on a - 200 shot. You would win £100, and of course your £200 stake would be returned, so you would pick up 300 pounds in all. At -300, you would have to put down 300 pounds to win £100. If you are relatively new to bookmakers' prices, I recommend that you take some time out to study the Reference Grids on pages 32 & 33. You will soon see the connection between the three formats. Euro Decimal is becoming the most popular of them though, with many UK bookmakers now displaying their odds in this way. What the odds mean You can work the odds of practically anything happening. Even how long you are going to live. That's what Insurance companies do when they quote you a price on your Life Insurance. Bookmakers look at sporting and other events, and `price them up.' Here's an example that illustrates that their odds are really only an opinion, sometimes right, sometimes wrong, expressed in figures. 'Burn' A bookie's odds compiler is standing by traffic lights, which are on red. A Mini pulls up in the nearside lane, on the far side a Transit van arrives. The compiler notices that they are both revving their engines. He reckons that a 'burn,' a race to get away from the lights first, is imminent. It's in the nature of odds compilers to try to work out a price for who will 'win.' That's what they do all day at work. He will assess the drivers, the car power, the weather, and any other factors that could affect the result. After a quick calculation he bets 1/3 the Mini and 2/1 the Transit Van. As with most odds, and that includes horses, football, and all the other major betting sports, these quotes are just an individual's estimate of each outcome's chance. In this case, the compiler has no form to go on, and is just taking an educated guess. You might be surprised at how often he does this in his work too The Mini is the favourite, which simply means that its odds give the shortest reward to the backer. Even if you have never dealt in bookmakers' odds before, you can easily find the favourite in any contest, no matter how many runners or possibilities there may be. Just convert each fractional odd into a decimal using our References Grid. In this contest there are only two runners, and the conversion looks like this. 1/3 = 1.33 2/1 = 3.00 The lowest figure is always the favourite, no matter how many runners you may have. There are some events in which all of the outcomes can be priced up with total accuracy. For instance, the odds for a dice to roll number '1' on any given throw are a certain 5/1 chance, the odds for a coin to spin 'heads' are Even Money. And the odds against the number 21 to appear first in this Saturday's National Lottery are 48/1, as I'll show in a moment. Just before we get to the Lottery, an interesting thought on fractional odds. A fractional odd will always

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time have the following characteristics. The top figure indicates the number of chances that any given outcome will not happen The bottom figure indicates the number of chances that it will happen. So, in this weekend's Lottery draw there are 49 equally weighted balls, one of which is 21. This means that there are 48 chances that the first number out will not be 21, and just 1 chance that it will. Therefore, the true odds for 21 to be the first ball out this weekend are 48/1. The top figure shows the number of chances it won't win the bottom, the number of chances it will. So, back to our odds compiler standing at the lights. Let's use the same rule-of-thumb to follow his reasoning. His odds of 1/3 for the Mini indicate that in every four 'burns,' he calculates it won't win on one occasion, and will win on three. His odds of 2/1 for the White Van show that in every three races, he believes it won't win on two occasions, and will win on one. But of course, as in all sporting events, his odds are only a matter of opinion expressed as a figure. Don't worry if this seems confusing at the moment - as you work through this handbook the use of odds will become clear with the examples shown. What Are Arbitrages, Why Do They Occur, And How Long Are They Going To Be Here? ARBITRAGE - (French) To buy and sell for profit, taking advantage of varying prices in different markets. That's the simple definition of an arbitrage, and that's the cornerstone on which your business will be built. You will take advantage of the differences between markets - in this case, bookmakers' markets on sporting events - to construct a certain profit for yourself on each and every deal you make, without the chance of incurring a loss. Your first question might be, "Why would bookmakers, a notably shrewd bunch of gentlemen, present me with the opportunity to remove large amounts of cash from their coffers, without any risk of financial loss to myself?" It's worth fully explaining the answer to that question, because you will then be absolutely clear why arbitrage opportunities occur, why the bookmakers can't stop you taking their cash, and what you should do to benefit from the greatest `free offer' ever made. Firstly, The Bookmaker's 'Theory Of Profit' When bookmakers offer prices on an event, they do so, naturally, with the objective of making money, and they attempt to make that money by offering you odds which are slightly less than the real chance of the èvent' taking place. In our area of operation, the èvent' we are talking about is usually a player or team winning a match. The bookmaker pockets the difference between the `real' price of the player or team winning, and the price that he pays his customers, and that difference is his profit. It works like this... Just suppose we have a tennis match (or snooker, or darts, or anything else that takes your fancy) and the two players are of absolutely equal ability. Neither can be said to have a better chance than the other and, like the spin of a coin, this could go either way. Then the true chance of both players, just like that coin spin, would be èven money'. So, if the bookmaker priced both players at èven money,' and he took £,50 for one player and £50 for the

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time other, the bettor who picked the winner would be £50 richer. The backer who had chosen the loser would be £50 the poorer and the bookmaker would be, well, he'd be exactly where he started. The bookmaker would be neither richer nor poorer, he would merely have transferred the cash from the backer of the loser to the backer of the winner, without any profit for himself. Which is not his aim at all. The bookmaker therefore decides that, to make a profit, he needs to take a cut of the money invested. This means, irrespective of which individual backers win and lose, the bookmaker will be in pocket. He does this by altering the odds he offers his customers. He reduces his prices so that backers receive slightly less than the true odds their selection has of winning. In the example of our two tennis players of exactly similar abilities, instead of offering èven money' for each, the bookmaker takes a little something for himself and now offers 10/11 for each of them. When they were even money, you would only have had to stake ten pounds to win another ten pounds that's what èven money' means. Now however, since the bookmaker's odds are 10/11, you would have to stake eleven pounds to win that tenner. You are now receiving slightly worse than the player's true odds of winning. Now The Punter Wins... And So Does The Bookmaker Let's re-run the match and see what happens when bets are settled at the new odds. Our same two backers step in with their £50 bets. One backs the winner again, and the other backs the loser, again, which just seems like asking for trouble. Some things stay the same. The bookie takes £100 pounds on the game, the losing backer bids adieu to his £,50 once more, but it's a different story for the backer of the winner. Because the bookmaker has reduced his odds, the winning backer only picks up £95.24. £50 on a 10/11 chance wins £45.24, plus his original stake of £,50. He's £4.76 worse off than when he backed the same player at èven money'. The bookmaker took £100 on the tennis match, but whichever of the two players won, because he had priced them both at 10/11, he was only ever going to have to pay out £95.24. The £4.76 is his cut for running the book. Bookmakers apply the same basic principle to every event, whether it be a two-player tennis match or a forty-runner Grand National. By offering less than the true odds, they seek to make an overall profit, whichever player, horse or competitor is successful. Bookmakers have a name for this process - they call it making an 'over-round book'. And because they use a formula to do it, there is a simple way to discover how much profit any bookmaker is trying to make from any given contest. Knowing these figures is vital to arbitrage dealers. We only need to make a few simple calculations to find out. Basically, it's the same calculation for every player or runner in the event. We need to know how much money we should have to invest on each individual competitor to return £100 if he or she were to win. So if a player was èven money' we should need to invest £50, which would return us £,50 profit plus our £50 stake, for a total return of £100. To make life easier, I've included a floppy disk which works these calculations out for you. You may find it helps to open the file and follow my example below. We repeat the process for every player or competitor and then add up all the resulting stakes. The amount by which this final figure exceeds £100 represents the bookmaker's percentage profit on the event.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time A case in point, our two tennis players, priced at 10/11... To achieve a return of £100 on a player priced at 10/11, my chart says that you need to invest £52.38. There are two players, so we need the same figure for both of them. Our total outlay would therefore be £104.76. In the case of this tennis match, our total investment to return us £100, whichever player wins, is £4.76 more than the £100 to be returned. This means that the bookmaker is trying to make a profit of 4.76 percent on the game. If you remember, the backer who placed £50 on the winner at 10/11 received only £95.24, which is £4.76 short of the amount he should have received for backing a true èven money' shot. In theory, being in control of their own prices, bookmakers can increase and decrease their profit margins at will. For instance, some bookmakers might not be satisfied at making 4.76 percent profit from a tennis match. They might decide to shorten their odds and so increase their profit margin. In which case, they would probably offer 5/6 about each of the two players. To see how much extra profit they are trying to make, we'll do our calculations again... To achieve a return of £100 if a player is 5/6, we need to invest £54.54. There are two players, so our total investment is now £109.08. Which means that this bookmaker's profit margin is 9.08 percent, or as he would put it, his book is 9.08 percent 'over-round'. I hope you've stayed with me through all of this, because knowing the principles that bookmakers employ will help you to overturn their apple-cart. And overturn it you will, by stealing these very principles andmaking them work for you. Now let's talk arbitrages. What Is An Arbitrage And How Does It Happen? Agatha Christie fans will have noted a clue a few lines ago, when I said that ìn theory' bookmakers can increase and decrease their profit margins at will. But the fact is that bookmakers operate in a very competitive market, and they cannot simply decide to increase their margins by offering worse and worse prices. If they did, no one would bet with them and then they'd make nothing at all. So bookmakers have to bow to market forces, and accept the same sort of profit margins that their competitors accept. As a sports arbitrage dealer you will most often be looking at two-outcome events, matches between individuals and teams. The UK betting industry as a whole seeks to make a profit of around 7 percent from these events. Now that's not a huge amount, and it takes only a small mistake in pricing or a minor difference of opinion between the men who set the odds, to overthrow that profit margin entirely. This can put the `book' in the backers favour and create an arbitrage. Here's an example. Wimbledon, a Ladies Singles match between Lindsay Davenport and Kim Clijsters. The odds compilers at the Tote saw this game as 2/9 Davenport and 3/1 Clijsters, whereas the boys at Victor Chandler's saw it as 2/5 Davenport and 7/4 Clijsters. A Nice Difference Of Opinion Is A11 It Takes If we take the best prices available for each player, and use our method of working out bookmakers' profit margins, we'll discover something to our financial advantage. Davenport 2/5 - amount of investment required to return £100 - £71.42. Clijsters 3/1 - amount of investment required to return £100 - £25.00.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time Total amount of investment required to return £100, whichever player wins - £96.42. This is a classic arbitrage. For every £96.42 invested, £100 will be returned - a guaranteed, nil-risk profit of 3.58 percent on outlay, in less than an hour and a half. Bookmakers have a name for this too. When the percentages add up to less than 100, they call the book 'under-round.' I call it money for nothing. This example is by no means unusual. There are dozens of àrbs' paying around 4 percent every week. If you invest in just ten of them to earn forty pounds profit from each, you will net a tax-free income of £400 in 7 days. Arbs which pay around 6 percent are plentiful too. Look at the opportunity presented by this `3-ball' at the British Open Golf Championship. A `3-ball' is a bet bookmakers offer frequently. It simply means that backers are asked to identify which of three named golfers will make the best score in the tournament... Wilson 11/10 Stan James. Riley 14/5 www.centrebet.com Sanders 4/1 William Hill Now let's work out the figures. To return £100 from 11/10 shot Wilson, our investment is £47.61. For Riley, priced 14/5, we need to lay out £26.31. And on Sanders at 4/1, we need to place £20.00. Our total outlay on these three will be £93.92, and our guaranteed return, whichever wins, is £100. A typical arb profit of £6.08 for every £100 invested. Even these 6 percent profit arbs will look tame when I tell you where to regularly find arb opportunities of 10 percent and more. But more of that later... An Odds-Compiler's Ego Means Free Money For You So an arb occurs when, using two or more bookmakers, we can construct an 'under-round' book, where the total amount of money laid out to secure a £100 return, whichever competitor wins, comes to less than £100. It's a very simple concept, and it's perfect. But the question still nagging you might be, "why do bookmakers provide us with so many opportunities to pick up this free money?" Most arbs occur because the men responsible for making the bookmakers' prices, the odds-compilers, have differences of opinion about the merits of the players or teams they are assessing. I'd have to say that, as a class, you won't find a group of bigger egos in any one place on the planet than at a meeting of odds compilers. These guys firmly believe that they know more about the particular sports they price up than anyone else, living or dead. For them, it isn't just a price they're putting up, it's their marvellous opinion - and in their opinion, they are totally, unmistakably right. So when a compiler in another company has a different opinion, it's always a case of Ì'm right and he's wrong'. It can become a matter of pride never to alter prices to fall in line with someone else's - and so

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time another arb is born. There was a rather amusing example of this machismo in action at Wimbledon, when the High Street behemoths took each other on over the merits of Venus Williams and Justine Henin. The Hill's compiler priced the game as 2/9 Williams and 11/4 Henin, whereas the boys at Ladbrokes saw it as 2/5 Williams and 7/4 Henin. These odds produced a small but definite arb. Ladbrokes price for Williams of 2/5 required us to invest £71.42 to achieve a return of £100. Hills price for Henin, 11/4, required an investment of £26.66. The total amount required to return £100 was £98.08. Although this was only a small arb, neither the Hills nor the Ladbrokes compiler would back down, and they glared at each other across the High Street for days, while bemused backers helped themselves to as much 2 percent profit as they wanted. Eventually it took a member of the Board to step in and prevail upon his compiler to move a price. Sometimes it only takes a very small difference of opinion between compilers to create an arb, especially when they are separated by an ocean. In Britain bookmakers like to see a 7 percent profit from `two outcome' events, but as we'll discuss in depth later, in other countries this is not the case. In America the `sports books, as they are known, are satisfied with a much smaller profit, and work to a margin of around 3 percent. Because of that smaller margin, US prices are often a fraction more generous than in the UK. The result is it takes less of a difference of opinion with an American odds compiler to create an arb, than with a compiler of the home-grown variety. And investing with the American sports books has never been easier. Most interestingly, and MUCH more of this later, the best and most frequent arbs occur in the many new untested markets, and in the 'in-running' markets, where bookmakers offer continually varying odds on sporting event as it takes place. In these areas, compilers, for all their high opinion of their own abilities, are often exposed as having only the haziest idea of what they are doing. Put to the test in a cricket match when a vital wicket falls, or in an 'in-running' market on a football game on which team will take the last corner, they come up with wildly differing odds and a superb array of arbs for us to feast on. But How Long Will This Feast Last? I can see no end to it. The fact is that the Internet has powered a dramatic increase in the number of bookmakers, all greedy to get into your home and grab your custom. The market is vast and the bookmakers are coming over the ridge of the hill like the Indians at the battle of the Little Big Horn. To break into the market and make an impact on consumers, newcomers must keep their prices competitive, devise new opportunities, offer more `value' than their competitors, and venture into untried markets. Of course, the established bookmaking companies then have to respond in kind to hold onto their existing accounts. You may ask whether the industry as a whole is doing anything to counteract sports arbitrage dealers from helping themselves to free money. The short answer is `no.' Bear in mind that for every bookmaker who pays out on the winning side of an arbitrage deal, there is another who picks up cash from the losing end. Provided a company's compilers are competent, any arbi-

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time trage losses are perfectly sustainable in the context of a company's overall non-arbitrage business. In fact, I know that when odds compilers have a particularly strong opinion about the outcome of a contest, some deliberately construct an arb with a competitor. They put their company in the position of taking all the money for the player they believe will lose, and are happy to do so. For a clever compiler, the chance to make arbs is a real boon. It means that he can attract plenty of cash for any player or team he chooses. What other business in the world can put their product in the shop window and be absolutely certain that they will sell just as many as they want? So, arbs are not a totally bad thing for our òld enemy' either. There is no reason to suppose that we will see any reduction in their number in the foreseeable future. Quite the contrary, I believe that arb opportunities will continue to increase as more and more bookmakers try to compete in a wider and wider range of markets. Arbitrages are here to stay, and so are sports arbitrage dealers. CHAPTER TWO Tricks And Tools For Picking The Perfect Arb Now that you know exactly what arbs are and how they're made, let's start looking at the various aids that will help you to search them out. We'll also cover how you can best organize your precious time. Make no mistake, bad organization can ruin any business, including yours. There is no difficult-to-learn skill in being a successful arbitrage trader, but what you do have to be is organized and professional. Shrewd use of time is very important to the success of your operation. It can make the difference between a reasonable income and a very, very good income. Preparation is the key. First, you need to make a long-term plan of action. At the back of this book you will find a list of very useful Internet sites from which you will be able to discover every match and tournament date for every major arb-producing sport. In a later chapter, I will go through each sport and advise you where and when to look for early or ante post prices. Use these two aids to help compile your overall plan. Specifically, you must make a list of all the events in which you are likely to discover arbs. What interests you is not so much the dates on which the events are played, but the dates that the bookmakers are liable to publish their prices. I'll advise you about this later. The earlier you are at locating prices, the more arbs you will find, and the better those arbs are likely to be - before any bookmakers' gross pricing errors are realised and corrected. Your long-term entry for a particular day might read something like this... Tuesday 14th Tennis: Snooker: Football: Cricket:

US Open Regal Scottish Coming weekend matches National League and India v Sri Lanka One-Day game

This will alert you to coming opportunities. On the morning of the 14th, or the night before, when previous results and the `draws' for the relevant competitions are known, you can add names to these events and produce a detailed `Daily Plan.'

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time So, when you sit down to begin trading each morning, you should know exactly what you are looking for on that specific day. Write your 'hit-list' of events to be àrb-checked' down. That way you won't miss any opportunity for profit. A Typical Daily List... Tuesday Tennis - US Open 2nd Round matches A vs B C vs D E vs F Snooker - Regal Scottish 3rd Round matches A vs B C vs D E vs F Soccer - Leagues that you wish to concentrate on Scottish One Scottish Two Series B Finnish Premier Specials Cricket National League Long List A vs B C vs D E vs F G vs H I vs j India v Sri Lanka, One-Day International Match prices Specials With your Daily Plan in front of you, you are now ready to make money.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time Finding Your Arbs The first thing that you should do is compile a table of bookmakers' prices for each specific event named on your Daily Plan. This is a simple table aimed at quickly pinpointing arb opportunities. This table will save you hours of work each week, checking and re-checking prices. All you need is a plain grid, with the names of the bookmakers along the top, and the event competitors down the side. You can either make a handwritten one, or you can produce it on your PC in Èxcel. Here's the simple grid which helped me to identify an arb in a tennis match between Andy Roddick and Lleyton Hewitt...

Roddick Hewitt

B/Sgre 6/4 1/2

Ladbrokes 13/8 4/9

Hills 6/4 1/2

Corals 2/1 1/3

S James 15/8 4/11

Stanley 5/4 4/7

S/Odds 6/4 1/2

The best price for Roddick was immediately obvious at 2/1, and the best price for Hewitt was 4/7. The investment on Roddick worked out at £33.33 to return £100, and on Hewitt it was £63.63, making a total investment of £96.96, and an arb profit of 3.04 percent. Tables like this are very useful when bookmakers put up their prices at wildly differing times. Some of the firms on this table had their prices on display within an hour of the `draw' being known, others waited until the morning of the match. By filling in this table as the bookmakers priced-up, I was able to spot the arb the moment it appeared, without wasting any time checking between the sites of èarly bird' bookmakers and the `latecomers.' One way of finding a large number of prices in a hurry is to enlist the help of one or two excellent little workers called òdds comparison sites.' These sites gather together the prices from a multitude of bookmakers and present them on grids similar to the one which I compiled for the Roddick/Hewitt match. Understanding how to use them and their special features is essential knowledge for arb traders. Comparison sites sometimes highlight opportunities that might otherwise be missed. A Brief User's Guide To Three ` Odds Comparison Sites' www.betbrain.com This is one of the first odds comparison websites and now incorporates a whole host of features, all of them easy to use. The Home page sets out the navigation of the site in two ways - you can either use the `Quick Brain' to pinpoint your specific request (two drop-down menus), or you can make use of the menus on the top bar to perform a more general search. The `Quick Brain' is very useful, taking you directly to any event of interest. If, for instance, you were looking for prices on Baseball's National League Pennant, you would simply select Baseball from the top dropdown, and National League Pennant from the bottom dropdown. The initial Èvent Page' will then be revealed, providing some handy 'quick-access' information. The figure next to each team in the National League will tell you how many bookmakers are displaying odds on betbrain. For that selection, a second column tells you what the average price is for that team, and another column indicates the best price available for them from firms displayed on the site. Click on your selected team, and you will move onto a detailed grid of odds for them, with the best prices highlighted in green.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time Should you be looking at a soccer match on betbrain, you will be given an additional piece of information on the initial Èvent Page.' This is the percentage probability of the selection winning, based on the àverage price' listed. This figure represents the bookmaker's price firstly converted into a percentage, then re-calculated with his profit margin removed. So if a team were offered at 2/1, in a `book' that was 12 percent 'over-round' (quite a usual 'over-round' figure in a three-outcome event) the calculation would be as follows... 2/1 is the fractional equivalent of having a 33.33 percent chance of winning, less the bookmaker's 12 percent profit margin. That produces a re-calculated figure of 29.04 percent as the team's real chance of victory. This is useful information for those who like to calculate their own prices for matches. When on betbrain's home page, note the `Bookmaker Information Link.' This is useful too, detailing the trading terms of every bookmaker on the site, their limits, contact numbers, special bonus offers and so on. Betbrain is excellent for soccer information, and worth its weight in gold for tracking down your football arbs. However, at the time of writing, two of our top arb sports are not covered on the site - tennis and snooker - though plans are afoot to include them in the future. www.infobctting com You don't need to be beautiful to be useful, which is just as well, because this site is just a mass of unlovely links, with no design skills in evidence whatsoever. But it works well, and is a very useful site for arbitrage traders. After negotiating the home page, which only wants to know whether you speak Italian or English, you will find yourself getting down to business on a page split vertically down the middle. On the left you'll find 120 links to bookmakers based in an array of countries as long as your arm, with details of language, types of payments accepted, online facilities, and minimum stakes. On the right are links guiding you to the sporting events covered on www.infobetting.com. The most interesting of these links for you and I is probably tennis's ÀTP Current Matches and Stats' link. This will display a green and red flashing light when there are odds on display. Click the link for a display of the bookmakers' prices. This site also gives the start times for all ATP matches (in Central European Time) and, for those of you who also follow tennis as a betting as well an arb medium, includes the players' head-to-head statistics for all games currently being played. This site could hardly be more useful for arbitrage traders. It has a column they call `Perc Tot,' which displays the percentage value of the best prices available for any particular player or team with bookmakers on the site. These `best prices' are coloured in red on the grid. Some other useful functions of the site include... • A good link directory • Free bets and bonus listings • Probabilities section • Search facility This site is not very well known in the UK, but it will save you plenty of time and can guide you to numerous bookmakers you would probably never find otherwise. Ten out of ten to this Italian job! Who cares what it looks like?

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time www.oddschecker.com Another old stalwart, and somewhat improved in a recent re-vamp. You would have to say that oddschecker is aimed at non-professional traders, as it features only UK-based companies that have an Internet platform and does not include any telephone-only or international firms. Finding your event can involve a good many clicks as well. For instance, if you wanted information on the Men's Semi-Finals of the US Open Tennis Championships, you would first have to click `Tennis,' then ÙS Open, Men, before being offered a choice of events. Once you are on the price grid itself, things get better. The grid is colour-coded. If a price box has a blue tint, this indicates that the odds are shortening, if it is a shade of pink, the price is lengthening. One of the more unusual features is the `Price Change Time Facility.' By clicking on a player, team or other selection, you will be given access to price changes, company by company, and the time that those changes were made. This can be useful when you need to know the trend of the market, or if further price upheavals are imminent. There are several `gimmicks' on oddschecker, but they are of little interest to you and I. There is a `Steamer Alert' service and a `Price Changes By E-mail' facility. But as a professional trader, you are likely to know about the price changes before oddschecker do. Another gripe: I reckon that on occasions the time between companies changing their odds and those changes appearing on the site are far too long, and you cannot afford any delay in receiving this pricechange information. Was it Einstein who discovered that time is money? By all means use oddschecker as a secondary assistant, but don't spend too long there. In conclusion, odds comparison sites can assist you, but the key to success is that your own research should be highly organized. Your object is to always be in the right place at the right time, making arbs while others are still unaware of their existence. This is a skill that can only be learnt through experience, so I recommend that you make use of mine and save yourself a rather long slog. In chapter 3 I'll show you how to plot your time for the best possible financial returns, how to increase profits by always being first in the queue, and how to find bookmaker cockups before they are released to the public. CHAPTER THREE Easy Staking for Maximum Profit Having cornered your arb, the hard work is done, and now you only have to ensure your investments are staked correctly to realise maximum profit. In the majority of these investments, no doubt, you'll be making the classic arb - that's an equal profit whichever player or team wins - and in this chapter I'll show you how to get your staking right every time. There may be occasions when you don't want to make the classic arb, but to win more from one side of the deal than the other. This is likely to be when you have a specialist knowledge of the sport or event being traded, and are confident that you can name the winner. We'll look at that too. The first thing to say is that you don't have to be an Einstein to get it right first time, every time. At the end of this chapter you'll find a chart showing you exactly how much you need to stake on virtually every price in the book in order to return you one hundred pounds (more of this later). All you need to do is to refer to this and adjust your stakes accordingly for returns of two hundred, five hundred, a thousand pounds, or whatever amount you wish.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time Easier still, you could download the disk you received with this book on to your computer, follow the simple instructions on page 93, and the program will tell you, to the penny, how much to invest in any and every eventuality. This includes those occasions when you want to win more from one side of an arb than the other. Or, if you like, you could always work your stakes out with a pencil and a piece of paper the way I did when I began. It's very simple to learn, and worth knowing. I'd like to go through that manual process now, so that you will always be able to calculate your staking quickly and accurately, without a chart, without a computer, whatever the circumstances. Arb Staking Made Easy Before making any calculations, you first have to decide how much you want your investment to return. When arb traders talk about a `return,' they mean the amount of their stake and the winnings from that stake combined. If you had one hundred pounds on an even money winner, then the `return' would be two hundred pounds. For ease of working, let's say that, in the following examples, your return will be one thousand pounds. And let's also say that you have found a tennis match producing the following arb... Player A – 4/6 Player B – 15/8 To work out your stakes for a classic, equal-profit-whoever-wins arb, you begin by moving the whole thing into decimals. To do this, you divide the top figure of the price by the bottom figure of the price, and then add 1. So in the case of player A, that would be 4 divided by 6, which equals 0.666666. (Okay, I forgot to mention that, if you're not Carol Vorderman, you'll need a calculator too.) Add the 1, to produce a final figure of 1.666666. You then repeat the process with player B - 15 divided by 8 equals 1.875, then add the 1. You end up with a final figure of 2.875. This is all you need to do to bring you to the simple staking calculation. Divide the decimal figures you have produced from the odds 4/6 and 15/8 into 1000, this will give you the exact amount of money you need to invest in order to secure a return of £1000. In the case of Player A, the odds of 4/6 produced a figure of 1.666666. If you divide this figure into 1000, the answer is 600 exactly. Therefore, £600 is the amount of money that you need to invest at 4/6 to achieve a return of £1000. Do the same calculation with player B, who was priced at 15/8. Your calculation on his odds produced a decimal figure of 2.875. Divide this figure into 1000, and the answer will be 347.83. This is the amount of money you need to invest at 15/8 to return a thousand pounds - £347.83. In this particular arb your total investment is £947.83p and your return is £1000, whichever side wins. That means a guaranteed profit of £52.17p. That's it! That's all you have to do. It doesn't matter what the odds are, the formula will always give you the correct staking plan. It's worth noting that I have worked this example out to 6 decimal places to give us an absolutely accurate result. If you work to 4 decimal places, which you may find more convenient, it will still be accurate to a penny or two on a thousand pounds. Bookie's Blunders That Can Make You Rich As I said earlier, there will be occasions when you want to win more money from one side of the arb than the other. Often this is when you are confident of an outcome because of some specialist sporting knowl-

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time edge. It sometimes happens, however, that a bookmaker puts up a price which is so wrong, so gloriously crazy, that you just have to take advantage and make it a whacking big winner. Whilst this may not happen every day, it certainly happens every week or so, and you are fully entitled to punish these errors by making the maximum you can from them. I'd like to illustrate the sort of blunder I mean, and how you can easily work out a `biased' staking plan to take full advantage of them, with a real case from the General Election betting of 2001. Bookmakers were betting on a huge array of political markets here, and there were arbs left, right and centre. But the one which sticks in my mind developed over the number of seats that the Liberal Democrat Party would win. Bear in mind that the Opinion Polls conducted at General Elections are nowadays extremely sophisticated and reliable. All those Polls, without exception, predicted that the Lib Dems would win more than 50 seats and, in some cases, that they would have 55 seats or more. Most bookmakers studied these predictions before compiling their prices. William Hill, for instance, were betting odds-on, 10/11 that the Liberals would have more than 50 MPs. So it's one of the great mysteries of the Election how a firm could have got their betting on Liberal seats as hopelessly wrong as Betonsports did. This British Internet company, a far-flung outpost of the mighty American NASA Sportsbook, priced up the Liberal Democrat seats like this... Under 40 seats - 7/4 40 to 43 seats inclusive - 13/8 Over 43 seats - 13/8 If we take the William Hill price of 10/11 for over 50 seats as an accurate assessment of the Liberals chances, and we're entitled to as it fits in with all known voter intentions, then the Betonsports odds of 13/8 for òver 43 seats' has to go down as totally wrong and wildly over-generous. This is exactly the sort of situation where you are justified in setting up a `biased' arb, so that you receive full benefit from an odds compiler's glaring error. Bluesquare.com immediately caught my eye as being the likely other half of the arbitrage. They bet 11/4 that the Lib Dems would have less than 47 seats. So, we can bet 13/8 that the Liberal Democrats will have òver 43 seats,' and 11/4 that they will have `less than 47 seats.' A very nice arb, with the advantage that if the Liberal Party were to get 44, 45, or 46 seats, both of our bets would win! Because, like everyone else in the country except Betonsports, we think that the Lib Dems are certainties to achieve more than 43 seats, we want to bias our stake to make this eventuality a big winner, in fact our only winner. We use the other half of the arb merely to ensure that, whatever happens at the Ballot Box, we cannot possibly lose. An Arbitrage Investor's Dream Come True This is a superb opportunity to make a cracking good profit without risk, and a marvellous arb, so let's aim for a return of £2000 from Betonsport's generous offer of 13/8 for òver 43.' Firstly, we calculate the decimal figure for 13/8, just as we did with other odds earlier... 13 divided by 8 equals 1.625 Add 1 Decimal figure 2.625

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time Now we need to know how much money we need to invest at 13/8 to bring us a return of £2000. Once again, we divide our target return, in this case 2000, by the decimal figure, 2.625, and the answer is 761.90. This means that our stake to return £2000 will be £761.90p Now that we've worked out the `biased' end of the arb, we want to invest in the other side - Bluesquare's 11/4. The aim here is not to show an equal profit, because we think our bet on over 43 seats is a virtual certainty, but merely to recover our stake, which is £761.90p. Same process... Our first task is to convert 11/4 into a decimal figure. 11 divided by 4 is 2.75 In this instance we don't add 1, because we only want to discover how much we actually need to win, not what our winnings and our stake are combined. So we divide our target return figure, which in this case is our outlay on the biased selection of £761.90, by the decimal 2.75, and the answer is 277.06. Which means, naturally, that our stake at 11/4 to bring a return of £761.90p is £277.06p. And that's it. You have biased your arb totally in favour of the 13/8 side, with the 11/4 portion winning you nothing, merely recovering your outlay in the event of something ghastly happening to the Lib Dem vote at the last minute. And with politicians, that's probably a wise decision. Let's see just how much difference putting a bias on this arb makes to your profitability, compared with the gains you would have made from a classic èqual profit from both sides' transaction. To make the classic arb, and a return of £2000 from both sides, your staking would have been... 13/8 - Stake £761.90p 11/4 - Stake £,533.33p Total Investment - £1295.23p Profit from either selection - £704.76p Percentage profit on investment - 54.4% Now the figures for the biased arb that you constructed... 13/8 - Stake £761.90 11/4 - Stake 1,277.06 Total Investment - £1038.96p Profit on biased 13/8 selection - £.961.04p Percentage profit on investment - 92.5 % A tremendous difference! An increased profit of £256.28p achieved with a smaller capital outlay. A word of caution, though, about biased arbs. You should only make them when you are very, very confident of the outcome of the event. If you are proven to be wrong, however, you won't have lost any money, you will simply have missed an opportunity to make some. Chart Your Profits Instead of working your arb stakes out in the way we have just investigated you could, of course, simply refer to the Staking Reference Chart at the end of this chapter. Here you'll find that all the calculations

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time have been made for you. This chart is going to prove a handy item to have, and a real help in running your business. There are four columns of figures. The first column gives you a bookmaker's price in the way that we are most used to seeing it in Britain - written as a fraction. So the first column might, for instance, be 7/4. The second column gives you exactly the same price, but written as a decimal, in the way that most European bookmakers, and a number of British ones too, are now expressing it. This would be 2.75. Note that, when decimal odds are written, a one point stake is always included in the figure. In this case 7/4, which is just another way of saying one and three quarters to one, is actually 1.75 as a decimal, but the addition of a one point stake makes it 2.75. The third column shows how 7/4 would be written by an American bookmaker. He expresses it differently again, and calls it + 175. In America the odds are expressed as decimals once more, but without any stake being included. Note also, that whenever a price is odds against, the Americans always put a `plus' sign in front of it. If a price is odds-on, then they put a `minus' sign before it. So, if an American bookie wanted to offer 4/7, he would write it -175. Exactly the same as 7/4, but with a minus sign to show that it is odds on. The final column shows the percentage of the book that the price represents. What bookmakers call the `take out'. In the case of 7/4, that's 36.3636. This is the magic figure. It is the figure you need to invest to return £100. Quite simply, if you want a return of one hundred pounds from a 7/4 shot, then you need to invest £36.36 on it. If you want to return a thousand pounds from that 7/4 shot, then just multiply the figure by ten and invest £363.60. It will be accurate in all circumstances and for every price. Your Automatic Arb Locator These percentage or `take out' figures will also show you, without the need for calculations, whether you have discovered an arb opportunity, and how much profit that opportunity will produce. Let's return to our old friends, the tennis players A and B. If you recall, they were priced at 4/6 and 15/8. If you check the chart, you will find that the percentage `take out' figure for 4/6 is 60.0000, and for 15/8 it is 34.7826. If you add the two `take out' figures together, they come to 94.7826. This means that to return £100 whichever wins, your total stake will be £94.78, in which case you most certainly have found an arb. This is an arb which produces a profit of £5.22 for every £94.78 invested. Whenever you see a price, you can look up its percentage value and know just how much rope you have to play with to make up an arb. In the case of a 4/6 chance, which you know takes out 60 percent, you must find a price with a `take out' of less than 40 percent to make a profit. The World Is Your Arb Oyster! It doesn't make one jot of difference to you whether you've backed a team with a bookmaker in Birmingham, Birmingham Alabama, or in Barcelona... They're all only a click away. And if you have to go to Wagga Wagga in Australia to make your money, well g'day and no problems mate, it will still pay the same. So as you systematically plunder the world's bookmakers for zero-risk profits, your chart will show at a glance what the odds in Europe and America mean in relation to British odds. You will be able to calculate instantly whether you have an arb opportunity anywhere on the planet, and you will be able to stake that arb accurately, even if you are unfamiliar with the bookmaker's figuring. Which I think you'll agree, makes it a handy chart to have. Of course, you could do all your staking the really easy way, and download the disk you received with this book onto your computer. If you tap in the prices as instructed, and tell it how much you want returned, the system will calculate everything for you, and even work out any `biased' arbs you may wish to make.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time Whichever way you work out your staking, a little practice will see you fast, proficient, and totally at ease in this important area of your business. Easy Does it Every Time Arb trading is a skill that can be learned by anyone, but like any skill, the more you practice it, the better you'll get. The more you go looking for arbs with the Arbitrage Handbook at your elbow, the more proficient you'll become at making money. But if you are a beginner, the advice is, don't try to do everything at once. Ease yourself into the business over a period of a few months. The best way to do this is to concentrate your attention on just two sports at the beginning. You can add all the others as time goes by. My advice is to start with a sport guaranteed to be rich in arb opportunities, like tennis or soccer, and trade it in tandem with another that doesn't have quite such a full calendar, like snooker or cricket. I reckon you'll make more money at the start of your arb career by concentrating on just two events, and you'll have time to think about all the theory you've learned as you apply it. If you have never àrbed; or even struck a bet before, don't be intimidated by bookmakers' terms and odds. The Arbitrage Handbook will explain them all. The bookies have made placing bets by phone, Internet, or in a shop as easy as falling off a log. Quite seriously, if you can order two pounds of tomatoes in the greengrocers, you can be a successful arb trader. Provided you've got the Arbitrage Handbook of course! Let's say that you have chosen tennis as your first major area of operations. Good choice. Why Tennis? Tennis is big arb business. There are dozens of matches every week, the sport runs for 10 months of the year, and most importantly, plenty of bookmakers price it up. Tennis can also involve dealing with non-UK bookmakers, and what you learn about their operations will stand you in good stead for the future. Let's assume you make cricket your second area for attack. I'd say that was a good choice too Why Cricket? Cricket can `do the business' for us just as well as the next sport, it offers some cracking arbitrage opportunities. However the workload is far lighter than in tennis and many other sports. Cricket has fewer games for you to look at than tennis, and generally fewer bookmakers to scan. It offers solid rewards for a much shorter expenditure of your precious time. You Don't Need Much Money (Well, not that much anyway.) Time to blow up another old myth. According to the people who've never tried it, you've got to be half way to being a millionaire to even contemplate arbitrage trading. Wrong! You might end up half way to being a millionaire, but the great benefit of arbing is that you can start with as much, or as little cash as you like. Many sports arbitrage traders begin their careers with very modest sums, and build their bank steadily. Others start with greater amounts, but the results are the same for both. Guaranteed cash. Here's a conservative illustration of how rapidly your initial investment can grow if you put it into arbitrage trading. I'm assuming an initial bank of one thousand pounds.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time Arb 1 6/5 & Evens 4.55% Required Stake Profit New Balance

£954.55 £45.45 £1045.45

Arb 2 8/13 & 15/8 3.31% Required Stake Profit New Balance

£1015.22 £34.78 £1080.23


£1074.76 £35.24 £1115.47

Arb 4 6/5 & Evens 4.55% Required Stake Profit New Balance

£1097.73 £52.27 £1167.74


£1161.90 £38.10 £1205.84

Over £200 profit made from just five arbs. And not one of them was more than a modest 4.55 %. How long would it take to earn this money? With one thousand pounds at your disposal, you can't run any of these arbs consecutively. You have to wait for your cash plus profits to arrive from Àrb 1; before you can make Àrb 2. and so on. Let's say it takes four days for your cash to reach you. Your five arbs would have been completed, and the money in your bank, within 25 days. In that period your original £1000 would have increased, without risk, to £1205.84. Because you now have a greater sum to invest, your arbs will reap that little bit more. To illustrate this I've extended the example up to 100 days, using the same conservative, less-than-five-percent arbs throughout. Day Day Day Day Day

1 25 50 75 100

£1000 £1205.84 £1449.38 £1742.13 £2094.00

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time You'll notice how your bank grows by greater amounts as the days go by. The first 25 days reaped just over £200, the next 25 days accounted for £250 profit. The next 25, £300, and during the last 25 the profit was over £350. Your original investment doubled in size from £1000 to £2094 in just 100 days, using very attainable arbs that you could easily better Don't Give The Bookies Your Money To Look After Keeping money in bookmakers' accounts is not conducive to effective arbing. I recommend that you withdraw your winnings as soon as the result of your arb is known. There is no point to having funds lying around with bookmakers to no purpose. You may need your cash quickly to work for you elsewhere. All bookmakers allow customers to operate online accounts with a `nil' balance, and ìmmediate deposits' mean there is no advantage at all to storing your money with them. Your funds are better off in your own bank, where they will earn interest for you. It's your money - here's how you get it out. Withdraw Cash onto your Debit Card If you made your original deposit by Debit card, the bookmaker will have stored these details in his system for use in future transactions. Log into `My Account,' and simply go to the Deposit/Withdraw section. Select `withdraw' and fill in the amount you wish to take out. Then simply click the `withdraw' button. 3-4 days later the money will be back in your account. Withdraw by Cheque A phone call to the payments or customer service department is needed if you wish to withdraw an amount from your account by cheque. The cheque will be made payable to the named account holder and should arrive in 2-3 days. Withdraw onto Credit Card If you made your deposit by credit card, the process is slightly different. Bookmakers will only refund the initial deposit amount back onto your card, with the remainder, the actual winnings, sent to you by cheque. The bookie isn't being awkward, he's just complying with the regulations governing credit cards. For example: You deposited £500 with your credit card and your bet won. Your account balance is now £900. You then decide to withdrew the whole balance. £500 will be returned to your Credit Card. A £400 cheque will be mailed to you. Have a Yen to Make a Buck? There is a little difficulty that crops up when we come to make inter-country and inter-continental arbs. It isn't anything to do with language, odds or security, it's the currency exchange. Suppose you wanted to strike a bet with Australian bookmakers Centrebet. Your bank would send the cash down-under in pounds sterling. When it arrived, the Australian bankers would change it into Australian dollars, and you are likely to lose a small percentage in the exchange. If your bet were a winner and you wanted your cash, Centrebet would send the money back in Aussie dollars, and your British bank would convert them into sterling. And that would involve another small loss on the exchange process.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time The amount of these losses vary according to the individual banks and the currency rates at the time, but you could lose an average of one percent each time you go through the exchange process. But don't dismiss betting overseas. On many occasions, the size of the arbs you find abroad will give you a good profit in spite of these small losses. And there are ways to keep these currency exchange inconveniences to a bare minimum. Let's first of all look at a payment method that is convenient, very fast, and can reduce if not eliminate a number of exchange losses. PayPal PayPal is very useful method of moving your money around, accepted in every betting country in the world. PayPal are merely purse-holders, who transfer cash from one PayPal account to another. Every bookmaker who is worth striking a bet with is in this system, and if you have a PayPal account too, you can send and receive money quickly and easily. You will still incur exchange rate charges, but using this system, you can choose the exact moment when the exchange rate is most favourable, to turn your pounds into foreign currency. Where you really gain with PayPal, is in moving cash from one 'foreign' account to another in the same country. Suppose you had 500 dollars in your www.wsex.com (World Sports Exchange) account, and you saw a bet that you wanted to strike with another 'American' firm. You could send your money from WSEX to the rival sportsbook without incurring any currency charges at all. That's a very useful thing to be able to do. You could make twenty transactions overseas, and only meet the currency exchange process twice. Right at the beginning, when you chose the right moment to make your currency exchange, and at the end, when you transfer your winnings back into your UK account. Western Union It's also easy to move funds through Western Union. Though Western Union make a charge for their service, some sportsbooks, www.wsex.com for instance, will refund all Western Union fees if your deposit is over a certain amount. Many arbitrage backers aren't bothered at all by the small exchange rate losses they incur. They make it all up, and more besides, by taking advantage of the many special offers commonly offered by overseas bookmakers. Deposit offers and bonuses can increase your arbitrage income significantly, and if you play your cards right, you could easily make a four figure sum from these benefits alone in your first year. Plenty of others have. The truth is that most bookmakers are desperate to increase their share of the betting market, and as an incentive, they offer a wide range of bonuses for customers opening new accounts. Bonus on deposit These can be very well worth having. Simply open an account, deposit your money, and you will receive a percentage bonus added. So an initial deposit of £300 with a 10 % bonus would turn into £330. This will more than compensate you for currency losses. There is always a ceiling applied to the amount of cash you can claim your bonus on, but some bookmakers pay the bonus on deposits of up to £300. There will probably be some strings attached to this offer, the most common being that you can only withdraw the bonus after it has been staked on an event, but that's fair enough, and for an àrber,' not usually a problem.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time Matched Free Bet. Another offer that is quite common is the Matched Free Bet. Bookies offer the customer a free bet to the same value as their first bet with their company. There will be a maximum value applied, which is normally between £,10 and £50. Top Up Bonus This one's a great favourite with the Americans. The Top-Up bonus is offered to existing customers who top up their account on a specific day, chosen by the bookmaker, which in many cases is a Thursday. A percentage of around 5 % is added by the bookie to the amount you deposit on the day in question, and can be used by the customer immediately. One-Off Specials If everything clicks into place for you, these offers can provide some big returns. The bookmaker will normally pick a strong betting event like a big football match, the Superbowl, or a Test match, and offer to refund losing stakes if a certain outcome occurs. For example, if you were to find an arb situation on a Test match between England and India you would have to stake 3 bets ... one on England, one on India and one on the Draw. Recently, the bookmaker offering the biggest price for an England victory in an England v India Test was also offering the following `special. "If Nasser Hussain hits a 1st innings century, all losing bets will be voided up to a maximum stake of £200" If India were to win the Test and Hussain did hit a century in the first innings, you have just added £200 to your winnings. Even if you only land one of these a year, it's well worth having. And they're free! I know some shrewd àrbers' who make a good thing of these bonuses and offers. The one thing you must ALWAYS do though, is to ask the bookmaker what his new account offers are before you sign up. Once he's got you betting with him, they may `slip his mind.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time



How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time CHAPTER FOUR Lets Get Down To Business! This chapter will give you the ìnside track' on building pre-match arbs. That is, arbs made on prices which bookmakers offer before a contest begins. Once an event is underway, we are in a different ball game with different opportunities, all of which we'll look at in chapter five, Àrbs In-Running'. Pre-match arbs are likely to be the largest area of your business and will probably take up most of your time. They provide the basis of your profitability, so it's vital that you get them right. This is going to be an extensive chapter. You will find just a little `theory' in it, but mostly this is a practical guide, aimed at putting all the short cuts and secrets of my trading operation straight into your hands. When you sit down for your first session of arbitrage trading, you'll do so with the knowledge of a five-year professional at your finger-tips. I'll be surprised if you remember everything after one reading. Treat this chapter as a reference point and an operational plan. It will help you build confidence and expertise in your own trading decisions, and give you the shortest of short-cuts from novice to expert. Organising Yourself Is The Key To Success I don't want to be unkind, but it's no exaggeration to say that most inexperienced arb-hunters waste about 90 percent of their time. They look at the wrong markets, check the wrong bookmakers, and usually at the wrong time. Stumbling from one dead end to another, beginners miss hundreds of arb opportunities because they are disorganized and have no plan of work. As a professional, you can't afford to waste time. Your aim is to maximize the profitability of every working minute. So we are going to discuss the major arb-making sports one by one, and decide on an Action Plan for profitable trading, wherever this will be useful. We'll begin with a sport on which millions of pounds are wagered in `legitimate' bets each week. A sport where bookmakers' arb losses are swallowed up in the huge profits extracted from fans and `normal' punters. Some bookmaking companies make as much as 30 percent profit on their soccer trading, which is no bad thing for you and I. This sort of margin gives bookmakers a sense of security and a `we're winning, so there's no problem'. attitude, which only makes our work easier. After my soccer assessment, you'll find your first Action Plan. It's there to help you get started, to make sure that you find the most arbs and the most profitable arbs, whilst conserving that most precious of resources - your time. SOCCER - Literally An Arb Supermarket There are no shortage of prices for us to investigate in this sport. Bookmakers are falling over themselves to offer new and novelty enticements to backers, but for sheer volume of choice and arb opportunity, the standard `90-minutes result' is still the unsurpassed market on the planet. As we discussed in chapter two, odds comparison sites can be a very useful tool, especially when we have as many bookmakers to keep track of as we have in this market. But if you want to be the cat who always gets the cream, you'll benefit from being one step ahead of these sites, and that will be our aim in building soccer arbs.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time 90-Minute Result Betting The first point to note is that, in Britain, many bookmakers use the same basic òdds card', so their prices are naturally very similar. On the continent bookmakers are much more likely to have their own opinion, and significant price differences are much more common. Another thing to be aware of is the marked difference between the way UK and European odds compilers look at the `draw'. In Europe, odds for the draw are invariably shorter than in Britain. Which means that European `home' and àways' have a tendency to be larger than in the UK. As we are always going to find the best odds for the `draw' in Britain, our arb building should start with a check on the European bookmakers, where we are most likely to find the top prices on the two `win' results. Finding the best prices before the crowd gets there can make a huge difference to your profit figures, and it's by no means impossible to get a bookmaker's odds before the comparison sites publish them. The trick is to know which sites to visit first for the greatest benefit. There are a number of European bookmakers who like to price up early, and whose prices are aggressive and opinionated. Just the sort of bookmaker who makes arbs. Recommended Bookmakers For Soccer Trading www.centrebet.com - Have some very big opinions, more frequently on European leagues than on UK football. Bet to reasonable margins. www.playoff.as - Football specialists who can be relied upon to price-up even the most minor matches. They have been involved in some very big arbs recently, and are keen to take money when they have an opinion. www.ladbrokes.com - Another firm with big opinions, particularly on the European leagues and the Scottish lower divisions. Will lay teams to lose plenty. In-running service available. www.betsense.com - Relatively new company with a wide range of prices. www.stanleybet.com - Pride themselves on offering the most comprehensive football service in the UK. Have been known to slip up through missing injury and suspension news. Possibly have too many leagues on offer to keep track of properly. Stan James - Telephone only. Have strong opinions, and have been known to purposely create arbs, especially on European and international football. Extensive in-running service. www.sportingodds.com - Bet to competitive margins and have some big opinions. Love to be bigger about the outsiders than any one else. In-running service. www.bluesquare.com - Well-informed bookie who prices up a wide variety of markets, including an extensive Total Goals coupon. In-running service. www.bet365.com - Extensive range of match prices from leagues all over the world. Maybe a bit too much for them to handle, as they can be very slow to react to injury news. In-running service. www.wsex.com - (World Sports Exchange) American firm who bet on a wide range of European and UK football. Good margins. Can be very slow to change prices, that's if they bother at all. If you are circling these sites as prices are published, you will find many offers for the `win' results far more generous than you will encounter in the UK, and these prices can often form the basis for an arb. Hint number one. Having logged on to your chosen site, don't start your price checking with the top leagues and work down, do it the other way around.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time Most arb opportunities are found in the lower divisions, where compilers' expertise is often hazy. By the time traders who started with the Premiership and La Liga have worked their way down to the goodies, you will have made your arbs and have moved on. If you have never looked into Football's lower reaches before, like the Spanish Second Division, Italian Serie B and the French Second Division, you will be surprised at the massive differences of opinion compilers often have about them. And of course, that means arbs. Also, put the Cup competitions high on your hit-list of probable arb makers. You will find that the Spanish Cup and Coppa Italia produce some amazing divergences of opinion, and not infrequently, arb profits of 10 percent and more. In weighing up football odds, never forget the huge impact that injuries can have on teams' prospects, and more importantly, on bookmakers' prices. It is not unknown for an item of injury news to result in a change of favourite within seconds, once the bookmaker is aware of it. Beat The Bookies And Get The News That Counts First Beating the bookmakers to this information is not as hard as you may think. Bookies' staff are generally worked pretty hard, and they do not have as much time to spend checking these things as you do. Happily for us, many of them are not blessed with a high degree of job motivation either. You will catch them out time and time again. Two official sites that you need to watch closely for news of injuries are www.UEFA.com and www.FIFA.com, who are both quite speedy at announcing the latest developments. Also check the press agency-backed www.sportinglife.com and www.ananova.com. The soccer mad www.soccerage.com is always a good port of call, as well as www.sportal.com. Ananova in particular pride themselves in being first with the news, and they run a ticker-tape of all the latest stories. This isn't a bad sports news site to have as your `home page'. Other common factors that can influence a team's strength are club games which clash with international matches, when teams lose the services of influential players, and player suspensions. Both of which can have a strong bearing on the market. A Real Situation Where Breaking News Would Have Produced You A Nice Arb Let's have a look at a real situation, where an awareness of `news factors' would have put you on to a nicely profitable arb missed by many. Israel were at home to Austria in a World Cup Qualifying match. Israel needed to win the match to qualify. Austria needed only a draw from the game. Because of horrific terrorist activity in the US a few weeks previously, and fears about security, nine Austrian players refused to travel to Tel Aviv to play in the game. One other Austrian player was suspended. All of which naturally meant that Austria's chance of winning was much diminished. Bookmakers' original odds for this fixture saw Israel priced at 11/10 to win. Once news of the seriously weakened Austrian team became known, those companies who were wide-awake cut the home side dramatically, to as short as 1/2 for the win. But many, many, firms were blissfully unaware of events and left their prices as they were. News-Hound arbitrage traders were then able to make the following book... Israel to win - 11/10 (on offer with 5 bookmakers, including supposed football specialists www.stanleybet.com) Match drawn - 5/2 (4 firms, including the top-class www.wsex.com) Austria to win - 4/1 (including www.betinternet.com)

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time These odds produce a guaranteed profit of £41.90 for an outlay of £1058.10. Actually, I have not used the best odds available on this game. Here's a graphic example of why you should have accounts with the smaller, lesser-known as firms too... Had you held accounts with wwwAipsport.cz and www.eurotip-online.com, both small but reputable companies, you would have been able to stake just £1021.11 for a certain profit of £78.89 on the same match. And the whole arb originated in your superior knowledge of current events. All it needed to beat the bookmakers was a visit to www.FIFA.com. Here's Another Example Of Why It Pays To Read The News Sites The Coppa Italia tie between Como and Fiorentina produced a handsome profit for those who checked out the latest team news. Fiorentina were facing the game with their first-team line-up in tatters. Three players were injured. Six were on international duty. Four had been dropped for upsetting their manager. The stand-in side was dubbed by the local newspaper the `Fiorentina Babies'! All of this information was available on ananova and other news sites. As you might expect, the Italian bookies were all up to speed on this match. One of the leading Italian firms, Snai, quoted Como at 6/5 to win the game. However, dozens of other European boomakers had no idea of Fiorentina's dilemma, and it was possible to construct an easy arb at your leisure. In this case, the bookmaking Lemmings were led over the cliff by www.betsense.com, who offered 3.35 for Como. Coupled with the 3.10 widely available for the match to be drawn, and the 3.00 for Fiorentina to win, arb traders were able to create a certain profit of £50.14 for an investment of £1049.86. The moral here is that bookmakers are notoriously poor at keeping abreast of events once their prices have been framed. If you are faster at fording relevant information than they are, and that is not difficult, you are guaranteed a steady stream of lucrative opportunities. The 'Number of Goals' Market This is usually a `three outcome' market. The most common format makes the `middle' an exact total of 2 goals, with this score priced at around 7/2. It's usually presented like this... Under 2 goals Exactly 2 goals Over 2 goals Odds for each eventuality will vary match to match and bookmaker to bookmaker. Blue Square though, do it a little differently - they price up a large number of games each week, and like to offer a 2 or 3 goal outcome as their even-money favourite... 0-1 goals 2-3 goals Over 3 goals `Total Goal' arbs are not particularly common and, when found, often only produce a 2 or 3 percent profit. However, they are worth looking for and worth transacting due to the confusion they create in the bookmaker's mind. Bookmakers do not expect arbitrage traders to be working in this market, and the appearance of a `Total Goals' investment on your account will totally throw them off the arb scent. If you can construct a `Total

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time Goals' arb profit and at the same time put two losing investments into your betting history, that's an outcome not to be sneezed at. And Finally, The `Corners Market' Bookmakers rarely disagree about the number of corners that will be taken. It is common practice in the industry to copy prices originated by the spread-betting firms, who keep extensive statistics on such things. The usual market is in the region of... Under11 corners Exactly 11 corners Over 11 corners Some firms may bet to 12 corners, but really, any profits you may be able to extract would be so small and so time consuming to build, the advice here is - Don't waste time hanging around corners. Action Plan - Soccer • Gain access to a significant number of non-UK (ie European) bookmaker's accounts. • Do not assume that a bookmaker's opening quote will be his last. Remember, price changes often follow injury news. • Scan the football news sites regularly. • Specialise in the European lower Leagues and in the European domestic Cup competitions. • ALWAYS secure the price that is `wrong' and out of line with the rest of industry first - before striking those prices generally available. • Even if they offer only small rewards, try to construct as many arbs as you can on the `Total Goals' markets. It's a great smokescreen for your trading activities. TENNIS - Plentiful Arbs Thanks To Differing Opinions Many bookmakers have found that this sport has been a major area of growth in the last two years, due in no small part to the amount of arb business it attracts. Why does tennis produce so many arbs? Well, this is a sport on which odds-compilers rarely agree. Different playing surfaces, poor availability of match statistics and hard-to-find injury information are a recipe for price divergences. And I'm glad to say it! It is also true that there aren't really that many competent tennis compilers around. Though you and I will have no difficulty in fording plenty of profitable arbs in tennis, if I may say so, I don't think that the bookmakers offer a particularly good service on this sport, either for us or for the `straight' punters. We rarely see markets other than `Match Betting' or `Set Betting,' and only the spread firms are showing initiative, with prices on `Total Games Won', `Total Aces', `Who Will Win Each Quarter', and so on. One day soon I expect to see a company with a bit of gumption shake up the industry lethargy. Until then, your business will be mainly in the `Match Betting' market, though very lucrative that market can be. Odds comparison sites are always a useful place to start arb building, and the two best odds comparison sites for tennis are www.infobetting.com and www.tip-ex.com. Mark these two up in your `favourites' folder, they're very useful. But as usual, the best idea is to get your hands on the juiciest prices before they ever get on to the comparison sites. Call The Bookmakers And Request Their Odds Early Sometimes the odds have actually been compiled, but are trailing round the bookmaker's office waiting for an internet operator to put them into the system. A telephone call can put you half an hour ahead of the field. If the prices haven't been finalized and you are told that they will be available `later on' ask for a spe-

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time cific time to ring back, and do so. There is one area in which you should exercise special care when making tennis arbs... Check the bookmaker's rules. Bookmakers often have different rules of settlement when a player retires from a game through injury before his match is complete. Some companies make all bets void, even if the game is within a few points of being complete. Others will pay out on the `result,' so long as one set has been played. But basically, with such differences of bookmaker opinion, arb success in this sport is not difficult to achieve. To make the most of the many opportunities you will find, you should focus your attention where it will be best rewarded. Recommended Bookmakers For Tennis Trading Here is a list of the bookmakers that I recommend you put on your tennis 'hit-list' - the good, the bad and the ugly. Some know quite a bit about the sport and will stick their necks out when they have an òpinion', some seem to know nothing about the sport, but stick their necks out anyway... www.interwetten.com - Probably the first bookmaker to price-up in the world, and a benchmark for other firms. Criminal percentages though. www.bet365.com - These guys are a newish firm. Sometimes they are nearly first up and sometimes nearly last. Always worth a look as they make many a howler. www.sportingodds.com - This firm likes to have a look at the others' prices before positioning themselves in the market. They don't avoid making arbs though. www.gamebookers.com - This site has created some lovely arbs in the past. And they can be very fast up on occasions. www.playit.com - Moderately quick to price up. This site is a steady contributor to arb profits www.ladbrokes.com - Often late to go up, but useful, because if they have an opinion they are prepared to hold it for hours, even in the face of heavy support. www.willhill.com - Moderately quick to price up and their compiler knows what he is doing. www.unibet.com - These guys are fairly fast up and are steady arb contributors. www.betinternet.com - Okay when they're up, but don't hold your breath, they're very slow at times. Stan Stan James - This is a telephone service only at present but they are very fast up with their prices, which are often of interest. But be very careful - their prices as displayed on their internet site are not updated regularly enough, and sometimes bear little relation to the odds actually being laid. Always check on the phone before commencing an arb. Action Plan - Tennis • Use the odds comparison sites www.infobetting.com and www.tip-ex.com as the main collators of tennis prices. • Where possible, chase up bookmakers by phone to get their prices before they appear on the net or teletext. • Check the bookmaker's rules of settlement for incomplete games. Make sure both sides of your arb are subject to the same ruling. (See Directory at the back of this book.) • I have given comments on the main firms currently betting tennis, but be on the lookout for newcomers to the net - they're liable to get it all wrong initially. CRICKET - Arguably The Best Of The Bunch We can divide this sport into two sections - Domestic and International cricket. Both are very good sources of profit as cricket is arguably the best arb sport of all. Domestic Cricket - Match Betting The County Championship and National League games provide plenty of arbs, but we do need to understand each bookmaker's Cricket Rules before wading in. We must ensure that both sides of our arb will be subject to the same settlement criteria.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time In the County Championship, the rule we definitely need to be clear on concerns what happens in the case of a drawn game. Most bookmakers now bet `without the draw', so if a game is drawn, all stakes are refunded. However one or two firms do not. Telephone bookmakers, Multisports, for instance, consider that the team achieving the highest points are the winners of drawn matches, and settle up accordingly. Similarly with abandoned games, most companies regard them as void and return all stakes, but there are one or two firms who settle bets on the number of points achieved before the game was abandoned. Just one thing to check on the National League One-Day games, and that is how bookmakers settle matches ending in a tie. The great majority of bookmakers consider all bets on those games void and return stakes, but there are one or two overseas firms who include the tie option in their pre-match betting, and would settle a win bet on team who `tied' as a loser. Arbs in domestic cricket are more than plentiful, and this happy situation is due to two factors... 1 - The highly unpredictable performances of the teams and the differing compiler opinions that those performances generate. 2 - A chronic lack of reliable information on the sport. If you have ever tried to obtain advance team sheets or player injury reports on a County Championship game, you will know exactly what I am talking about. As for vital information on how the wicket will play - whether it will it suit the spinners or the seamers - the first reliable information on that little conundrum is likely to be the evidence of your own eyes when the game is half over. However, there are some bookmakers who pay for some very good information on cricket. They receive details on the state of the wicket and the outfield, of player injuries and selection, and other influencing factors. When they have strong information, these bookmakers will price up very aggressively, trying to attract money for the team they believe are likely to lose. In doing so, they create some excellent arbs with their less well-informed bookmaking bretheren. In the end, it doesn't matter to us why arbs are created, just so long as they are. And cricket is a first-rate sport in which to find them. Once again, knowing your bookmakers, and being in the right place at the right time to find the right price, can make a huge difference to the amount that you earn. Recommended Bookmakers For Domestic Cricket Trading www.bet365.com - Made life easy for Traders with numerous opinions and errors. Well worth checking. www.sportingodds.com - Often up early with their prices, and they do lay their opinion. Will accept fair sized bets without batting an eyelid. Since expanding their cricket service recently they have created many arbs. Always worth a visit. www.blusq.com - Like sportingodds this site is always up early with its prices, though it can be equally quick to change them at times. Good stake levels. www.totalbet.com - This firm is now part of the UK Betting group of companies, and they take cricket seriously. Plenty of prices on offer, and they usually go up early. www.tote.co.uk - their compilers can have some huge òpinions,' and this site is always worth a visit. The only negative is that they can sometimes be rather late to price up. Stan James tel: 08000 351135 - This telephone only company love cricket, and offer a first-class service. They price up early, and have a very good ìn running' service. International Cricket - Match Betting As we've already noted, the `whispered' information that a bookmaker is privy to plays a big part in his prices, and on the international scene it may be doubly relevant. Who can forget the dustbowl wickets cre-

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time ated by the `Pitch Doctor' for England's One-Day internationals in Sri Lanka? These resulted in a pasting for England, but there were a handful of bookmakers who had astutely realised that this would be the case. The chances of England's cricketers may have had disappeared in a cloud of dust, but arb traders had the time of their lives, finding different match favourites in different countries! Which brings me to a piece of advice I want you to take to heart. It is essential that you sign up to a wide range of accounts in foreign countries. Many overseas bookmakers operate to lower profit margins than British bookmakers. Australia, the USA, and New Zealand are examples. A lower bookmaker margin is a good thing in itself, but another advantage is that you will find enormous differences in how overseas bookmakers view the chances of competitors in an event. Accounts with foreign bookmakers will dramatically increase your options and your profits, and cricket is a sport where they are invaluable, as the following example proves. The international cricket market is huge, and the sums staked are sometimes astronomical. Bookmakers who have accepted all or part of a mammoth bet often move their odds in dramatic fashion, attempting to attract business for the other eventualities to grind out a 4 percent overall profit. A good example of this sort of situation occurred in the One-Day international between Pakistan and England. Due to huge support from the sub-continent for a Pakistan victory, British bookmakers switched favourites, making Pakistan odds-on for a win, after originally having England as their favourite. Not so the bookmakers in Australia, who still had England as favourite, with the Pakistanis trading at odds against. In this game it was possible to back both sides at 11/10 for a very nice profit, but only if you were able to take advantage of prices `down under', by having an account with an Australian bookmaker. Still on my `foreign accounts' hobby horse, I'd like to offer the observation that most British bookmakers hate pricing-up international cricket. In the main their compilers aren't up to it, and company bosses are too mean to invest in odds-makers with the skills to do a good job. So what tends to happen in the UK is that bookmakers herd together like sheep around a price which seems to offer some safety. Which means that the British end of your arb will usually be guaranteed by strength of numbers. It then only takes one overseas bookmaker to have an opinion, and you have yourself an arbitrage. I cannot stress how plentiful and lucrative cricket arbs can be. They are well worth the effort of getting yourself a good selection of Australian and New Zealand accounts. Make cricket one of your specialist sports and you won't regret it. In fact, if you wanted to dedicate your business solely to trading cricket arbs, I wouldn't try to argue you out of it, and there is not another sport that I could say that about. Recommended Bookmakers For International Cricket Trading www.centrebet.com - Australian firm which loves the game. It will accept good amounts and has a compiler who'll `take a position' every now and again. www.canbet.com - Aussies who bet like Americans. Low profit margins and big opinions. This is a good account to hold. Can be slow pricing-up at times and they don't always offer all the games I'd like them to, but they make plenty of arbs, and that's what we're here for. www.iasbet.com (international all sports) - A good range of events priced up early. It's an exceptionally easy-to-use site. www.cricketbet.com.au - This firm's margins take some believing and sometimes stand at only 104 percent. I am reliably informed that company bosses treat their pre-match odds as a loss leader, hoping to attract backers and win money from them `betting in-running'. Well, that's the theory. They don't price up every single international, but at these odds who cares! The ones that they do price-up regularly make lovely 5 percent arbs and bigger. Stan James - Telephone only. Most games are priced up. They don't seem to have much of a clue about the sport, and frequently make arbs. They also have a tendency to copy a competitor's prices, which is

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time good, because when those competitors alter their odds, Stan James sometimes fail to notice and continue to offer the old prices. This makes yet more arbs. Unfortunately, they are reluctant to take many decent sized bets. www.bct365.com - These fellows get everywhere. Plenty of games priced-up to their usual standard and worth a visit. Sunderlands - Another telephone-only service. Now that the betting tax has gone, this home-based bookmaker must be on our list. This company has a compiler with an opinion, who has created many arbs during the past year and is expected to do so again. Finding Arbs In The 'Runs Scored' Market Pre-match betting on how many runs will be scored in a session or an innings can provide massive profits. I recommend that, as soon as you see a bookmaker offering this market, you drop everything and endeavour to ford another as quickly as possible. Here's an example of the profit possibilities... If the total England First Innings runs were bet in the following way by bookmaker A: Under 280 280-330 Over 330

6/4 7/4 7/4

And by bookmaker B: Under 220 220-270 Over 270

6/4 7/4 7/4

You could then guarantee yourself an excellent and certain profit by backing England to score Ùnder 280' with bookmaker A, and Òver 270' with bookmaker B. You also have a chance to scoop a substantial jackpot. A couple of typical results would see the following returns... 1) Having had £800 on Under 280 and £800 on Over 270 - England score 210 all out and you achieve a profit of £400. 2) Having had £800 on Under 280 and £800 on Over 270 - England score 310 all out and you achieve a profit of £600. Which is very acceptable, but there is a further, more profitable possible scenario. You will have noticed that there is a 10-run òverlap' between the bookmakers' prices, and that in creating your arb you have backed England to score between 270 and 280 with both bookmakers. If England's score does indeed fall between these magic numbers, this is what happens... 3) Having had £800 on Under 280 and £800 on Over 270 - England score 278 all out and you achieve a profit of £2600. This scenario is known as `fording the middle; when you have collected on BOTH sides of your arb. Not only is this three-way market an arb from heaven, but it also gives you the opportunity of finding that glorious `middle,' sometimes known in the rougher parlance of the trade as the `double nick'. In the chapter on Creative Arbs we will examine how these three-way markets frequently give you the chance to record spectacular wins. Granted, to achieve one of these `middles' you need everything to go right for you, but the opportunity to land this jackpot is free. You'll have found a winning arb, whatever happens, and free chance to steal the pot. That can't be bad. Chances just like this were available regularly last season, and they'll be there again next. Just one `mid-

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time dled' market will send your profits into the stratosphere. Action Plan - Cricket • Open plenty of foreign accounts. • Prices often move due to the weight of money, and in doing so create arbs. Watch for significant price changes. • Keep an eye on news sites such as www.cricinfo.com for any information that could trigger those price changes. • Always ensure that both sides of your arb are settled in accordance with the same bookmaking rules. • Look to play big in Runs Scored markets. You are going to make a `normal' profit at least, and one day you will land a `middle' and a huge payout. GOLF - Play The Green Right And You'll Find Some Tidy Profits Our attention here is focused on the `3-ball' and `2-ball' markets. In these bets, the bookmaker names either 2 or 3 golfers, and offers prices on which of them will make the best score. 3-Ball Betting In 3-ball markets the bookmakers often operate to a 12 percent profit margin, which is not particularly kind to backers. But there are a number of firms who like to stick their necks out on this sport, and with betting tax now gone, there are plenty of profit opportunities. In fact the number of arb opportunities in golf is surprisingly high, and you will find them in every tournament. Here is a typical 3-ball example... Bookmaker Bookmaker Bookmaker Bookmaker

1 2 3 4

7/4 2/1 9/4 11/4

6/4 2/1 2/1 13/8

7/4 5/4 11/10 11/10

By backing the three golfers at 11/4, 2/1 and 7/4 you achieve a profit of 4 percent, and also score a `positive' with bookmakers by putting two losing bets onto your accounts. Particularly when trading these 'three-outcome' markets, you need to prioritise the order in which you strike the bets. You do not want any of the prices you are seeking to `disappear' in mid-transaction. In our example, the golfer you are supporting at 2/1 is available at that price in two places, so he can be backed last. The two bets you need to be sure of achieving are the player at 7/4, a price out of line with the industry norm, and the outsider at 11/4. Once these have been struck, your arb is home and dry. It can sometimes happen that one bookmaker provides two of the prices in your 3-bet arb. Tread carefully two bets on the same 3-ball would alert a bookmaker to the fact that you are not a punter, but a trader. Make sure that you place these bets on two separate accounts, and all will be well. The 3-ball example I have used does not show an exaggerated profit, in fact it is quite conservative. You'll find 3-ball arbs are frequently available at 6 percent or more. These usually concern a golfer who is a littleknown quantity but in good form, or a household name who is in poor form. Both of these scenarios tend to confuse compilers and cause differences of opinion. Should one of the bookmakers contributing to this 3-ball arb be betting to an 11 percent profit margin instead of 12 percent, and a number of them do, we have a rip-roaring profit on our hands, as in this example... Bookmaker 1 Bookmaker 2

8/13 5/4

13/8 11/8

8/1 3/1

Situations like this are by no means uncommon, and this arb makes a very satisfactory 6.78 percent profit.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time 2-Ball Betting While 2-ball betting sounds as though it's easier to win at, it isn't. The fly in the ointment is that the two players may shoot equal scores, and the `match' results in a `tie. Bookmakers generally price the tie at 7/1 or 15/2, with the prices for the players being opposites. For example, 1/2 and 2/1. With the price for the tie being a constant, we have a problem. We need a big discrepancy between the other two prices to make even a modest arb. Suppose our old friend `bookmaker A' were betting 10/11 and 11/10 the two golfers, with the tie at 15/2, we should need to find a bookmaker offering 2/1 about the 11/10 chance to even take a 2.59 percent profit. Price discrepancies like that do happen, but not regularly, and the best and most frequent arbs are found in the 3-ball markets. Recommended Bookmakers For Golf Trading www.sportingodds.com - This group have plenty of opinions, they're up early with their prices, and also bet to competitive markets. www.blucsq.com - Good golf service, and not afraid to step out of line on their prices. Stan James - As I've already said, telephone only. Up early with their prices, though the long delays which can occur getting their odds onto teletext pages mean backers sometimes miss out on value. Give them a ring. www.ladbrokes.com - Sometimes quite late going up, but they still create quite a few arbs. www.eurobet.co.uk - (Corals) These guys have put up some really big prices recently. Not noted for going up early, but they seem to want to take a strong position in the golf market. SNOOKER - Form Upsets Mean Plentiful Arbs Match Betting There are some solid profits to be achieved here, thanks to the clashing opinions of the odds compilers. Actually, snooker is becoming a difficult sport for anyone to price-up accurately. `Form' upsets are a regular feature of most tournaments, with supposedly inferior players treating their betters with scant respect, and `stars' often dumped out of competitions at an embarrassingly early stage. These results lead to very different opinions amongst the bookmakers. Some compilers fail to recognise that a defeated `big name' player may not have been giving a particular tournament his serious attention, and price-up his little-known conqueror much too respectfully in his next match. Some do recognise that the star was not at his brilliant best, and continue to price his victor as of little account. Which of course means àrbs' a-plenty. Suffice it to say that there is plenty of disagreement amongst compilers on players' merits, and that snooker arbs are frequent and easily found. One thing I would like to draw your attention to - the bookmaker's rules in the event of an abandoned match. Some bookmakers would regard all bets as void, while others would consider the winner to be the player who progresses to the next round. I know an abandoned match sounds a bizarre possibility, but stranger things have happened, and it pays to know the rules. Recommended Bookmakers For Snooker Trading www.sportingodds.com - One of the major players in the snooker market. Will price-up matches on their opinion and lay them to lose a good amount. Usually up early with their prices and should be one of the

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time first firms you check. www.bluesq.com - Have plenty of opinions and will also lay a decent bet. Not the first up with prices, but not the last either. www.totalbet.com - Once a partner with the `Tote,' this firm is now part of the UK Betting operation. Prices are comprehensive, and usually up early. Keep them in mind. www.tote.co.uk - The Tote compilers have been known to have some big opinions and to make some cracking arbs on snooker. One for the list. Stan James - Telephone only. They like to take a big position in the snooker market and will lay their opinion for large amounts. Can be relied on to create plenty of arbs. www.willhill.com - Normally quite late with their prices, however they do not allow other firms to sway their opinion, and will hold up their end of an arb until the cows come home. www.ladbrokes.com - Not the fastest up with odds in this area, but they have opinions and will lay them. Created many arbs last year and will do so again. DARTS - Aiming For Arbs And Maybe A 'Middle' As Well Match Betting My comments about form upsets in snooker also apply to this sport, but here they lead to even bigger discrepancies in the bookmakers' odds. Darts has been a growth sport for the betting industry recently, with turnover improving tournament after tournament, mainly due to the increased TV coverage. Bookmakers have had to improve their knowledge to keep pace, and that increased knowledge has led them to develop òpinions,' and create numerous arbs. It is also a fact that a number of bookmakers obtain inside information from players on current form and prospects. This leads compilers to knowingly create arbs, attracting money for those players they believe will lose. Speciality Betting Similar to the `Runs Scored' market in cricket, there are markets in Darts betting which will give you the opportunity to create an arb, and also have the chance to land a bonanza `middle' pay out. Bookmakers are now beginning to bet on `how many 180s will be scored' and on what will be the `highest checkout' in a match. There have been some outstanding differences of opinion. Most `fixed odds' firms do not have the expertise to frame these markets accurately. So knowing that the spread-betting firms delve carefully into the record books before pricing-up, they wait for prices from the Spread boys to appear, and then convert them into conventional odds. That's what most bookmakers do. But there are still some companies who tackle a sport that they are not sure of in the traditional way, by taking a good old-fashioned guess. It is the price differences between those who follow in the footsteps of the spread firms, and those who take a flying leap at the market, which most frequently give us our arb and `middle' opportunities. Recommended Bookmakers For Darts Trading www.sportingodds.com - A big player in the darts market. Plenty of opinions, up early, one of your first ports of call. www.bluesq.com - Never an early-pricer, but they do have opinions and will lay them to a fair sum. Stan James - Telephone only. This company has sponsored the PDC Championships for the last two years, and they like to get their prices up early. They have a compiler with an opinion and have created many arbs in the past. Watch them carefully for any speciality markets, like the `180s' or `Highest Checkout'. They made some notable howlers last year, and produced wonderful arbs in the process. www.willhill.com - Late up, but they stick to their prices through thick and thin. www.ladbrokes.com - As opinionated as ever, and hard to shift off a price. A good source of arbs. www.bet365.com - Had a dabble at this sport last year, and made plenty of arbs. More are expected this year.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time AMERICAN SPORTS - Picking Great Arbs Across The Atlantic Taking advantage of the very competitive betting margins in the US, and the fact that many British bookmakers are by no means up to speed on American sports, we can construct a very satisfactory number of arbs in this area. Prices for American football, baseball, basketball and ice hockey are now offered by a growing number of UK firms. By combining a little British inexperience with the cut-throat prices available across the pond, many of our arbs will be transatlantic affairs. There are three markets in particular you should look at... The Money Line - which is US terminology for match betting without a handicap. Line Betting - match betting with a handicap. Total Points - betting on the number of points scored in a game. Unless a bookmaker is very aware of what is happening in the States, he can easily and very quickly be left behind by events and US price changes and, in the process, find himself one end of an intercontinental arb. The main factors that change US odds are injuries, weather and money. I have seen the `line' on an American football game change by 7 points, a huge move in that sport, on the news that a star player had injured himself in training and would not be able to play. Weather is also vitally important. NFL teams reliant on a strong passing attack find themselves at a disadvantage in bad weather, and their line can shift significantly. The weather also has a very important part to play in `Total Points' betting. Rain, snow or high winds make moving the ball and scoring points much more difficult, and the `Total Points' markets can change 15 percent or more on the forecast of foul weather. Arb traders need to check the prices of the British bookmakers regularly against the injury and weather news from the `States, and then with the prices offered by the American sports books. Most UK bookmakers do not put enough time or effort in keeping up to date on US sports, and they can be guaranteed to unwittingly create arbs, particularly during the bad weather months of winter. There are a huge number of sports books in America. To keep track of them, you should use one of the excellent comparison and information sites available. One of the best is www.donbest.com, who offer a range of services to suit everyone's budget. Don Best's free service is useful. It compares the prices of dozens of casinos and sportsbooks, but it is about 15 minutes behind with price changes. At the tortoise speed some British bookmakers move on US sports, this is usually still quick enough for you to obtain your arb! For those who want to trade American sports extensively, Don Best's Platinum Service, which costs $99 per month is a viable option. Features include price changes, live scores, injury updates, weather forecasts, and tables showing the history of all current lines. An alternative comparison site which you will also find useful is, `The Jim Feist Offshore Connection' at www jimfeist.com. This is a free service and can be viewed in HTML or the auto-refreshing `Java'. If you are looking for a freebie, this one might be slightly better than the Don Best version. With injuries and bad weather constant factors in American odds changes, it is only a matter of time before events move too fast for British bookmakers to keep up with. Traders with their fingers on the pulse can expect a regular supply of arbs. Recommended Bookmakers For Trading In American Sports www.gotocasino.com - American sports book. Easy to open an account on the net, or you can ring them, if you prefer, on 1-888-333-PLAY (7529). They bet to very good margins and a profit take-out of only 2.26 percent on a `match' is quite typical. Like the other US sports books I recommend here, there are no cash-

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time handling charges, or those charges are minimal. www.intertops.com - US book. This firm offers a very comprehensive service, betting on just about everything. With their very low profit margins, they can also be useful if you are making arbs on British or European soccer or golf, as they bet on them too. www.betgcs.com - American. Another one you can sign up with by phone if you wish on 1-800-213-3370. The margins this firm offers are excellent. I have seen matches priced to produce only a 2.09 percent profit. www.willhill.com - A big player in the American market and, unfortunately, pretty quick on the uptake when prices change in the US. www.eurobet.co.uk - (Corals) Quite an extensive US service, and gratifyingly slow to update prices. www.bluesq.com - Good US coverage, and often slow to amend prices. www.bet365.com - An error-prone firm who offer good US sports coverage. A good source of arbs. MOTOR SPORTS - A Hidden Treasure In The World Of Arb Trading Motor racing, particularly Formula One events, is a great place to nail some nice returns. Arbs do not occur as frequently in F1 as in some other sports, but, when they are found, usually produce good profits and are worth the looking for. There are three markets meriting your close attention... Qualification Match Bets This is a bet that matches two drivers, the winner being the driver who has the quickest Qualification time, and consequently starts the Grand Prix from the highest position on the grid. In theory, bookmakers could match any two drivers they choose, but in practice, most firms tend to match the same drivers as their competitors. It is common, for instance, to see teammates pitted against each other. Bookmakers' initial beginning-of-the-week prices may be subject to dramatic changes as the all-important Qualification session on Saturday draws near. This is not usually because of the weight of backers' money, but due to a bookmaker reaction to the performances of drivers in practice. Some compilers take a great deal of notice of these practice sessions, and totally alter their prices for Qualification bets. Others take the view that, at this stage, drivers are not racing seriously, and prices are often left just as they were. It's in these differences of compiler reaction that arb opportunities occur. To take advantage of these variations, I recommend that before a practice session begins, you compile a table of each bookmaker's current Qualification odds. As you note the bookmaker's reaction to the session through his price amendments, you will be able to spot immediately where an arb has occurred. Bookmakers often initially bet 5/6 each of two in these match-ups. An ideal, and by no means infrequent ,arb opportunity occurs when one driver significantly out-performs his rival in an early practice session. It is then possible to back the session `winner' at 5/6 with the compilers who are unimpressed by such practice results, and the other driver at inflated odds with those compilers who react strongly to practice sessions. Race Match Bets In this market, bookmakers select two drivers and the winner is the driver who finishes the Grand Prix in the highest position. There are often mighty big discrepancies in compilers' prices for these match-ups, with some firms altering their odds feverishly as the practice times come in, and others leaving their markets untouched for days. It is sometimes necessary to do a little digging to discover each company's prices here, what is not updated on the net should be unearthed by telephoning and requesting the company's current odds. In the general confusion, bookmakers often have no idea of how other firms are betting on this market, which is all to the good.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time A typical Race Match Bet arb would be similar to the one I saw in the German Grand Prix, when Rubens Barrichello and David Coulthard were matched against each other. It was possible to back Barrichello at 6/5 and Coulthard at 11/10. Classification Betting In this bet, the bookmaker offers odds on whether or not a driver will finish as `classified' in a race. To be `classified,' a driver need not finish the entire distance of the Grand Prix, he need only complete 90 percent of it. Once again, the compilers are often at sixes and sevens over this one, and it is in their numerous differences of opinion that we find our arbs. A typical arb opportunity in this market was one which I saw in the US Grand Prix 2001. It was possible to back the Ferrari driver Rubens Barrichello to be `classified' at 1/2, and `not classified.' at 12/5. Although this was only a 4 percent arb, it is interesting to note that it was available for a full five hours before the race. Had this been a tennis arb, it would certainly not have been available for this length of time. In Motor Racing, there is much less pressure to conclude arbs quickly. Recommended Bookmakers For Motor Racing Trading www.bet247.com - Exploded into the market in good style in 2001 with some big opinions. Well, opinions or mistakes, depending on how you look at things. Created lots of arbs and will do so again. www.surreysports.com - Another firm who often have huge opinions and are often at odds with industry prices. A good coverage of F1 markets, and usually ùp' early. www.sportingodds.com - Not afraid to lay their opinions when they have them, though they tend to be fence-sitters in some `match' markets. Bet to good margins. Stan James - Plenty of markets and priced up early. A good source of arb materials. www.ladbrokes.com These guys were caught out many a time in 2001. They often stuck with their original prices through thick and thin, and quite often it was thin. www.eurobet.co.uk - (Corals) Knowledgeable compiler who is not afraid to stick his neck out. Has been known to deliberately create arbs with several firms at once in order to attract cash for the eventuality he believes will be the loser. Very fast up with prices. www.bet365.com - Full range of markets. Liable to make mistakes and a good source of arbs. Action Plan - Motor Racing • Create and then update your own table of prices when searching for Qualification match-bet arbs. Start with www.eurobet.co.uk, who are invariably first ùp'. • Ensure you know when the practice sessions begin. Check prices immediately once they are over. • Make those bookmakers noted for having the biggest òpinions' your first calls. • Always ensure that both of your investments are subject to the same settlement rulings. No matter what time of year, you'll always find plenty of àrb' opportunities available. Here is an extensive listing of the major sporting events month by month. January DARTS - World Championships, Purfleet GOLF - Kapalua Championships (Kapalua Kapalua) TENNIS - ATP Tour Events (Adelaide / Doha / Chennai) TENNIS - WTA Tour Events (Gold Coast / Auckland) DARTS - BDO World Championships, Frimley Green AMERICAN FOOTBALL - NFL regular season ends GOLF - Honolulu Open (Honolulu) TENNIS - ATP Tour Events (Sydney / Auckland) TENNIS - WTA Tour Events (Sydney / Canberra / Hobart)

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time GOLF - South African Open (Durban) AMERICAN FOOTBALL - AFC and NFC Wildcard play-offs TENNIS - Australian Open, Melbourne GOLF - Bob Hope Classic (Indian Wells) GOLF - Alfred Dunhill Championship (Johannesburg) AMERICAN FOOTBALL - AFC and NFC Divisional play-offs GOLF - Phoenix Open (Scottsdale) SNOOKER - Regal Welsh Open (Cardiff) GOLF - Perth Classic (Perth) AMERICAN FOOTBALL - AFC & NFC Championship games GOLF - Melbourne Classic (Melbourne) February GOLF - Pebble Beach National Pro-Am (Pebble Beach CA) TENNIS - ATP Tour Events (Milan / Bogota) TENNIS - WTA Tour Event (Tokyo) AMERICAN FOOTBALL - Super Bowl XXXVI (New Orleans) SNOOKER - English Masters (Wembley) GOLF - Buick invitational (La Jolla) TENNIS - WTA Tour Event (Paris) GOLF - ANZ Championship (Sydney) TENNIS - Davis Cup, World Group round one AMERICAN FOOTBALL - AFC-NFC Pro Bowl (Honolulu) GOLF - Nissan Open (Palisades) TENNIS - ATP Tour Events (Marseille / Copenhagen / Vina Del Mar) TENNIS - WTA Tour Events (Antwerp / Doha) GOLF - World Golf Championships (La Costa) GOLF - Tuscan Open (Arizona) TENNIS - ATP Tour Events (Memphis / Rotterdam / Buenos Aires) March SNOOKER - China Open (Shanghai) TENNIS - ATP Tour Events (Acapulco / Dubai / San Jose) GOLF - Genuity Championship (Miami) GOLF - Malaysian Open (Kuala Lumpur) FORMULA ONE - Australian Grand Prix (Melbourne) SNOOKER - Thailand Masters (Bangkok) GOLF - Coral Springs Classic (Coral Springs) TENNIS - ATP Tour Events (Scottsdale / Delray Beach) TENNIS - WTA Tennis Masters Series (Indian Wells) GOLF - Dubai Desert Classic (Emirates) GOLF - Bay Hill Invitational (Orlando) TENNIS - ATP Tennis Masters Series (Indian Wells) GOLF - Qatar Masters (Doha) FORMULA ONE - Malaysian Grand Prix (Sepang) GOLF - The Players Championship (Florida) TENNIS - ATP Masters Series (Miami) TENNIS - WTA Tour Event (Miami) SNOOKER - Irish Masters (Dublin) GOLF - Players' Championship (Sawgrass) GOLF - Madeira Island Open (Santo de Serra) GOLF - Houston Open (Texas) GOLF - Open de Canarias (Gran Canarias) FORMULA ONE - Brazilian Grand Prix (Interlagos) April TENNIS - WTA Tour Events (Porto / Sarasota) GOLF - Sugarloaf Classic (Sugarloaf Duluth)

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time GOLF - Algarve Portuguese Open (Algarve) TENNIS - Davis Cup, World Group round two SNOOKER - Regal Scottish Open (Aberdeen) GOLF - Masters Tournament (Augusta) TENNIS - ATP Tour Events (Estoril / Casablanca) TENNIS - WTA Tour Event (Amelia Island / Estoril) GOLF - Masters Tournament (Augusta) FORMULA ONE - San Marino Grand Prix (Imola) GOLF - Head Island Classic (Head Island) TENNIS - ATP Masters series (Monte Carlo). TENNIS - WTA Tour Events (Charleston / Budapest) BASKETBALL - NBA play-offs begin SNOOKER - World Championship (Sheffield) GOLF - Greater Greensboro Classic (Greensboro) TENNIS - ATP Tour Events (Barcelona / Houston) GOLF - The Seve Trophy (Wicklow) TENNIS - Fed Cup first round FORMULA ONE - Spanish Grand Prix (Barcelona) May GOLF - New Orleans Classic (New Orleans) TENNIS - ATP Tour Events (Munich / Mallorca) TENNIS - WTA Tour Events (Hamburg / Bol) GOLF - French Open (Paris) TENNIS - ATP Masters Series (Rome) TENNIS - WTA Tour Events (Berlin / Warsaw) GOLF - Byron Nelson Classic (Texas) GOLF - International Open (De Verve) FORMULA ONE - Austrian Grand Prix (Spielberg) GOLF - Fort Worth Colonial (Fort Worth) TENNIS - ATP Tennis Masters Series (Hamburg) TENNIS - WTA Tour Event (Rome) GOLF - German Open (Heidelberg) GOLF - Memorial Tournament (Ohio) TENNIS - WTA Tour Events (Strasbourg / Madrid) TENNIS - ATP Tour Event (St Poelten) GOLF - PGA Championship (Wentworth) FORMULA ONE - Monaco Grand Prix (Monte Carlo) TENNIS - French Open, Paris GOLF - Victor Chandler British Masters (Milton Keynes) June GOLF - Long Valley Open (Potomac) GOLF - British Masters (Milton Keynes) BASKETBALL - NBA finals begin. GOLF - Buick Classic (New York) GOLF - English Open (Warwickshire) FORMULA ONE - Canadian Grand Prix (Montreal) GOLF - US Open Championships (New York) TENNIS - ATP Tour Events (London / Halle) TENNIS - WTA Tour Events (Birmingham / Vienna / Tashkent) GOLF - Greater Hartford Open (Cromwell) TENNIS - ATP Tour Events (St Hertogenbosch / Nottingham) TENNIS - WTA Tour Events (Eastbourne / Hertogenbosch) GOLF - Great North Open (Northumberland) FORMULA ONE - European Grand Prix (Nurburgring) GOLF - St Jude Classic (Memphis)

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time TENNIS - All England Championships, Wimbledon GOLF - Irish Open (Cork) July GOLF - Illinois Open (Illinois) GOLF - Dublin Open (Dublin) FORMULA ONE - British Grand Prix (Silverstone) GOLF - Greater Milwaukee Open (Milwaukee) TENNIS - ATP Tour Events (Bastad / Gstaad / Newport) TENNIS - WTA Tour Events (Brussels / Palermo / Casablanca) GOLF - Scottish Open (Loch Lomond) GOLF - New York Open (New York) TENNIS - ATP Tour Events (Stuttgart / Umag / Amsterdam) GOLF - British Open Golf Championship (Muirfield) TENNIS - Fed Cup Quarterfinals FORMULA ONE - French Grand Prix (Magny-Cours) . GOLF - John Deer Classic (Illinois) TENNIS - ATP Tour Events (Kitzbuhel / Sopot / Los Angeles) TENNIS - WTA Tour Events (Stanford / Sopot) GOLF - TNT Open (Hilvershum) FORMULA ONE - German Grand Prix (Hockenheim) GOLF - The Colorado International (Colorado) TENNIS - ATP Masters Series (Canada) TENNIS - WTA Tour Events (Los Angeles / Helsinki) August GOLF - The Qwest International (Colorado) TENNIS - ATP Masters Series (Canada) TENNIS - WTA Tour Events (Los Angeles / Helsinki) GOLF - Volvo Scandinavian Masters (Stockholm) GOLF - Buick Open (Miami) TENNIS - ATP Masters Series (Cincinnati) GOLF - Celtic Manor Resort Wales Open (Newport) TENNIS - ATP Tour Events (Indianapolis / Washington) TENNIS - WTA Tour Event (Montreal) GOLF - US PGA Championship (Minnesota) GOLF - North West of Ireland Open (Donegal) FORMULA ONE - Hungarian Grand Prix (Budapest) GOLF - NEC Invitational (Sammamish) GOLF - Reno Tahoe Open (Nevada) TENNIS - ATP Tour Events (Long Island / Atlanta) TENNIS - WTA Tour Event (New Haven) GOLF - Washington Golf Championship (Washington) GOLF - Scottish PGA Championship (Gleneagles) GOLF - Scottish PGA Championship (Gleneagles) GOLF - Southern England Championship (Surrey) TENNIS - US Open, New York GOLF - BMW International Open (Munich) September FORMULA ONE - Belgian Grand Prix (Spa) GOLF - Canadian Open (Ontario) GOLF - European Masters (Crans-sur-Sierre) AMERICAN FOOTBALL - NFL regular season begins GOLF - Pennsylvanian Classic (Pennsylvania) TENNIS - ATP Tour Events (Tashkent /Salvador / Bucharest) TENNIS - WTA Tour Events (Big Island / Shanghai) GOLF - German Masters (Cologne)

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time FORMULA ONE - Italian Grand Prix (Monza) GOLF - Tampa Bay Classic (Florida) TENNIS - WTA Tour Events (Tokyo / Quebec) GOLF - WGC American Express Championship (Kilkenny) TENNIS - Davis Cup, World Group semi-finals GOLF - Texas Open (San Antonio) TENNIS - ATP Tour Events (Hong Kong / Toulouse / Palermo) TENNIS - WTA Tour Events (Leipzig / Bali) GOLF - The Ryder Cup FORMULA ONE - USA Grand Prix (Indianapolis) October GOLF - Kingsmill Championship (Kingsmill) TENNIS - ATP Tour Events (Tokyo / Moscow) TENNIS WTA Tour Events (Tokyo / Moscow) GOLF - Las Vegas Classic (Las Vegas) TENNIS - ATP TOUR EVENTS (Vienna / Moscow) TENNIS - WTA Tour Events (Filderstadt / Aarhus) GOLF -Lancome Trophy (Paris) FORMULA ONE - Japanese Grand Prix GOLF - National Golf Classic (Florida) TENNIS - ATP Masters Series (Stuttgart) TENNIS - WTA Tour Events (Zurich/Bratislava) GOLF - World Match play (Wentworth) GOLF - Buick Challenge (Pine Mountain). TENNIS - ATP Tour Events (Stockholm / Basel / St Petersburg) TENNIS - WTA Tour Events (Linz / Luxembourg) GOLF - Spanish Open (Madrid) November GOLF - Atlanta Tour Championship (Atlanta) TENNIS - ATP Tour Masters Series (Paris) GOLF - Southern Farm Bureau Classic (Missouri) TENNIS - WTA Tour Championships, Munich GOLF - Italian Open (Sardinia) GOLF - The Presidents Cup (South Africa) TENNIS - ATP Doubles World Championship (TBC) TENNIS - WTA Tour Event (Pattaya City) TENNIS - Fed Cup GOLF - Volvo Masters TENNIS - Masters Cup, Shanghai. TENNIS - Davis Cup final. December TENNIS - Davis Cup final. GOLF - WGC-EMC2 World Cup (Puerto Vallarta). CHAPTER FIVE Arbs In-Running If the Pre-Match Arbs of the last chapter can be considered to be bread and butter profits, welcome to the cake shop. Arks in-running is an area of your business that can deliver fantastic returns, and move your lifestyle from the bicycle to the Rolls-Royce class. Make no mistake, this is an opportunity to obtain free money quite unprecedented in the history of betting. 'In-Running' is now a hugely important part of bookmakers' business, and their biggest growth area.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time Companies who were at first reluctant to become involved are now swarming aboard, eager to grab a share of the market. Although the bookmakers are winning money overall from their `straight' punters, in the process they are creating situations which are pure gold for arbitrage traders. Situations from which, with a little preparation and expertise, you can extract large sums of cash. The problem the books face is that in-running is such a volatile and immediate market. When bookmakers prepare prices for a future event, they have time to research and consider their odds, and they can usually check those odds against those of competitors. Clangers can be quickly spotted and eradicated. In a properly run company, nearly all compiler errors are corrected before the public ever see them Not so in-running. Betting an event in-running requires the odds compiler to continually change his prices with the ebb and flow of the game. He has no time for lengthy considerations, nor can he pore over competitors' odds. He has to make instant decisions on the strength of his own opinions. This really gets to the bottom of the compiler's knowledge of the game, and also his competence at producing a winning result for his company. As well as setting odds for the match, the compiler will often have to field a string of queries from colleagues. He may be asked whether a large sum from a respected source should be accepted, whether an À1' customer can strike a bet which will totally unbalance his in-running book, and make decisions on other important trading matters In short, this man certainly has his work cut out for him. Even good compilers can make errors in situations like this, and since we know that there are a good deal more incompetent than competent odds setters, it should come as no surprise that in-running markets produce so many huge differences of opinion between them - and so many hugely profitable arbs in the process. This chapter will show you how to exploit this situation. The prices which are crazily wrong, the compilers who are so confused they don't know whether they are `best' price a team or `worst', and the percentages which add up to mega-buck pay days for arbitrage traders. CRICKET - An Arb Opportunity Every Time A Ball Is Bowled This sport is one of the most volatile of those that are bet in-running. Just two wickets lost and prices change dramatically, sometimes to the extent of installing a new favourite. Compilers frequently over react to events, and markets often look close to chaos. I have seen cricket matches where the bookmaker began with odds of 5/6 for both teams, moved through the fractions until one side was 1/8 and the other 9/2, and then returned the way he came, until both sides were back at 5/6 again! The way to profit from all this is to always strike your investments at a `value' price, and to try to bias your profits with the way that the match is going. This might sound obvious, but inexperienced traders sometimes find it easier to say than do. The purpose of this section and this whole chapter is to make sure that you have the complete professional trader's toolkit, so that you too can join the in-running bonanza. Outright Prices Cricket is the most consistently profitable sport for in-running arbs, and the market to concentrate on is the òutright win'.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time There is real money to be made here, and you should make this your main area of trade. You will notice that at the start of matches there are relatively few arbs to be found. Even in the most bizarre circumstances, bookmakers tend to hold hands and react in a similar way. However, once there is an innings on the board and a total to be chased, compilers start to acquire opinions. And the opinions of many of them revolve madly around just two factors: wickets and fours. Cricketers have been losing wickets and hitting fours since cricket was invented. That's the game, as it happens. But the reaction of some compilers when a wicket goes down is similar to the one they'd have if the Martians landed and abducted the whole team. What this means to you is that every ball can swing the odds and create an arb opportunity. So you should always follow a match, phone to hand, logged on, funds at the ready. Let me give you an example, by no means untypical, of how crazy and profitable this in-running outright win betting can be. The Cheltenham and Gloucester Trophy semi-final between Somerset and Warwickshire saw the odds compilers in their usual state of disarray. First, let me tell you how the match went... After Warwickshire scored a total of 228, Somerset emerged from the Pavilion needing a very `gettable' 229 to win. Things went wrong for them at the start, when star batsman Marcus Trescothick was out with only four runs on the board, and the usually reliable Bowler was dismissed for a duck. Next man in, Burns, was soon out too, and Somerset had scored 6 runs for the loss of three wickets. At this point, compilers had Warwickshire as short as 1/4 to win. Somerset then pulled themselves together somewhat, and started to move the scoreboard, but the subsequent loss of Parsons, Blackwell and Cox left them with plenty still to do. That's when Keith Dutch and Rob Turner came together for them, and started to attack the Warwickshire bowling. This partnership was to prove a match winner, and a source of riches for arb traders, as compilers failed to agree on whether these two could lead Somerset to victory. Two of the leading 'in-running' bookmakers, Stan James and www.bluesq.com thought that they would, but two of the others, www.sportingodds.com and www.bet365.com were having none of it. Their money was on Warwickshire. These differences of opinion resulted in not just one arb opportunity being made during the afternoon, but many arriving one after the other, like a succession of early Christmas gifts. Happy traders were kept busy making money hand over fist for hours. Most professionals made at least three arbs, many made up to six. Here are five of the most memorable... 1/3 and 4/1 1/2 and 11/4 4/6 and 9/4 8/11 and 2/1 11/10 and 5/4 -

5.26 percent profit 7.14 percent profit 10.17 percent profit 9.26 percent profit 8.62 percent profit

The point to remember is that there was nothing stunningly exceptional about this game of cricket. Batsmen get themselves out, batsmen build partnerships - it happens match after match. The arbs that this game produced were the product of the compilers' feverish overreactions to wickets and fours. And the good news is the oddsmen never learn. They do it all the time.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time Cricket can be quite a time-consuming game to follow, but with rewards like these, it's well worth the effort. Whatever sports you decide to trade in-running, make sure that cricket is one of them, and the outright win market your main target. Innings Total Runs When the in-running bookies settle down to produce markets on the total number of runs scored in an innings, give them your closest attention. As we have just seen, the compilers sometimes have a difficult job agreeing which team is going to win the match, let alone how many runs will be scored. To be fair, this is a difficult one to call, and it's no great surprise that at least one of the in-running bookies usually gets it wrong. The bookmakers invariably split the `total runs' into three bets. Many firms start out with around the same sort of opinion. This is because most of them, quite frankly, have copied their markets from the spread firms. It is when the game gets underway and firms begin to adjust those markets in the light of `wickets and fours' that their paths diverge. Here are three real quotes from an NCL match, after the fall of two early wickets... Under 220 runs 220 to 240 runs Over 240 runs -

6/4 7/4 15/8

Under 190 runs 190 to 240 runs Over 240 runs -

2/1 5/4 2/1

Under 190 runs 190 to 200 runs Over 200 runs -

7/4 5/1 8/11

As you can see, bookmakers price the `middle band' in different ways. Some like to keep it very narrow, as in the third example, and offer a `big' price for a ten run `window'. Others like to make the `total runs' market a real three-way tie, by betting a `middle' of fifty runs, as the second bookmaker has done. This firm will doubtless have placed their estimate of the likely score right in the middle of their middle band. You will encounter some very different opinions from time to time, but the bread and butter `Total Runs' markets are rather similar to this one. Here you can achieve a small arb of just over 2 percent by backing ùnder 220 runs at 6/4' with the first bookmaker, and òver 200 runs at 8/11' with the third. The joy of these `Total Runs' markets is not usually the size of the arb, it's in obtaining a `middle', and the chance to scoop a jackpot pay out. In our example, you are of course guaranteed a 2 percent profit on your trade, but should the final score be anywhere between 201 and 219, you will land both sides of your arb, and secure a double return. These markets are always worth being involved in, not only for the `middles' which you are certain to achieve several times in the course of the season, but also for the less spectacular days, when you can record two losing investments in your betting history, and still show a profit. Biasing Your Winnings just because a man is called an odds compiler, it doesn't necessarily mean that he knows more about a sport than you do. I have known compilers whose knowledge of the game they are trading is virtually nil. In fact, even compilers who do know what they are doing often get it all wrong. They make the mistake of trying to balance their books rather than price the game they are watching. Worrying about the company's trading position blurs their judgement. Once you have been watching cricket for a little while, you will begin to form opinions of your own.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time It won't be long afterwards when you realise that some of the prices compilers produce are so wrong, so plainly, unequivocally wrong, that they just scream to be backed. However, we are not gamblers, and we are not going to risk a penny of our capital. But what we are going to do is to bias our trading to take advantage of these errors of judgement. When a compiler blunders badly, perhaps significantly overpricing the most likely result, we can make that result our biggest winner, or our only winner if you are confident enough, accepting just the return of your outlay from the other side of the arb. The way to make your opinions sharper than the compiler's is to be methodical. Use the chart I recommended in a previous chapter, and keep score of the match over-by-over. Note and compare teams' scoring rates, runs required and cumulative totals. I guarantee that with a little practice you will be able to `read' a game better than 90 percent of the men who are setting the odds. Recommended Bookmakers For In-Running Cricket Prices www.bluesq.com - Fairish judges, but rather conservative. They try to keep themselves in the middle of the market but will accept reasonably large bets. www.sportingodds.com - Make sure you have an account with this firm. They have some very big opinions and lay a decent bet. www.bet365.com - Whoops, here they are again. There's often great value to be found here, as they frequently seem to be watching a different match from everyone else. One area they consistently get wrong is the `short price'. I have seen offers of 1/3 about teams best priced at 1/8 elsewhere. This not only gives us an arb, but the gift-wrapped opportunity to bias our winnings towards a 1/8 chance. Stan James - Telephone only - This group have been betting in-running longer than anyone else, and still don't always get it right. Their large client base ensures that mistakes aren't up for long though, and you have to be quick on the dial. Action Plan - Cricket In-Running • Concentrate on the outright winner markets as your main arb source. • Remember, the later in the match, the more volatile the market and the more the likelihood of finding high-profit arbs. • Don't despise the total runs markets for their niggardly profits, think of those free chances for double-pay `middles'. • When you have gained enough experience watching and logging the progress of matches, look to bias your profits when you recognise compiler slip-ups. FOOTBALL - An In-Running Favourite Football is the most popular of all the in-running sports, and the outright win is its most popular market, but that doesn't make it profitable to invest in. There are two problems with soccer's outright win market. 1 - There are three possible results. 2 - The bookmakers regularly bet to a difficult-to-overcome 12 percent profit margin. To find a soccer arb, we have to locate a very considerable difference of opinion, and that doesn't happen frequently. Take a look at what you are up against. Here are typical pre-match odds for an imaginary game... Team A Draw Team B

6/4 9/4 6/4

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time Let's suppose that we are ten minutes into the second half, and that the score is 1-1. The compiler now prices this game as... Team A Draw Team B

15/8 11/8 15/8

Now, for us to achieve a modest 3 percent arb in this game, we would need to find the following odds... Team A Draw Team B

12/5 13/8 12/5

And the problem is that, although numerous firms will be betting in-running, we'll be very lucky to find the prices we need. The fly in the ointment is the price for the draw. You might have come to the conclusion that they don't teach compilers very much at compiler school. But one of the things they do drum into them is that, if the pre-match quote for the draw is 9/4, should the game be stalemate at half-time, then the draw odds must be cut to around 6/4. I'm afraid that is the way bookmakers look at it and it's bad news for us. Because with the draw price locked in at around 6/4, and a 12 percent profit margin hanging over everything like a big black cloud, we need to find two large differences of opinion on the win results to make an arb. It's not impossible, but it doesn't happen very often. There are similar problems with many soccer scenarios, but there are one or two situations where we are likely to find opportunities for profit. These hinge on the compiler being under pressure, and having no ready answers to his problem. The sort of situation compilers hate, and one they frequently foul-up on, is when the underdog surprisingly takes the lead, or two quick goals are scored, turning the game upside down in minutes. The less opinionated compilers, and those who are just plain confused, often sit on the fence with their prices. However, a compiler with heavy liabilities on the team who have just moved into the lead will sometimes step right out of line in an attempt to balance his book. And an arb is born. Soccer òutright win' arbs, when they do occur, are usually in the area of 4 percent money makers, but you have to be quick and well organised to secure one. Let me suggest an easier and more fruitful area for your attention... The Last Corner Market We're now back to a two possibility event, and one in which pricing errors are more plentiful. It is a fact that bookmakers pay less attention to their `last corner' prices than they should. In a way, it's understandable. This is not a popular, high-turnover market and harassed compilers dealing with big money bets on òutright', `total goals' and `next goal' markets tend to leave it to fend for itself. The time to attack is in the last quarter of the match, preferably at the moment of a change in the market. You will find that out-of-date prices are more frequently available in this market than any other, and the rewards for securing one are superb. I'd like to suggest a not untypical scenario, as an illustration of how fast this market can change, and the profits you can earn... Let's say there are twenty minutes or so left in the game. Team A, who have had the majority of play, but

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time are a goal behind, are pushing forward. Team B, a little fortunate to be in front, are adopting a `defence first' policy, and their chances of getting a corner are slim. However, Team B are the current holders of the last corner, and the bookmakers price them at 4/7 to win the market. Should Team As pressure pay off and they are awarded a corner, the price changes will be massive. Team B, favourite at 4/7 a moment ago would now be pushed out to 3/1, and Team A would shorten to 1/5 from 5/4. If you are fast on the button or the dial, you could easily help yourself to a stupendously good price before the compilers get around to updating it. Providing you are quick, this type of arbing is quite easy to trade, as you only have to concentrate on getting one price. Success in your pursuit of the 5/4 for Team A will enable you to sit back and wait for the 3/1 about Team B to arrive through the system in its own good time. In this example, if you invest £400 at 5/4 on Team A, your arb is secure and you have locked in a clear 44 percent profit on your trade. The investment later of £225 at 3/1 is a formality. Note - Bookmakers usually close their markets on both outright win and last corner betting after 80 minutes. Recommended Bookmakers For In-running Football Prices www.eurobet.co.uk - (Corals) A poor in-running service overall. They do, however, make real howlers more than occasionally. www.ladbrokes.com - At last expanding their in-running operation, and not before time. Considering their market position and the huge opinions these fellows have about everything, it's a mystery they haven't got into gear before now. www.willhill.com - Another household name who offer a poor in-running service. They are beginning to improve... slowly. www.bluesq.com - New ideas, enthusiastic approach, innovative markets and they accept a decent bet. www.sportingodds.com - Good service, decent range of events covered, and their margins are low. www.bet365.com - This firm offer a comprehensive ìn running' service, putting some of the bigger outfits to shame. The good news for us is that their prices are often at loggerheads with our bookmakers. Definitely one to note. www.victorchandler.com - Only cover the major games, but they do a good job of it, often taking major `positions'. I look forward to the day when they expand their service. Stan James - Telephone only. This is a firm that does cover every game, no matter how insignificant. They have the occasional opinion and will lay it. Guaranteed never to take a market down early. GOLF - Decent Arb Profits If You Are Prepared To Wait The best policy for golf in-running is to stay out of the fray until the tournament reaches its closing stages, with no more than four golfers in contention. Realistically, it doesn't matter what the differences of opinion between bookmakers happen to be - overcoming their profit margins in a field of more than four is a difficult task, and rarely done. Tournaments that are down to two or three contenders are the favourite hunting ground. Best of all are those featuring just two in with a chance, or a two-player play-off. My experience is that the best opportunities occur on the European tour, where bookmakers, both in the UK and on the continent, have a pleasing habit of trading the event from their Field Book position. This means they are being influenced by their liabilities on the tournament as a whole, rather than pricing-up the final stages on the actual form and chances of the players concerned. To give an example: If a two-golfer finish were a genuinely difficult to call `5/6 each of two' affair, but the bookmaker held a large liability on one of the participants, he would price this player at perhaps 4/6, and try to attract money for his opponent at 11/10.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time This wouldn't be quite enough for us to make a profit. But if a different firm had a very strong opinion, or equally large liabilities on the other golfer, they might price the match entirely the other way around. We could easily see 11/10 for each player, and be able to collect a 4.8 percent arb. This sort of liability situation develops quite regularly. Golf is a sport where outright prices are often laid at 100/1 and more to good money, and bookmakers frequently have huge liabilities on their books for players with real chances of winning. I have seen many a bookmakers' golf Field Book in the course of a misspent youth, and it is a very rare occurrence for the bookmaker to have two big losers fighting out the finish. But one big loser - that's `situation normal'. The best part of this for you and I is that the bookies are happy to lay the arb. Just for a change we're welcome to step inside and pick where we want. Recommended Bookmakers For In-Running Golf Prices Victor Chandler - Telephone only. For some reason they don't put their live golf prices on their internet site, though they are displayed on teletext and are available to telephone callers. This is no bad thing, since having a telephone option can be a great help at times. This firm have huge opinions and are very aggressive with their prices - I've never seen them back down. They doubtless get themselves into very ìnteresting' positions, with both thumping big winners and losers on their book. www.sportingodds.com - Good in-running service with most tournaments covered. Bet to very attractive margins, probably the best percentages in the industry. www.bluesq.com - Another good service. Most tournaments competitively priced up and fair bets taken. www.willhill.com - Margins can be tight at times, however they do price-up their opinions. They will take a good bet and are usually worth an early visit. www.bet365.com - Due to their `new kid' position in the market and probably relatively low turnover, if they have a big liability in their book you can bet that the response will be an overreaction. They're worth checking out on that score alone. Tend to miss out the smaller events and can take a bit too much margin at times. Stan James - Telephone only. A big player in the golf market, with some big opinions too. Have created many an arb and are likely to continue to do so. Their prices are displayed on teletext pages. Action Plan - Golf In-Running • Begin your preparations when it looks as though a tournament will finish in a two-or three-player battle. • Always make the `value' price your investment priority. • Be prepared to have larger investments than usual if a bookmaker is levelling out his book - he'll be glad to take them. OTHER SPORTS - In-Running Arbs In Snooker, Tennis And Rugby There are other sports well worth a look in-running. Although arbs are not encountered frequently, when they do occur, they often produce very good profit levels. Snooker This is a terrifically volatile in-running sport. One missed `pot' at the wrong moment can have a cataclysmic effect on prices. Compilers can't afford to miss a moment of the action and are often under pressure, which brings us to our favourite equation... Compilers under pressure = arbs Here is an example of how the odds in a match can change dramatically in seconds. Let's consider a `best of nine frames' game, with the current score at 3-3. Player A is at the table, needing to pot all the easy colours to take the frame and move into a 4-3 lead, just one frame from victory. At this stage the compiler would price Player A as around a 2/9 chance to win the match, with his opponent

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time Player B at 11/4. Player A then misses an easy shot, leaving Player B to come to the table, sink the remaining balls and win the frame. The compiler would then price up the match in exactly the opposite way. He would have Player B at 2/9, and Player A at 11/4. It's worth following the compiler's thought process here. When Player A was at the table and looking highly likely to move into a 4-3 lead, the compiler will have awarded him that frame already, and was probably thinking along lines similar to these... `Player A needs one from a possible two frames to win, and Player B needs both of those frames. In a tight match like this, with both men playing to a similar standard, the odds of either of them winning a frame are even. So, the true odds of Player B winning two frames and taking the match is therefore even money multiplied by even money - less the one point stake - which equals 3/1. With the bookmaker's profit margin deducted from that price, the odds which I should offer backers is 11/4' Which is exactly what he does. If one player in a match is priced at 11/4, then in order to ensure that the bookmaker enjoys an overall profit of 8 percent on the book, the compiler will offer the other player at 2/9. Which is the price that backers are offered for Player A. Situations much more complicated than this develop quite frequently in snooker, and compilers are always prone to get their figuring wrong under pressure. We don't necessarily have to know what the correct figuring should be, we just have to compare prices and jump on the arb opportunities that will surely occur. Tennis This sport is only in its infancy, so far as in-running markets are concerned. At present only a handful of bookmakers regularly price-up, and most of them have a tendency to take their prices down when an important point is being played. At the moment it is difficult to make arbs here. The leading tennis in-running firms are mainly internet operators, which adds to our problem of securing both sides of the arb. I know that certain telephone bookmakers have plans to trade this sport as-it-happens, and that day can't come too soon for us. Rugby We have already covered the importance of `middling' to your profitability and, though rugby in-running is not noted for producing frequent or profitable arbs, it is well worth keeping an eye on for those free shots at the jackpot. Particularly toward the end of a game you will find opportunities to make small arbs, or at least situations where you are guaranteed not to lose, which produce three-or four-point `middles'. These `middles' are worth your time, because when they do pay off, it will be in spectacular style. CHAPTER SIX Something Special - Creative Arbs The name of your job is Sports Arbitrage Trader, but, just as Gary Lineker sells crisps and Harry Redknapp writes for the newspapers, there's no reason why you have to stick to sports to make money. So long as there is an opportunity to invest in a market and take an arb profit from it, what the market relates to is of no practical importance to you and me.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time What I'm going to suggest is that you can make good money - sometimes very good money - from politics, books, pop records, and just about anything where two or three bookmakers have decided to offer prices. The betting industry likes to call these markets `specials', and they are becoming a very popular part of the bookmakers' product. The most successful `special' of all time, so far as betting turnover is concerned, is without doubt TV's Big Brother series. The bookmakers took sackfuls of cash on these programmes. The more Big Brother markets they devised, the more the public invested their hard-earned. The show produced a number of good arbs too, with every bookie in the country having a go at producing prices. In this chapter, I'd like to point you in the direction of some very interesting `special' markets which invariably provide good opportunities for profit. The nice thing about `specials' is that compilers are often so totally baffled by them, the arbs they create are nothing less than amazing. Let's have a look at a few which are guaranteed to put money in your pocket... Music, Film and Television Awards Under this heading come events such as the MTV Music Awards, the Brit Awards, and the Mercury Music Prize. Awards are presented in a range of categories such as `Best Album', `Best Female Singer' and so on, with three to six nominees competing in each. The MTV Music Awards, usually pop up with a good arb or two. Check out these prices for `Best Female Singer'. The first four bookmakers to price-up did so over a three-day period and, when the odds were in, this what they offered between them. Noted alongside is the amount required to return £1000... Jennifer Lopez Dido Madonna Mariah Carey Janet Jackson

15/8 7/2 3/1 12/1 14/1

£347.82 £222.22 £250.00 £76.92 £66.66

This joint effort presented us with the chance to invest for a profit of 3.6 percent. You will find many such arbs in these events. Not sensational, but still worth picking up. When a market such as this is priced-up over a period of days, it's a good idea to make a table of prices as the bookmakers publish their odds. This ensures that you can see the state of the market at a glance, and won't miss out on a profit. As few traders get involved in these special markets, this is excellent business to have on your account history. Keep your stakes `round' and it will look to the bookmaker like a perfectly normal bet. In addition to the main music awards, there are dozens of more obscure events where you will find arbs. No matter how little known the event is, once one bookmaker has put up prices, you can be sure that others will follow. Of course, you don't have to stop at music awards. If there is one group of people who like giving each other shiny medals more than `musos', it's the film, stage and TV performers. Oscars head the list, but there are dozens of other accolades giving tearful recipients the chance to thank their parents and the `crew'. You will find all of these awards bashes a rich source of plunder. Since there is no `form' to go on in the conventional sense, a bookmaker's prices all come down to the opinion of his compiler. You will have noticed that, as a group, compilers often have difficulty agreeing what today's date is - and arb opportunities in these events are frequent. Specialist Specials Forgetting the glamour and the glitz of showbiz for a moment, let us turn our attention to an arb source you

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time may not have considered before - Literature. Well, the Booker Prize anyway. This is the main British-based literary award, and always attracts a fair amount of betting. Not only betting, but arb traders too, because every year you can rely on the bookmakers to present you with a lovely profit. Here are the nominated authors, and the prices available for them... Peter Carey Ian McEwan Andrew Miller Rachel Seiffert Ali Smith David Mitchell

5/2 5/2 6/1 10/1 12/1 14/1

This table represents a chance to invest at 94.8 percent, for a guaranteed profit of 5.2 percent. A terrific read in anyone's book. A point worth making is that these prices and this arb were freely available for three full days. You would never see a 5 percent arb on offer for this length of time for a mainstream sporting event. By delving into the specials market, you have stolen a march, not only on casual arb chasers, but on your fellow professionals as well, many of whom have still not cottoned on to what an easy-to-work and lucrative area this is. In the Booker market, with investments to be made on six eventualities, it is important that you achieve the most outstandingly `wrong' price first. In this case, it was the 5/2 on offer for Peter Carey, who was as short as 13/8 with some firms. It is also worth pitching your profit aspirations at a non-frightening level for the bookmakers in this quiet backwater market. You can always go round again if you want more. Here are the outlays to secure a £2000 return... £571.42 £571.42 £285.71 £181.81 £153.84 £133.33

on Peter Carey on Ian McEwan on Andrew Miller on Rachel Seiffert on Ali Smith on David Mitchell

As you are investing here in a market seldom visited by traders, it is a good idea to `round' your bets, and present them as though they were `straight'. This will further confuse the bookmakers as to exactly what sort of customer you are. Nice to contemplate too, are the five lovely losers you will be putting on your accounts. For those who decide to `round up', the following stakes would have been acceptable. Also shown are the returns and the net profit for each author... Peter Carey Ian McEwan Andrew Miller Rachel Seiffert Ali Smith David Mitchell

£570 £570 £285 £180 £155 £135

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£1995 £1995 £1995 £1980 £2015 £2025

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profit profit profit profit profit profit

£100 £100 £100 £85 £120 £130

If you had a strong opinion as to who the winner might be, you could have refined this arb still further by biasing your returns toward your idea of the victor. Remember, you don't actually need to know anything about the subject of the market you are investing in, to us they are all simply money markets. Politics It's not often that I find myself enthusing about politicians, but for sheer arb heaven you can't beat a gener-

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time al election. The last election in this country in 2001 provided all the usual treats for traders. To such an extent that some professionals cleaned up more in one week than they normally accumulate in six months. There were many, many opportunities to make money, and many mistakes by the compilers. But here is one that takes some beating... Bookmakers decided to bet on the number of seats political parties might win - similar to betting on the `Total Runs' a cricket team might score - by organizing the possibilities into two or three `bands'. Making `standard' arbs of around 5 percent wasn't at all difficult, but such is bookmakers' incompetence that it was often possible to make well in excess of this figure. This is how two bookmakers bet on the number of seats the Liberal Democrat Party would win... Bookmaker A Under 45 seats Between 45 and 50 seats Over 50 seats

11/4 2/1 10/11

Bookmaker B Under 43 seats 43 or more seats

4/9 13/8

These differences of opinion presented two golden opportunities. Firstly, we could achieve a hugely profitable arb. Secondly, there was a free `middle' of 43 or 44 seats, where we might possibly land both sides of our investment and a jackpot payout. These days, opinion pollsters are remarkably accurate with their general election voting predictions. Their measuring techniques have never been so sophisticated and reliable, and these experts are never very far from the mark. Added to which, we do not have to rely on just one firm to get it right, we can cross-check their findings with at least two other leading companies. But such is the pig-headedness of some bookmakers, they believe that they know better than the poll specialists. When we compare the prices of the two bookmaking firms in our example, it's obvious that someone has got things horribly wrong. One firm bets 10/11 more than 50 seats, and the other bets 13/8 more than 43! A cursory glance through the opinion polls convinced traders that Bookmaker B had it all wrong. The polls were predicting around 54 or 55 seats for the Liberals, and the offer of 13/8 for more than 43 was exceptional. This being the case, an arb equally biased toward both outcomes would have been a golden opportunity missed. This is a real `no argument' instance when you are fully justified in biasing your arb to take full advantage of the bookmaker's slip-up. Putting matters into perspective, the offer of 13/8 should actually have been around 1/4. A suitable investment plan might have seen you invest £1200 at 13/8, and £436.36 at 11/4. This would have secured an overall PROFIT of £1513.64, which represents a net gain on stakes of 92.50 percent. Don't run away with the idea that this Lib-Dem example was a one-off freak. Far from it. The market on the number of seats that the Labour Party would gain produced arbs of 92 percent and 93 percent on different occasions, while the market on Conservative seats produced a 90 percent arb that remained available for over two days. Recommended Bookmakers Covering The Goldmine of 'Specials' If you give all the `specials' your close attention, you will be one of a small band of traders who regularly find gold here. Many of these markets might strike you as being pretty silly, but there is nothing silly about the profits that they produce. Make it your policy to check out the `specials' as often as you can.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time At the end of the year you may be surprised to discover what a major contribution they have made to your overall profits. Here are some bookmakers to place at the top of your list for `specials'... www.sportingodds.com - These boys will bet on anything and always have a good selection of specials on offer. They have a few niche markets to themselves as well. Guaranteed to have an opinion on everything. Good source of arbs. www.bluesq.com - Very good coverage of special events. They are extremely aggressive in their pricing and, when they disagree with sportingodds, it's usually a pay day for traders. Their limits are good, surprisingly high at times. These are the pranksters who lightened the nation's gloom during the last outbreak of 'foot-and-mouth' by staging live Hamster racing, complete with paddock comments. Worth a visit. www.willhill.com - Certain markets are always priced-up early, notably any with a political slant. Others often go up late, particularly music awards events. They will accept a decent bet on any price they offer. www.ladbrokes.com - Often leaders on specials, such as the Big Brother markets, but will not be pushed into trading an event just because others are doing so. When they do go up, which is most of the time, they tend to have massive opinions and are not frightened to price-up accordingly. Their phone betting outlet can be very useful at times. www.bet365.com - Great copiers of other firm's prices, but this can be a good thing. If the price they have copied is wrong, you now have at least two sources from which to build an arb. Some of their limits on the internet are a joke, but now that they have a telephone betting facility, there are no longer computer auto restrictions to hide behind. Stan James - Telphone only. Another bookmaker with reams of copying paper in their office. I'd hate to have to wait for a market to go up if it was only being bet by Stan James and bet365. On the occasions when they do have an opinion, prepare yourself for a mighty arb. Although this firm was not involved in any of the political arbs discussed earlier, their general election odds must have paid for many a Carribean Cruise. CHAPTER SEVEN Spread Betting Arbs This chapter is a little thinner than some others, because in truth there is less to say. `Spread' arbs can be found, but there are less of them, and they are generally harder to secure than `fixed odds' or 'in-running' arbs. But every little helps, and we'd be foolish to pass up any opportunity to take a profit. For those who have not dealt with `spread' firms before, here's a quick explanation of how this kind of betting works. Firstly, it's much simpler than many people imagine. Although spread betting has an image problem, with many people believing it to be a preserve of the mega-rich and those with degrees in mathematics, neither of these things are actually true. The idea behind spread betting is the same as with buying or selling shares. If you buy a share and it increases in value you make money. If it goes down in value you lose money. It's the same with spread betting on sport. Instead of a share, the investors buy or sell a `line' in whichever market interests them. As an example, let's look at a fictitious Rugby League game, and the most popular of the spread betting markets, `points supremacy'. In our imaginary game Wigan are at home to Bradford. The spread firm compilers decide that Wigan are favourites, and expect them to win by 5 points. So that the spread companies can make a profit, they offer a `spread' of points based on their opinion of the outcome. In this example, with 5 points as their core opinion, the `supremacy spread' they offer might be `Wigan over Bradford by 4-7 points'. If a backer thinks that Wigan will win by more than 7, he `buys' Wigan at 7. If he thinks that Wigan will win

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time by less than 4, or that Bradford will win, he `sells' Wigan at 4. Importantly, if our backer agrees with the odds compiler that Wigan will win by between 4 and 7 points, he should not have a bet. The reasons for this will become clear in a moment. The More Right You Are, The More You Win Let's assume that Wigan win 23-15, a winning margin of 8 points. Buyers of Wigan are in the money. They bought at 7, and their profit is calculated by counting how many points more than 7 Wigan won by, which in this case is 1. So buyers win one times their stake. Sellers of Wigan have had a bad day. They sold at 4, indicating that they thought Wigan would win by less than 4, and Wigan scored 4 points more than that sell figure. Those backers lose 4 times their stake. In spread betting, the amount that you win or lose is not the amount that you name as your initial stake. In the spread world, the more right you are the more you win. The more wrong you are, the more you lose. Unlike a fixed odds market, where a £10 losing bet costs £,10, in our example a £10 per point sell of Wigan would have cost the backer four times his stake, namely £40. Here's how things would work out with a different result. Let's say the game ended Wigan 34 - Bradford 6. Buyers of Wigan at 7 will be looking at a tidy profit. Wigan won by 28 points, so after deducting the 7 points that the spread firm made the backer pay for siding with Wigan, he has won 21 times his stake. This result would be bad news, though, for sellers of Wigan at 4. These investors are looking at a loss of 24 times their stake. The result that the spread firm would really like is for Wigan's winning margin to fall within their `spread'. Suppose Wigan had won by five points, 22-17. The spread company would not have to pay out a penny. E Because the margin of victory was 5, all buyers at 7 have lost two times their stake, and all sellers at 4 have lost 1 times their stake. The next most popular spread bets are the `Total Points', `Runs' and `Goals' markets. Back to our rugby game for an example. The `total points' spread in this match may be quoted as 44-47, which represents the compiler's guess at the total number of points scored when both teams' totals are added together. Exactly the same principles apply here as in the points supremacy market. Backers who feel that it will be a high-scoring game buy at 47 and those who feel that points will be hard to come by sell at 44. Your Prospects For Making 'Spread' Arbs Let's stick with Wigan and Bradford. We already have a quote for a Wigan supremacy of 4-7 points. Suppose another firm were of the opinion that Wigan were stronger favourites than that, and that they might make their points supremacy 8-11. This difference of opinion has created an arb. You could buy Wigan at 7 with the first firm, and sell them at 8 with the second. This would ensure a profit of 1 times your stake, whatever the score in the game. It works like this: Suppose that Wigan won 30-0. The buy with the first firm at 7 has produced a profit of 23 times your stake, and the sell with the other at 8 has produced a loss of 22 times your stake. One point profit. If Bradford had upset the form book and won 25-20, you would have a losing bet of 12 times your stake with the first company, and a winning one of 13 times your stake with the other. One point profit whatever happens. Sometimes spread firms may disagree on who the favourite should be, making things a little more complicated. In this case firm A may see Wigan as superior by 0-3, and firm B may believe that Bradford are the

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time superior side by 2-5. In this case, the backer could sell Wigan at 0 with firm A, and also sell Bradford at 2 with firm B, to secure a profit of 2 points whatever the result. In this scenario, if Wigan won the game 23-16, you would have incurred a 7-point loss with firm A, but a 9point profit with firm B. This produces an overall profit of 2 points. Had Bradford won, say 30-12, this would give you an 18-point win with firm A and a 16-point loss with company B. Another overall profit of 2 points. 'Minority' Sports Are Where You'll Find Your Spread Arbs Actually, it's very appropriate to use rugby league for our examples. This is the sport that has provided the greatest number of spread arbs over the last year or two. Just as with the fixed odds firms, it is always best to start your spread arb searches with the so-called ,minority' sports, such as rugby league, rugby union, darts, tennis and snooker. These are the areas where you will find less compiler competence, greater differences of compiler opinion and more arb opportunities. One enormous problem for arb traders in the spread markets is that there are so few spread betting firms around, and they are very quickly aware of any arb situations that have been created. Even if they don't immediately notice it themselves, it doesn't take a genius to work out that a succession of backers, all keen to buy the points supremacy of an obscure rugby team, are most likely making an arb. Though most spread arbs are closed down pretty quickly, it is not always the case. One or two firms, if they strongly believe their quote to be correct, may accommodate backers to decent amounts - at least until they have reached their financial limit for the match. The internet has been a great boon for traders. Sporting Index lead the way with a superb online site. IG Index have online trading as well. Cantor Index will be on the bandwagon in the near future, and Spreadex must surely wire themselves in too, or lose touch with the others. Check For Arbs On The Net The Evening Before The Game It's my experience that spread prices are frequently available to internet clients before they are offered to telephone customers. Actually, it is far from unknown for a company to have their odds on the internet the evening before an event, but for those same odds not to be offered to phone customers until the following morning. Make sure you do your searching on the internet the night before. With spread arbs often only available for short periods, it's doubly important that you construct them quickly, and that you always start by securing the `wrong' price first. Being early and being quick is everything in the world of spread betting. CHAPTER EIGHT The Empire Strikes Back A bit like those tiny creatures you can only see under a microscope, bookmakers fall into two categories. Those with spines and those without. There is a class of bookmaker who work hard to produce their odds, and are prepared to lay them to substantial amounts. They know exactly why they have priced an event up in the way that they have. Their compilers have put real effort into setting the prices, and they are prepared to stand by their opinion. Gentlemen, you have my respect. Then you have the other sort. The spineless variety. The more you look at odds and markets, the more you realise how many of the spineless variety there are. Often they're incompetent too. And because they don't really know what they are doing, they have no con-

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time fidence in their own product - their prices. These are invariably the firms who panic, overreact, and cause traders most problems. Their usual modus operandi is to copy prices from other companies. Really, their aim is to put themselves in the middle of the market, and not attract any large amounts of shrewd money. Sometimes however, they find that the odds they have `lifted' make them joint `best price' about a player or a team. When these firms discover that they are one end of an arb, they'll sometimes cut their price, even though not a single bet has been struck. So What Are They Doing In The Bookmaking Business In The First Place? Good question. Quite a few of the newer internet companies are here because they know that there is a huge, as yet untapped, market of novice backers at the other end of the net, just ready to be exploited. They don't want to be bookmakers, they want to be money collectors. Still, because they are incompetent, they do make arbs, and when you invest on them, that's when they panic. These companies play their ace card quite quickly, by restricting the amount of cash that you can stake. Don't bother asking for an explanation, `trading decision' is all you'll get. If you persist in attacking their arbs, this limit will be cut to such a level that your account is not worth having and you give up dealing with them. All of which is rather annoying, but it will be to our great trading advantage to be able to make arbs with whoever we wish, so it's well worth engaging in a little forward planning to ensure that we are not inconvenienced by these invertebrates. Understanding The System The first thing you need to know is that bookmakers like to put their clients into categories. They review accounts regularly, and if your investments catch their eye in some special way, they'll give you a `tag' as being one sort of backer or another. Their theory being that they'll know exactly how to handle your request next time you come on the line for a bet. If a bookmaker approves of a customer in a big way, he will tag him as an À1' which, in normal circumstances, is high disgrace indeed. It means that the client is a large and regular loser, and that he should be given whatever bet he asks for. There's a thought to send a shiver down your back. However, an À1' tag is an Òpen Sesame' to the bank vault for arb traders, and it is not totally impossible to run a profitable business and still obtain a few along the way. That's something we'll investigate in the next chapter. Other backers will be tagged `C'. This means `careful', and is a warning to anyone dealing with the client that he has been known to place sharp investments in the past. His business is to be treated with caution. And then there is the highest award a bookmaker can bestow. Some clients are labelled Ù'. This stands for ùnprofitable', which means that you are a regular winner, and that they'd rather you took your business somewhere else. And to encourage you to do so, they'll restrict the amount that you are allowed to bet. Which `tag' do we want? Well, we'd dearly love an À1', provided it can be obtained without us first having to lose large lumps of money. But as for the others, we don't want any of them. We really want our account to escape close scrutiny. It's our ambition to be unnoticed in the crowd and left to pursue our arbitrage business without hindrance. Get Into The Mindset Of A Bookmaker To give ourselves an insight into how we can arrange this happy state of affairs, let's put ourselves in the bookmaker's chair for a while. If we know about the technology he'll be using, and if we look at an account

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time the way that he does, then we'll be better able to misdirect him. Modern equipment is quite sophisticated. By tapping your account number into the system, the bookmaker will be able to see your complete history with his company. Profit and loss, and the sports invested in. Many firms now have software that can break down your profitability or loss sport by sport and, in some cases, into the particular areas of a sport. If they do, you will show up as a backer primarily interested in head-to-head events such as snooker, tennis, golf `2 balls' and others. In theory, the bookmaker could now work out that what you are really doing is trading arbitrages. But if you have managed your account properly, it may never even occur to him. Exactly how you operate your accounts is the subject of the following chapter. This area of your business may not have the nerve-tingling excitement of discovering a hugely profitable arb, but it's essential that you give it your closest attention. If you like, it's the engine room of your profit machine. If you manage your accounts so that they are running sweetly, needing only minor maintenance, this will have a positive effect on every aspect of your trading. You will have more time to find more arbs, and the arbs that you find will be bigger and more profitable. The bookmakers who tend to restrict arb traders through fear, because they are not confident in their prices, are indeed the very bookmakers most likely to make the monumental howlers. These are the firms who can be so wrong in their odds, that on occasion they have been known to produce 20 percent 'nil-risk' profit opportunities. The very last thing that you want is to see these hugely over-generous prices and wonderful arb opportunities, and not be able to make money from them because you have allowed your account to be tagged. As an arb trader, you are working in an area where details count. It isn't difficult to `manage' the bookmakers, but you need a strategy to defeat their technology and tagging system. All that this strategy requires, as we'll discover next, is patience, a little inspiration, and your close attention to a number of key areas. CHAPTER NINE Taking Evasive Action If Charles Dickens' Artful Dodger were alive today he'd make a terrific arbitrage trader. To run our business with minimal interference from heavy-handed bookmakers, it would help if we were to develop some of this lad's qualities too. We need to be inventive, patient, quick-witted, and most important, to be able to go about our affairs more or less unnoticed. We can add a quality of our own to this list. We need to be able to think our way around a situation rather than through it. There is no reason that we can't enjoy a long, happy and profitable association with our bookmakers provided we understand their view of the world, and show some initiative in dealing with it. We've got to ,manage' them, rather than have them `manage' us. Let's start at the beginning. There is no bigger giveaway to a bookmaker that he is dealing with a trader and not a run-of-the-mill backer, than a series of irregular stakes. No real punter, whether he be a `C', a Ù', or an À1', ever has £248.42p on a selection. An amount like that can only mean arb. Rid Your Account Of Suspicious Staking For instance, if you are making an arb with one selection at 4/7 and another at 5/2, and you are looking for a return of £1000, then ideally you would want to invest E636.38p on the 4/7 chance, and E285.71p on the 5/2. Either of these amounts would cause eyebrows to be raised immediately, and possibly result in your account being tagged after only one bet! The solution is to round off the amounts staked so that the investment looks like a `normal' wager.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time In this case, I would suggest that you increase your total investment by 10 percent and dispense with the pennies. This would give you a stake of £700 on the 4/7 chance and £315 on the 5/2 shot. The profits will now be very slightly unbalanced, with the 4/7 side winning £85 and the 5/2 winning £87.50. It's a compromise worth making, since it will keep your account looking like that of a punter. With A Little Help From Your Friends You already know how important it is to have accounts with as many bookmakers as possible. The more accounts you have, the more options you'll have, the more money you'll make. Provided you take this advice seriously, and manage your accounts in the way I recommend, there is no reason why you should not have a mostly trouble-free career. Bookmakers don't actually mind you winning money, they know that somebody is going to win, what they take exception to is a client who damages their profit margin. Overall, we are going to back winners and losers fairly equally. So even a large amount on a winner with a certain bookie is likely to be followed by an equally large amount on a loser, and probably sooner rather than later. In the great majority of cases, you'll be winning a little from each bookmaker, but you won't be upsetting their precious overall profit margins. However, if you have backed a string of winning results with one firm, then try your darndest to give them a few losers. If you are arbing in any three-outcome events, throw that bookmaker the least likely result, and get a few losers onto your account. If you manage your investments sensibly, you can expect to be ignored for years. Some arbers enlist the help of family and friends, by betting on their accounts. There is a lot to said for this with people that you trust. Obviously, the bookie will have no idea that it is you who are behind the betting, and nothing will show up on your betting record, so it can be very convenient. By the way, there is nothing illegal, or even shady about this little ploy. People order clothes, theatre tickets, books, pizzas, and goodness knows what else on their accounts for friends and family, and a bet is no different. I know one arber who has rather taken this to extremes though, and has a circle of nearly forty pals who put bets on for him. That amount of `cloak and dagger' is totally unnecessary, but by all means get family and friends to work for you if they are willing. The main thing though is not to take too much from any one firm, and if, as occasionally happens, you just can't back a loser with a certain bookie, forget that account for a month or so and take your business elsewhere. There are other little ploys which arbitrage traders use to good effect, and I'll pass them on. Some traders like to play bookmaker to their friends, encouraging them to bet on their accounts. The idea is that if a bookmaker sees Yankee bets, forecasts on the dogs and other such wagers dear to his heart, the last thing he will suspect is that he is dealing with an arb trader. It's not a bad idea, but make sure you collect the money for the losers or it could end up draining your profits. Another thing you should weigh up carefully is your ùser name'. Every company will ask you to select a short name by which your account will be known. Bear in mind that this name is likely to be shouted across the bookmaker's office when you ask for a decent bet, so make it as bland and unmemorable as you can. I knew someone who insisted on having `Fishface' as his user name. Naturally everyone in every bookmaker's office remembered it, and all his bets too. Try calling yourself a number. Who will ever recall what 47726 backed last week? And remember what your mother told you, ìf at first you don't succeed, try, try again'.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time If you ring for a certain amount and are restricted in any way, call back a few minutes later. Don't make the mistake of believing that bookmaker's employees are more organised than they actually are. I know backers who have telephoned for a bet and found themselves restricted, only to ring back straight away and be given just what they wanted. One ploy used with great success by an acquaintance could have come from the Artful Dodger himself. He will ask the telephonist for a double, coupling his arb selection with a non-runner at a horserace meeting. The operator never suspects that an arb can be made on a multiple bet, nor is it easy to fathom out from a reading of his account later, and his investment is usually accepted without question. CHAPTER TEN Welcome To The Organisation Trading in sports arbs can be almost anything you want it to be. It can be a paying hobby, an occasional pursuit when you want to raise extra cash, or a solid profit-making business, just like any other. Your success doesn't depend on any God-given talent, such as being able to paint a masterpiece in oils or dance like Fred Astaire, it depends solely on how much time and effort you are prepared to put in - and how well you organise that time and those efforts. It would be a mistake to think that the more effort you expend the harder you are working. Quite the opposite. The more you plan and direct your efforts where they will do the most good, the easier your work becomes. The person who sits down to dabble at trading once every three months is liable to have a frustrating afternoon. Having forgotten the short cuts, he's going to encounter plenty of false starts and dead ends. The person who trades every day will slip into his routine of good practice and enjoy a profitable, stress-free session. As you have bought this book and read thus far, I'm going to assume that your intentions are fairly serious, and inclined toward making appreciable regular profits. So you will want to be organised. You will need some equipment to get you going. You can start quite modestly with a second hand computer, internet access and a phone. The whole package should cost only a few hundred pounds. However, as your business expands and you want to make more and faster arbs, you can upgrade and add to your tool-box. Little By Little, Reinvest Your Profits The equipment recommended here will ensure that you are lightning quick in pursuit of your quarry, and a more efficient money maker. Firstly, I recommend that when possible, you purchase or upgrade your PC to a Laptop model. They don't do any more than the `tower' set ups, but their portability and mobility mean you can operate from virtually anywhere. Also, get yourself the quickest processor you can. Intel is currently on their fourth version, and it's very fast. When it comes to your telephone line, ideally you need to be on the `net and to make phone calls at the same time. The monthly outlay required to obtain this facility will more than pay for itself. Think of it like this, if you miss just three arbs in a week because of time spent disconnecting and reconnecting, you may have lost yourself up to £400 in profits. ADSL has a number of benefits for traders... • It's fast - up to ten times faster than dial-up Internet. • It's always òn.' No waiting to connect.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time • It's convenient. Surf and phone at the same time. • It's cost effective. Unlimited `net access for a flat fee. No call charges. If you decide against an ADSL installation, then you need to select a good ISP (Internet Service Provider). Go for one that has a competitive ùnlimited access' package. You are going to spend plenty of time on the net and it's essential you are not concerned about charges. If You Don't Have A Mobile, Get One! To give yourself an extra line of communication, purchase a mobile phone. This is a near necessity in your line of work. Mobiles are plenty cheap enough, and there are thousands of pricing packages to chose from, more than I could detail here. Bear in mind the following when signing up... • Most of your calls will be to bookies' `free' numbers. Actually, they're not entirely free to mobile users, but are charged at your standard rate. • Your calls will be of mainly short duration. • You could be making calls anytime during the day or night. • Your calls might average at around 15 per day. • You need a reasonably good model with a decent battery capacity. • You also want a `Hands Free' kit included. Whether you want to invest in a WAP phone is your call, I don't believe it's really necessary. Current models are rather fiddly to use if you're thinking of using one to trade with. It might be better to wait for the improvements of the next generation. One thing you can't afford is for your mobile phone network to go down at the wrong moment, and to miss a vital call. If you set yourself up with all this equipment, you will have the capability to place three bets at the same time. One on the net, one on your landline, and one on your mobile. Don't worry about talking to two telephonists at the same time, just ask one to hold. Perhaps a three-bet at once scenario seems a bit far-fetched to you at the moment, but after you have been trading for a month or two, you will be so fast at arb building, it will seem quite the normal thing to do. In addition, you could get yourself a `phone dialler' for your PC. This cuts down the wires trailing around your house, and it also makes your computer a complete workstation. Diallers are useful devices. They can store up to 100 numbers in separate files, along with your comments on each. It's handy sometimes to know immediately that a certain bookmaker `will lay special markets to lose £2000'. Diallers can also tape your calls, and this can be useful if you are requesting a full set of prices yet to be published. Muting and secrecy buttons are easy to operate, which is just as well. As for your browsing, you will probably be best served using an Internet Explorer browser, the newest version of which can be downloaded free of charge from www.microsoft.com. Internet Explorer allows you to file all your most frequently visited sites in a `favourites' folder. The best way to organise this folder is to put all the bookmakers into one sub-folder, all the tennis information sites into another, and so on. This means that you can go straight to any site at a click, without having to continually re-type the URL address. Have Your Calculator At The Ready Don't forget to always have your stakes calculator open and minimised on your screen. There will be times when the investment you request may be cut, and you need to be prepared to make some quick re-calcu-

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time lations. Let us say that you have discovered a tennis match priced at 11 /10 and 6/5, and you want to make an arb which returns £1100 on both sides. You have already worked out the stakes, and anticipate placing £500 at 6/5, and £523.82 (rounded to £525) on the 11/10 chance. Well, there is a first time for everything - your request for £500 at 6/5 is declined, and you are offered only £200. As you might simultaneously be on the line to the bookmaker offering the other player at 11/10, you must quickly revise your staking. Maximising your stakes calculator, you alter the `Desired Return Figure' from the £1100 you initially planned, to the amount your reduced stake on the 6/5 shot now returns, which is £440. The calculator tells you immediately to reduce your stake with the bookmaker offering 11/10 to £209.52. The whole thing takes seconds, and most importantly, it is accurate. So much for the gadgets and gizmos. They will help you, particularly when your business is firing on all cylinders and you are building arbs hand over fist. And that is not some far-distant prospect. I reckon that, starting from scratch, you will become practised and experienced enough to call yourself a professional in two months. But in the early stages, you don't need all this gear. To make good money, all you need is a very simple set-up, this book, and a willingness to work and learn. Remember, This Isn't A Difficult Business If you treat it with respect and do all the little things right, it is easy and rewarding. But before you start, put down some firm foundations. Re-read the early chapters in this book, plan your time and working schedules, monthly, weekly and daily, so that you enjoy the maximum benefit for your efforts. Whatever you do, don't skip compiling your records of transactions. I have every hope that you will soon be trading with dozens of bookmakers on numerous accounts. The time you spend logging your business transactions will be well spent. It's the bookmakers you want to confuse, not yourself. If you are starting sports arbitrage trading from scratch, don't attempt to do too much in the early weeks. It is better to take it slowly at first and get your work right, to build up your àrb speed' naturally, rather than trying to hit top gear after just a few days. If you are a beginner, you may find it's a little bit eerie at first. Click a few buttons and people send you money. It seems too easy. Well, tightrope walking a hundred feet in the air looks easy when you are watching a professional. What the audience don't see is the practice and preparation. I hope that this book will give you the tools to reach some professional heights of your own. A bit like tightrope walking, arb trading is all about practising and being careful. There are more and more bookmakers coming online every month, offering more and more markets, and more and more arbs. The world is your oyster, from Pole to Pole there is money to be made. Enjoy your work, and be successful. The Palpable Error Rule All bookmakers have a rule that states they can void a bet if a `palpable error' has been made in the price they offered. That's fair enough. If a hapless bookmaker's employee types 20/1 on his company's Internet site for a tennis player to beat another, when he should have typed 2/1, we shouldn't have too many complaints.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time Though most errors aren't as stark as that, when they do occur, it's still usually obvious that something is wrong somewhere, and investors should be wary. For example, when sportingodds.com put these prices up for two players in a tennis match, 4/7 and 9/4, they were making an arb with themselves! It was clear one of the prices was wrong, and that sportingodds might bring in the èrror rule. But as Nick Ross on Crimewatch would say, `don't have nightmares. Palpable error disputes are rare, especially in the two and three outcome events we mainly invest in. However, it's better to be safe than sorry. There are two ways to avoid getting your bet adjusted on a palpable error rule. 1) If a price looks really wrong compared to other offers in the market place, strike your bet by telephone, and ask for confirmation that the price on offer is indeed accurate. 2) Stick with the reputable firms, they won't call `palpable error' unless they have really made one. The `palpable' rule is in the book to protect firms from paying out large sums when their employees make genuine mistakes, but the likes of Ladbrokes, Hills and Corals will often offer to settle these rare `palpable errors' with a discretionary payment. It's unlikely that you will ever have a palpable error dispute, but if you do, and if you feel that the bookmaker is being unreasonable, get in touch with IBAS. The initials stand for Independent Betting Arbitration Service, and this industry supported body will look into both sides of the question, and arbitrate between you and the bookmaker. Every bookmaking firm worth having a bet with (over 90 percent of all firms) is signed up to IBAS, and will agree to their arbitration. IBAS, PO Box 4029, LONDON WIA 6YL tel: 020 7529 7670 e-mail: ibas0a mgn.co.uk web: www.ibas.co.uk INFORMATION SITES Here is a selection of information websites that I use on a daily or weekly basis. There are plenty of others, and maybe you will find sites that you like better, but these will get you off to a good start... General News Sites www.ananova.com A very useful site for breaking news, updated surprisingly quickly. Good all-round service especially for sports such as football, motor sports, and golf. Ananova offer a free email alert facility which can be tailored to suit clients' particular needs. For example, instead of requesting `football' you can specify a single area of that sport e.g. Scottish Division 3, and receive information on that division only. www.ananova.com provides an at-a-glance update that is easy to use, with few of the time-consuming graphics that slow other news sites down. www.newsnow.co.uk An excellent site which cleverly covers a wide range of sports. Newsnow uses a huge network of specialist sites as providers for the news headlines, and this can result in the information being virtually news-site "exclusive". For example, the relationship between Agusta, one of the worlds leading aeronautical designers and the Ferrari Marenello Formula 1 team was first released by the official www.ferrari.com site, but appeared on www.newsnow.co.uk just seconds later. This information was of immense worth to the professional investor. Newsnow is a very sharp collector of information, and probably rates as the best news site I have seen.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time www.sport365.com Part of the `365' network. Quick up with some of their stories, and use Reuters as a news provider. Covers a fair range of the more popular sports and they archive all old headlines for viewing. www.espn.com US-based site that provides a very useful sports news service for NFL, MLB, NHL, and NBA. Accurate and concise, and available to the reader às it happens'. Also very good for Tennis and Golf information. Soccer I find the official sites can be of immense use at times, for injury and suspension information as well as for draw and tournament detail. www.uefa.com Recently revamped to include an informative "Match Centre" zone for each of their competitions, as well as a fairly quick news service. "Media Information" can be of use at times. www.fifa.com Excellent site that has only one downfall - it is a nightmare to navigate. However, once you have mastered its unexpected twists and turns, www.fifa.com provides all the information that you will need on any fifa match. * Live Index: Quick way to find out a monthly schedule of play with start times and venues. Golf www.pgatour.com The only top class US tour golf site on the net, but what a beauty. The jewel in the crown is the live holeby-hole coverage which at times gives you crucial leader board changes faster than the TV coverage! The important point to make here is that you should not wait for the automatic page refresh, use the F5 key or the right click function to manually refresh the page as this will nick you valuable seconds. In general, an excellent service for tee-off times, leader board info, general golf news and comprehensive tournament schedules. Information is quick and accurate. www.europeantour.com Offers the same service as pgatour.com for the European circuit. Snooker www.worldsnooker.com Good layout of draw information, updated quickly and easy to download. Good level of news, and "live scoring" facility for selected tournaments. www.110sport.com Well-organised site that covers all of the season's tournaments. Draw format displayed quickly and in an easy-to-view fashion. News items are rarely fresh, which is surprising since they are a player management company. www.wheelsinmotion.net Another player management group that has a dedicated sports site. A useful source of information and is sometimes the first to display tournament draw details. Darts www.planctdarts.co.uk A good site that is improving month by month. Well laid out, with some interesting areas to explore, including a world ranking page.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time Livescores The majority of dedicated sports websites provide live scores for their particular sports, but here are two score specialists who might prove useful on occasions. www.livescore.com A longstanding website that provides a fair service for soccer live scores. Worldwide service with an easy to use index. www.wetten-schwechat.at Good, and in the main quick, live score site that covers a wide range of sports. Punctuality can be erratic, but they are often still first up, especially on obscure tournaments. BOOKMAKERS DIRECTORY Bet and Win www.betandwin.com Austrian-based Bookmaker who has stepped into the big league recently. Offer a good range of prices on a wide selection of events, the only downside being their rather thick profit margins. That said, these margins are often totally negated by the size of their opinions, especially on Tennis, and there are many arbs to be made with them. Bet Internet www.betinternet.com Telephone 01624 62000 Internet/phone bookmaker trading from the Isle of Man. Similar margins to UK firms. Look out for their tennis, snooker and darts prices, all arb material, but especially their opinionated football odds. Bet On Sports www.betonsports.co.uk Telephone: 0800 0155191 Betonsports.co.uk are the UK arm of the American NASA group. Liable to make big ricks due to their lack of specialised compilers. Look out for any special events or events where there has been a big market move, as they can be very slow to react. In-Running service is poor, and so far restricted to Golf and Football. Bet Sense www.betsense.com Recently established UK firm who specialise in football. Massive selection of prices available. Considering soccer is their bread and butter, they can be very slow to react to injury news. Often create arbs, which they are prepared to lay to good money. Tennis also well covered. Bet365 www.bet365.com Telephone: 0800 4588888 Newish internet bookmaker, up and running since April 2001. Have already made many ricks. They price up an enormous number of markets, apparently too many to keep proper track of. Their in-running service is a good one for us, as they bet on a lot of interesting two runner events. Snooker, Darts, and Tennis are well covered, although they can miss out the odd tournament for no apparent reason. Football, Rugby, NFL and Cricket are regularly priced and provide good arb material.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time Blue Sq www.bluesq.com One of the first UK bookmakers on the net. Bet with òpinions' on most sports, and create numerous arbs. Look out for their tennis, snooker, darts, NFL, and football prices for potentially profitable situations. In-running service is very good, with prices offered for cricket, football, golf, NFL and rugby, and sometimes `margin sensitive' sports such as darts, snooker and tennis. Canbet www.canbet.com Telephone + 61 2 6207 8723 Australian firm with an American touch. Excellent coverage of all US sports. Good margins. Always check out their cricket, tennis, and rugby prices, as they love to swim against the tide when they have an opinion. In-running service on cricket and rugby. Centrebet www.centrebet.com Australian Bookmaker who offers a very good all-round service. Competitive prices most events, and better margins than the UK. Look out for cricket, tennis, and football prices especially. In-running service rarely offered, and restricted to events that are of Australian interest. Victor Chandler www.victorchandler.com Telephone 08000 973344 Gibraltar-based firm with a reputation for laying heavy bets. That said, their internet operation has been slipping recently. Seldom up early now, and not too many arbs to be found. Early prices can sometimes be unearthed on their text pages on Sky and Channel 4. On the `plus' side, if you do find an arb with them,they are likely to hold their price for some time. In-running service on football, golf and cricket. Coral www.eurobet.co.uk Telephone 0800 242232 Have made plenty of errors in the past, and are now more careful about how they price up. However, despite their best efforts, still make the occasional unintentional arb. Act quickly when they do, as they are understandably nervous of landing themselves in another fine mess. Look out for motor racing, cricket, and any `special' prices that they put up, no matter on what sport or event. This firm's stupendous `specials' cock ups are legendary. In-running service is fair, they bet selected test matches, football, golf and motor racing. Cricket Bet wwwxricketbetxom.au Telephone + 61 500 801 901 Cricket-only firm who bet their pre-match odds to amazingly low percentages. These prices are intentional loss leaders, to draw backers into their in-running service. A firm guaranteed to create arb profits a plenty. Cricket Bet's in-running prices take some believing too. Their shrewd compiler has some very strong opinions and makes phenomenal arbs on occasions. Internation All sports www.iasbet.com Australian-based firm who bet to low. US margins on many sports. Look out for their cricket, tennis and

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time rugby prices for profit opportunities. Direcbet www.direebet.com Telephone + 1 800 797 6602 On-course bookie for 30 years who has now `gone internet' to specialise in US sports. Bet to good margins and offer plenty of US `propositions.' (Special bets.) Look out also for their tennis odds, they have òpinions' here and have made a number of intentional arbs recently. Heathorns www.hcathorns.co.uk Telephone 01483 860123 Long-established credit firm who have just taken the internet plunge. Bet to good margins and are steady arb makers. Watch out for their competitive pricing when tournaments get down to the business end. Frequently have big opinions on golf. No in-running William Hill www.willhill.com Telephone 0800 148149 One of the more professional bookmakers in the village. Rarely make ricks, though they do have plenty of opinions. Often create arb situations and are one of the heavier layers in the industry. Look out for tennis, snooker, darts and football prices. In-running service is basic, offering just football and golf on a regular basis. Gamebookers www.gamebookers.com Telephone + 1 268 562 2573 Go-ahead outfit whose site is jam-packed with markets, information and services. The downside of this is that navigation can be painfully slow at times. Quality service offered on a huge range of sports, including skiing and handball. Although their margins are rather high, they still manage to create a good number of arbs. Look out for òpinions' on tennis, US sports and soccer. In-running service offered on baseball, soccer and formula one. Globet www.globet.co.uk Telephone 0207 385 0148 Italian firm based in the UK who have taken some mighty big positions in the past. They price up every soccer league under the sun, and often have off-the-wall opinions on them. Good source of arbs. Interwetten www.interwetten.com Telephone + 43 1 774 647 711 Plenty of markets, and they love to be first up with their prices. Unfortunately, bet to scandalously high margins on occasions. One thing they're good at - their live-score service is the fastest around. Intertops www.intertops.com Telephone 00 8003 344 3322 Very good Antigua-based firm. Full US service, and they also price up an extensive range of soccer, including all the European and British leagues. Can be very slow to react to football injuries. No in-running. Ladbrokes www.ladbrokes.com

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time Telephone: 0808 1000421 Bookmakers with an opinion. Not usually first with their prices, but always worth checking out. Being in an arb situation doesn't worry them at all, notably prepared to lay their prices. Look out for tennis, snooker, darts and cricket odds. In-running service is basic, offering just football and golf on a regular basis at present, but likely to improve in the future. Littlewoods Bet Direct www.bet247.co.uk Have taken a cautious approach on the internet, betting very few markets that are margin-sensitive, except for a few big events. Look out for their `specials' prices though, as they have been part of several creative arbs recently, also check their somewhat wayward motor racing odds. In-running service patchy, sometimes they bet, sometimes they don't. Paddy Power www.paddypower.com Telephone 0800 039 1800 Irish-based bookmaker. Internet limits are restrictive, it's better to use their freephone number for substantial bets. Never that early with prices, though their tennis, darts and snooker odds are worth a look. Scandic Bookmakers www.scandicbookmakers.com Telephone 0208 698 5000 Despite the name, a UK-based firm who target European customers. They take massive `positions' on their football prices and create numerous arbs. Watch out for their soccer handicap odds, which are often quite different from the industry norms. Sporting Odds www.sportingodds.com Telephone: N/A Internet bookmaker with numerous strong opinions. They like to bet selected sports early, including cricket, tennis and snooker, and create plenty of arbs. Comprehensive In-running service priced to very competitive margins, cricket and NFL in particular. Sport Odds www.sportodds.com Telephone + 61 2 9209 6949 Cracking good Aussie firm. Early with their prices, bet to good margins, a useful account to have. Watch out for their odds on cricket, tennis, motor racing, and US sports, as they often see things quite differently from UK and European bookmakers. In-running service on cricket, soccer and some US sports. Sports.com www.sports.co.uk UK-based firm who make numerous ricks and plenty of arbs. Check out their specials, which are often way out of line.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time Stanley www.stanleybet.com Can be relied upon to make the odd rick, however they avoid sports such as tennis and darts like the plague. Look out for their Football odds, as they can be very slow to react to injury situations. Their cricket prices have also been known to be well out of line. In-running service N/A. Stan James www.stanjames.com (not interactive) Telephone: 08000 351135 One of the more progressive bookmakers, although their limits can be low. Worth keeping an eye on, as they bet all the `margin sensitive' sports, often with an opinion. Look out for tennis, cricket, snooker, darts, NFL, and football prices. Their in-running service is excellent, and they bet all live TV events including darts, snooker, golf, NFL, cricket and tennis. Sunderlands Telephone 0181 7600 600 Phone-only firm who often take market-leading stances on their cricket prices. opinionated on golf and snooker, too. Skybet www.skybct.com Telephone 01481 824 570 Very quick up with their odds on a number of sports, and often involved in arb situations. Look out for opinionated prices on tennis, snooker and darts. No in-running. The Tote www.tote.co.uk Telephone 0800 825 550 Not quite the staid play-it-safe sort of firm you might expect. Have some big opinions on US sports, snooker, golf and especially cricket. Plenty of arb opportunities. In-running service is rather basic, but their cricket compiler has been involved in some massive arbs in his time, including 8 and 9 percent payouts in international matches. Totalbet www.totalbet.com Telephone 0800 825 550 Part of the UK Betting group of bookmaking companies. Making every effort to get plenty of markets up early. World Sports Exchange www.wsex.com Telephone (800) 3003 1530 American outfit, one of the most competitive firms to hit the screens of late. A quick site with aggressive margins and a huge range of sports make this a must for your favourites file. To translate the low ÙS sports' margins onto events such as tennis and formula one is admirable, and long may it continue. Big opinions laid to big money. Always check out their tennis, motor racing and soccer

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time prices. (All the major European leagues and competitions priced up) In-running service offered on US sports, and it is well worth a look. More links: http://www.sports-arbitrage.com http://www.oddschecker.com/ http://readabet.bestbetting.com https://www.centrebet.co.uk http://www.thewizardofodds.com http://www.toteboard-daytrader.com Betting calculator http://www.flatstats.co.uk/hedging_bets.html Software http://www.bethelp.com/Links/SoftwareSites.htm ARBITRAGE CALCULATOR User Guide This disk is compatible with all Excel Programmes 95 and above. To access your Arb Calculator, simply load your disc into your computer, and open the programme Excel. The Arb Calculator works on `Fractional Prices', however, there is a simple way to convert any decimal or American odds into fractions, as I will show you later. The process of calculation is fast and simple. Here is an example of how the calculator works out your stakes for a typical 'two-outcome, arb. The prices: Selection A Selection B

4/7 9/4

Step 1 Click into cell B4 and input the first figure of the odds for your first player, in this example for Selection A it would be a `4'. Step 2 Then either `TAB' or click over to cell C4 and input the second figure of Selection A's odd, which would be a `7 That is it for Selection A... Now on to Selection B... Step 3 Click into cell B5 and input the first figure of the odd for Selection A, which would be a `9' in this example. Step 4 Then either `TAB' or click over to cell C5 and input the second figure of Selection B's odd, which would be a `4,' then hit the Return Key. That is the end of the ìnput odds' process... Now all you have to do is decide how much you want each selection to return, and input this figure into Cell D4, but remember, the `DesiredReturn' is a changeable figure, so you can adjust it if you need to make the stakes rounder in order to avoid detection as an arbitrage trader. Step 5 For this example we will use a'Desired Return' of 500' so click into Cell D4 and enter 500 and then hit the return key. That is your Under Round calculated in less than 30 seconds...

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time As a check to ensure that your first use of the Arb Calculator has gone to plan, you should have the following figures in the respective cells. Cell Cell Cell Cell Cell Cell Cell Cell Cell Cell Cell

E4 E5 F4 F5 G4 H4 H5 14 15 J4 J5

Should Should Should Should Should Should Should Should Should Should Should

display display display display display display display display display display display

1.571429 3.250000 318.18 153.85 472.03 500.00 500.00 27.97 27.97 5.59 5.59

If they all agree, then you have done everything right... If you have a discrepancy then do not panic, just go back to the beginning and re-input the 5 steps taking care as you do so. The calculations show that, in this instance, you will profit 27.97 for an outlay of 472.03 which represents a percentage profit on stakes of 5.59 %. Making your stakes `rounder'... The `Desired Return' figure can be changed to make either one side or both sides as `round' as possible, and help ensure that you remain undetected as a trader Staying with this arb example, we'll now make some changes to the Desired Return figure. The two amounts which concern us are the 318.18 on Selection A, and the 153.85 on Selection B. I would approach this by firstly, reducing the `Desired Return' by just 10 to see the effect this has on the stakes. Rounding Stakes Step 1 Select Cell D4 and input the figure 490 followed by the `Return' key. This has the following effect on the stakes on Selections A & B... Selection A's Stake is now Selection B's Stake is now

311.82 150.77

We are now closer to whole 10s and when we knock off the odd pounds and pence, we are left with one investment of 310 and another of 150, which are much less detectable as arbitrage business. You can change the `Desired Return' figure to any amount, even one that includes pence, should the situation demand it. Biasing your Under Round... The Arb Calculator can all also work out stakes for those arbs where you wish to bias your profit entirely toward one selection, merely recovering your outlay on the other. The process is just as fast and easy as for calculating conventional arbs. Let's have a different arb. The `Biased Selection' is the one on which we wish to make all our profit, and the Recovery Selection the one we wish merely to return our stakes.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time The prices: Recovery Selection Biased Selection

5/2 8/15

Step 1 Click into cell B8 and input the first figure of the odd for your first player, in this example for the Recovery Selection it would be a `5'. Step 2 Then either `TAB' or click over to cell C8 and input the second figure of the Recovery Selection's odd, which in this example would be a `2' That is it for the Recovery Selection ... Now on to the Biased Selection. Step 3 Click into cell B9 and input the first figure of the odd for the Biased Selection, which will be an `8' Step 4 Then either `TAB' or click over to cell C9 and input the second figure of the Biased Selection's odd, which in this example would be a `15' That is the end of the ìnput odds' process... Once again, all that is left to do is to decide how much you want your Biased Selection to return, and then input this figure into Cell D8. Just as in our first, `conventional' arb, the `Desired Return' is a changeable figure which can be `rounded' if necessary. Step 5 For this example we will initially use a `Desired Return' of 1000, so click into Cell D8 and enter 1000 followed by the return key. That is your Biased Under Round calculated in less than 30 seconds... As a check to ensure that your first use of the Biased Under Round Calculator has gone to plan, you should have the following figures in the respective cells. Cell Cell Cell Cell Cell Cell Cell Cell Cell Cell Cell

E8 E9 F8 F9 G8 H8 H9 18 19 J8 J9 S

Should display Should display Should display Should display Should display Should display Should display Should display Should display Should display hould display

3.500000 1.533333 260.87 652.17 913.04 913.04 1000.00 00.00 86.96 0.00 8.70

If they all agree then you have done it correctly again... If you have a discrepancy then do not panic, just go back to the beginning and re-input the 5 steps taking care as you go. The calculations show that you will profit 86.96 for an outlay of 913.04 which represents an percentage profit to stakes of 8.70 %. Making your stakes `rounder'... As in our first example, we could reduce the Desired Return by a small amount and see the effect on our staking, but in this instance, the figures of 260.87 on the Recovery Selection and 652.17 on the Biased

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time Selection are so close to `10 unit' figures, it's simplicity itself to merely knock off the odd pounds and pence. Which would leave us with, Recovery Selection's Stake 260.00 Biased Selection's Stake 650.00 3-Runner Events The Arb Calculator can also be used to work out the investments required for 3-runner events, and the input process is exactly the same as in the first 2 examples. The prices: Selection À' 7/2 Selection `B' 7/4 Selection `C' 7/4 Step 1 Click into cell B12 and input the first figure of the odd for your first player, which in the example of Selection A would be a `7 '. Step 2 Then either `TAB' or click over to cell C12 and input the second figure of the Selection As odd, which would be a `2' That is it for Selection A... Now on to Selection B... Step 3 Click into cell B13 and input the first figure of the odd for Selection B, which would be a `7' Step 4 Then either `TAB' or click over to cell C13 and input the second figure of Selection B's odd, which would be a `4' That is it for Selection B... Now on to Selection C... Step 3 Click into cell B14 and input the first figure of the odd for the Selection C, which would be a `7' in this example. Step 4 Then either `TAB' or click over to cell C14 and input the second figure of the Selection C's odd, which in this case would be a `4' That is the end of the ìnput odds' process... Once again all that is left to do is to decide how much you want your arb to return, and input this figure into Cell D12, Step 5 For this example we will use a `Desired Return' of 1100 so click into Cell D12 and enter 1100 followed by the return key. Your 3-Runner arb has been calculated in less than 30 seconds... As a check to ensure that your first use of the 3-Runner event function has gone to plan, you should have the following figures in the respective cells.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time Cell Cell Cell Cell Cell Cell Cell Cell Cell Cell Cell Cell Cell Cell Cell Cell

E12 E13 E14 F12 F13 F14 G12 H12 H13 H14 112 113 114 J12 J13 J14

Should Should Should Should Should Should Should Should Should Should Should Should Should Should Should Should

display display display display display display display display display display display display display display display display

4.500000 2.750000 2.750000 244.44 400.00 400.00 1044.44 1100.00 1100.00 1100.00 55.56 55.56 55.56 5.05% 5.05% 5.05%

If they all agree then you have done it correctly again... The calculations made show that you will profit 55.56 for an outlay of 1044.44 which represents an percentage profit to stakes of 5.05 %. You will not always be trading with bookmakers who show their odds in `fractional' style. Here's how you convert decimal and American odds for use in your Arb Calculator. Converting US and Decimal odds To convert US Odds to fractional odds is an easy process... To start with we will look at the way the US bookmakers portray prices which are òdds on': A price that is odds on will always be prefixed with a minus sign, for example -110 or -120. What these odds are actually telling you is the amount that the client has to stake to win $100 so in the case of -120, you would have to stake $120 to win $100. As in the case of fractional odds, the profit to be won is the first figure, and the amount to be staked is the second. So using our Profit/Stake scenario with the US odd of -120 we convert it to a fractional odd of 100/120, and enter these figures just as we would enter conventional British odds. Profit 100, stake 120. Now on to US òdds against' prices... A price which is odds against will always be prefixed with a `plus' sign, for example + 350 or + 400. What these odds are telling us is the amount that the client will win if he stakes $100. So in the case of + 350, you would win $350 for a stake of $100. Once again, as in the case of fractional odds, the `profit' to be won is the first figure, and the stake is the second figure. So using this Profit/Stake plan with the US odd of + 350 we can convert it to a fractional odd of 350/100. Profit 350, stake 100 To convert Decimal Odds to Fractional odds is just as easy... The first thing to remember, is that decimal odds such as 1.57 and 2.38 show the total return that you receive from your investment, including your stake. In order for us to be able to enter the correct `profit' part of the odd and the correct `stake' part, into the right cells, in our calculator, we first have to separate the `stake' and the `profit'.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time As decimal odds always assume a stake of 1, it couldn't be easier. 1.57 2.37 4.50

subtract your stake of subtract your stake of subtract your stake of

1 = 0.57 profit 1 = 1.37 profit 1 = 3.50 profit

Let's make a fractional odd from a decimal, and use 1.57 as our first example. Subtracting our `stake' of 1 from the decimal 1.57 leaves us with a `profit' figure of 0.57. With a stake of 1, this could correctly be written as a `fractional' odd of 0.57/1. However, it's much easier to handle if we multiply both the first and second figures by 100, which will give us 57/100, and these are the figures we should enter in the Arb Calculator. Another example using the decimal odd of 2.37. Subtract 1 from the decimal odd Leaving a decimal profit figure of 1.37. Multiply this figure by 100. Giving a fractional profit figure of 137 As the `stake' in the fractional odd is always going to be 1 multiplied by 100, we shall always have a fractional `stake' figure of 100. Put the 137 `profit' figure over the `stake' figure of 100 Which gives us a fractional odd of 137/100 The Calculator is fast and accurate, the very qualities you need when the arbs are flying thick and fast or when time is of the essence. It's very straightforward to operate, and a little practice will see you expert in its use. Avoid staking errors by always keeping it handy on your screen. Frequently Asked Questions Below you'll find some answers to Frequently Asked Questions. If you have any thoughts on how this handbook can be improved or have comments to make, please drop us an email anytime. Or maybe you'll want to share your arb experiences with us! Has a bookie blundered big time! how did you take advantage? let us know, we love to hear the success stories. Details to [email protected] Frequently Asked Questions Q: My arbitrage calculator disk doesn't work. A: Run through the full user instructions - This disk should work on all versions of Microsoft Excel If you are still experiencing problems please email [email protected] Q: I've never placed a bet before - how do the bookmaker odds work? A: Don't let this put you off. Q: Do I need thousands of pounds to be an Arb Trader? A. No, you can start as small as you want and build Q: What if I have a problem with a bookie? A: Most complaints come from void bets (which are extremely rare). Only ever enforced, if a bookie has made a genuine error with their odds, they can claim a palapable error. Don't worry about this - see what you can do about palapable errors. Q: What equipment do I need to get started? A: Other than this guide and calculator provided, very little. A phone line and access to an internet connection are essential. You can take your arb trading to another level.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time Q: I don't know much about the various sports and the different rules? Will this restrict the amount of profit I can make? A: Not at all. You'll just need to check the odds, pick the arbs and cash in! Q: Do I need to keep money in each of my betting accounts? A: No - not at all. You'll be holding back funds that could be put to good use. Q: I'm a first time Arb Trader are there any rules I should follow? A: It's an exciting period for you but ensure you don't waste your precious time taking wrong turns. – there is a clear plan of action for the first time bettor. Stick to this and you'll learn the skills quick and reap the financial rewards. Q: When placing bets with overseas bookies what can 1 do about exchange rate costs? A: Mr X will show you how you can reduce the costs and put to use some of the special deals that the bookie offer ... you needn't lose out to exchange rates. Q: Won't the bookies know I'm an arbitrage trader? A: Not if you follow our plan! You'll have to be a little sneaky - but don't worry it's not illegal! ...Just putting the odds back in your favour so that you can operate a full account without being detected as an Arbitrage Trader. Although if you can learn to specialise in a couple of sports you'll probably pick up arbs quicker, if you can react quickly to circumstances (injuries & suspensions) which might affect a game or event outcome.

How to Place Risk-Free Bets For Guaranteed Profits Every Time

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