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Copyright 2011 © CityMan Business Solutions Ltd Lucy's Guide to Making £1000 Per Month From Gambling © First published in Great Britain by CityMan Business Solutions, 2011 7 Ford Road, Sheffield, S11 7GZ, United Kingdom. CityMan Business Solutions Ltd have asserted their rights to be identified as authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents Introduction
Page 5
Having principles and sticking to a plan
Page 6
Your betting bank and staking
Page 8
Building your bank with the bookies' money
Page 10
Bookmakers or Betfair?
Page 12
Arbitrage
Page 14
Trading
4 Bonus Appendices - Betting Basics!
Page 30
Bankroll
Page 31
How not to do Loss Recovery
Page 33
8 Ways to stop bookies limiting your account
Page 36
4 Great Staking Secrets
Page 40
Conclusion
Page 43
1.
Introduction
My website (www.laybackandgetrich.com) is full of betting system tests showing you how to make money from gambling, with my main focus usually being on the horses, but also occasionally on football betting. However, I am conscious of the fact that websites can actually sometimes hinder not help, as a new user can arrive on any page, and then be over-faced, or just plain confused, by the amount of information that's available, or by the way that pages are linked in a fluid, rather un-structured, way. So I decided to put this guide together to explain, in straightforward English, how anyone can reasonably expect to make £1000 per month tax-free from betting, using an organised approach. It also happens to be basically what I do**. Do the same, and you'll find it just ain't that hard to make money from betting. The guide is organised into the following sections. 1. Introduction 2. Having principles and sticking to a plan. 3. Your betting bank and staking. 4. Building your bank with the bookies' own money 5. Bookmakers or Betfair? 6. Arbitrage 7. Trading
I have also scattered throughout the text: •
Profit Targets. These should give you an idea of the amount of money you can make from a particular technique. Obviously this will vary from month to month, but it should give you an indication of what's possible.
•
Lucy's handy little tips .... keep your eye out for these, as though they may appear somewhat tangential at times, however they are often more important than the stuff that surrounds them!
** with the exception of Lucy's Arbtrader System, which is a whole separate story ;-) .
2.
Having principles and sticking to a plan.
I am constantly amazed at how few punters have a real clue about what they are trying to achieve in their betting. Sure, you're trying to win money! Well thanks, I guessed that much, but.. it would help before we begin, if you could answer the following questions. 1. How much do you wish to make? And how much are you prepared to stake? (There is obviously a connection between the two! We will pick up on this in section 2). 2. What level of risk are you prepared to tolerate? (Highly risk averse people are probably better starting with arbitrage, whereas those who are more risktolerant may find arbing frustrating, and require the thrill of backing or laying). 3. Do you have the constitution to put up with long, losing runs? (If not, longshots are out. And if you have a real problem with this, you may wish to dispense with backing altogether, and instead focus on laying, or arbing) ◦ Lucy's Handy Little Tip 1 - This guide doesn't have a lot to say
about backing systems, as I believe consistency is best achieved by arbing, trading or laying. In my view, backing is more for the true gambler, who is not really the person I'm aiming at here.
4. How much time do you have to devote to your betting, and do your favourite sports events take place when you're working? (If the answers are “not much” and “yes”, then live trading is almost certainly out too). 5. What are your favourite sports? (e.g. If you know a lot about football, why wouldn't you exploit that knowledge?). 6. Do you have a 'mathematical' mind (in which case arbitrage or trading may suit) or are you more interested in trying to understand form and thereby predict outcomes (in which case, you should probably be backing or laying) ? Answering these questions will help you decide on the best approach for you to take. There is no one-size-fits-all answer, but please don't make a start without having attempted to answer them, preferably in writing. Please do it now, then I recommend you come back to them when you've finished the guide, to see if the course of action you've developed as you've worked the book is in tune with your basic personality type. The rest of this guide presents a number of options from which you can select the ones that suit your personality, based on the questionnaire above. The idea being that, by the time you get to the end, you will have a portfolio of betting systems that suits you. Then, once you've designed your portfolio, please - stick at it. Do not keep chopping and changing as you will not achieve anything! There is a continual tide of new tipping and betting systems and services on the Web nowadays, and apart from being somewhat overwhelming, it can also be very tempting to keep trying the latest 'new thing'. I understand these thought
processes as, trust me, I've been there myself. Some new system appears and you think, Maybe I'm missing out? Maybe everyone else is making money but me? Well yes, quite possibly they are – but then of course, very possibly they're not. Believe me, there is nothing quite like running a betting systems review website like www.laybackandgetrich.com to highlight just how hard it is for most systems to live up to the hype. I see it every day. Some wonderfully marketed new product hits the market, allegedly with a great track record, and – well, like everybody else I guess... I'm always initially sceptical, but always also thinking, “maybe, jus' maybe, this time it will be different!” And of course, it occasionally is – but not, I assure you, very often! So yes, it's good to keep an open mind. But to start with, I urge you please to construct a plan and stick to it. Give it six months or so. There will be plenty of time to try new systems and approaches after that. Six months isn't all that long! And that's how long it takes, in my view, to see if a given approach works. My next concern is that you may agree with all the above in principle but still not actually do it as you have just found this 'one special system'. So repeat after me: “I will avoid system hopping NOW!” Too many punters buy all the latest whizz-bang football betting systems, then when they stop working for a few weeks, get despondent so rush out and buy the latest horse racing system. Then when that doesn't work..... repeat ad infinitum! This is just a way of making the systems providers rich at your expense! They are exploiting your emotions, to their profit and at your cost! I can't stress enough (and I will repeat ad nauseam below) that you need to be professional. And that means, adopting a structured approach and sticking at it, through the ups and downs. Otherwise, you will never make money from betting. It also means recognising that this process is going to require some actual effort. The process is simple – but not easy. By which I mean, you will make £1000 per month if you follow some simple principles, but you still have to put some actual effort in, as with any worthwhile endeavour in life. Stick with it, and it will be worth the hassle in the end.
3.
Your betting bank and staking
a) Your betting bank. Always use a betting bank containing money you can afford to lose. Everybody says it but that doesn't mean it ain't true. If you can't afford to set aside a separate betting bank, you should not be gambling. This principle is non-negotiable. If you are drawn to betting but are worried that you cannot afford it, or deep down suspect that betting is not right for you, go to http://www.gambleaware.co.uk, and please read no further. Instead, good-bye and have a good life! I'd personally recommend having a separate bank for each system that you use. Now this can get a bit unwieldy if you're running with half a dozen systems, but as a minimum I'd recommend separate banks for backing, laying, trading and arbing (assuming you're doing all four). Otherwise you will get muddled up, which tends to lead to a blurring of focus, and a consequent lack of persistence. Remember – be professional. Keep the pots separate, and you will feel more in control, which will encourage you to persist, and help you learn about each type of betting as you proceed. b) Start with small stakes. As with bank size, this is going to depend to a certain extent on your personal circumstances, however what follows are some practical guidelines for getting to an approach that's right for you. •
Lucy's Handy Little Tip 2 - It may surprise you that I personally don't recommend paper trading. It doesn't work for me, or, I suspect, most people, as it's not real enough to teach you about your emotions. Instead, find an amount which is really “ultra-safe”, but which you'd still feel ever so slightly disappointed about losing. For me, that amount is £5, but for you it might be £3, or even £2.
The minimum bet on the world's biggest betting exchange (Betfair.com) is ostensibly £2, though in fact you can bet less than this by editing unmatched bets. However, to do so is a pain, so I'd recommend £2 as the lowest possible minimum starting bet to the ultra-cautious. Really, if you can't afford to bet £2, I have to question again whether any form of gambling is for you. c) So how much of my bank should I bet on a single bet? How long's a piece of string!? No, don't answer that! Instead, consider the following: •
Firstly, to repeat, your bank(s) must all contain money you are prepared to lose. So they can contain £100, £500, £5000 – provided you can afford to lose it, the precise amount is up to you.
•
However, to make £1000 a month, I believe you are going to need a total betting bank, across all your systems, of £2000.
•
You don't of course have to start off with a £2000 bank! You can work up to it. So, if you only have £500, start with that. But in this case do not withdraw money from the pot until you've reached your £2000 target.
•
If you are starting with much less than £2000, I'd strongly recommend you begin with arbitrage only (see section 3 below). This is so easy, you may even decide to do nothing else! It's a nice, steady way of building up your capital reserves, plus it is likely to lead to you opening up a good range of bookie accounts (which is no bad thing), whilst you familiarise yourself with all the web screens you're going to be using.
•
Whatever bank you choose to begin with, please use discipline when staking. This is crucial. A typical 1 point backing bet using a new system should commit no more than 1% of your betting bank (hence bet £10 if you have a £1000 backing bank). ◦ You may even wish to consider 0.5% when you're starting out. So if you only have £500 in your backing bank, your very first back bet on a new system would be for £2.50 =£500 * 0.5%. ◦ That said, if you're placing arbitrage bets, you may end up risking
nothing at all, so these restrictions would not apply: see Lucy's Handy Little Tip 3 below.
•
Remember – there's no rush. It's ok to get rich slowly, especially when you're learning!
•
Learn also to “ratchet” up and down what 1 point means to you. I recommend you do this at the start of each betting day, then leave well alone till the start of the next day (i.e. don't make intra-day changes or you'll get horribly confused). ◦ Thus, if you're working with the principle that “1% of my bank = 1 point”, and your bank has progressed (say) to £520, then today you will be placing bets of £5.20. If however, at the end of the day, you have regressed to (say) £505, then tomorrow you will be betting £5.05 each time. ◦ Ratcheting has the benefit of accelerating your progress when things are going well, and protecting your bank when you're struggling. ▪ Lucy's Handy Little Tip 3 - These ultra-cautious staking principles
do not apply in the same way when arbing, as the amount of money that is at risk is far smaller than the amounts you actually place as bets. Arbing is inherently low risk, as its goal is to lock in profit without any sports risk whatsoever (though there can be some risk arising from, say, data entry or timing error). We will look at how to place arb bets later, but for now just note that they represent a great way of making consistent, steady profits on our way to our £1000 / month target.
4.
Why not use the bookies' own money to build your betting bank?
a) Bonus Bagging The single most satisfying way to build up your betting bank is to do so with the bookies' money before you start betting regularly. This is easily done by exploiting bookies' bonuses. And without a doubt, the very easiest way to do this is to use Mike Cruickshank's Bonus Bagging service, as it really is, “monkey see, monkey do”. It's enormous fun, and still worth doing if you already have a lot of bookmaker accounts. To find out more, read all about my live trial by clicking here. If this concept is completely new to you, the principle is that you back on an event to happen at a particular bookmaker's website (e.g. Lucky Ned to win the 3.50 at Kempton), and then bet that the same event will not happen via a betting exchange such as Betfair.com (i.e. bet that Lucky Ned will lose the same race – this is called a 'lay' bet). Doing this with the right stakes (Mike tells you precisely how much!) allows you to extract the free cash that bookmakers will give you to open an account with them, without incurring any sports-related risk: i.e. you are guaranteed to profit whether or not Lucky Ned wins the race. This approach is an example of sports arbitrage ('arbing' for short), about which I will have more to say in section 5, however Bonus Bagging is a particularly satisfying variant, as the profits can be remarkable (with risk-free offers of up to £200 available from some bookmakers). Mike's Bonus Bagging site explains the process in more detail, though it does require a small, one-off fee to join (currently £27). You will however typically win a lot more than £27 on your very first arb, so it's easily worth doing. A beginner should be able to amass a four figure sum by following Mike's instructions. But it is still worth doing even if you have a heap of bookmaker accounts already. I had loads, but still made a tidy three-figure sum during my trial, and could have made quite a bit more. There are also completely free alternative services to Mike Cruickshank's site (www.bet72.com is the best of these in my view), however Mike's service is truly second to none, and, in my opinion, well worth the small initial fee. Sports arbitrage is notoriously fiddly, but Mike explains everything in great detail, so really you can't go wrong with his service. •
Lucy's Handy Little Tip 4 – Mike's service is also worth persevering with following completion of your initial 'capital-building' phase. This is because new opportunities, including reloads, refunds and even casino offers, become available all the time, and Mike keeps you informed about them all, and explains in
simple English what you have to do to exploit them. •
Profit Target – You should be able to make a four figure capital sum to start with, and then add a regular monthly income of around £250 via reloads, refunds, casino and spreadbet offers. And all you have to do is 'do as you're told' by Mike!
b) Record-keeping This is probably as good a time as any to reiterate something which is a bit of a mantra of mine... namely that, as you build your bank, you will inevitably open lots of bookmaker accounts – so save your logon and password details in a spreadsheet, and add a column to record your balance, so you don't forget what's where. Having lots of bookie accounts is good as it means you can spread bets around and not have your accounts limited by your favourite bookies when you have a lucky run with one of them. You will also need an account with Betfair.com, and with Betdaq (but only for when Betfair is down). So I know it's boring, but please do keep records. You will be glad you did. We agreed we needed to be professional, didn't we? Well this is one example of it. One thing that puts people off keeping records is that they're not really sure what information to collect. There really isn't in fact that much. You simply need a spreadsheet with one row per bet, with the following column headings: • date of sports event • time • venue • your selection (horse, team, desired outcome) • market (e.g. win market, place market, correct score etc.) • name of bookmaker or betting exchange • bet type (back /lay / trade / arb) • odds taken •
Betfair SP (a useful benchmark even if you don't actually take it – yon can find it out after the event what it would have been, at no cost by going to http://www.timeform.com/free/)
• result (win/lose) • opening bank • stake • returns (after commission if at an exchange) • closing bank This information will be invaluable when you review your progress (which, again, I strongly recommend you do from time to time). It's amazing how many times you will see patterns in your betting, and realise where you've been going wrong (or indeed, right!).
5.
Bookmakers or Betfair?
Bookies are getting a bad name! If you read a lot of gambling blogs, you would think there is little point in ever placing a bet via a bookmaker's website. Betfair.com in particular (which is a site I admit to loving!!) has the reputation amongst a certain class of gambler as being the only place to bet. There are a couple of often-repeated reasons for this. a) On average, Betfair.com offers better odds than your average bookie. Well yes, on average, it almost certainly does. However, most of the odds advantage on betfair is on longshots, with short-priced favourites often similarly or more attractively priced at the bookmaker's. I'm not entirely sure why this should be – maybe the bookies are simply terrified of getting burnt by some 100-1 outsider!? - but in practice, it means that they often offer competitive prices on fancied horses. So it all depends who you're planning to bet on. You may well find the most appealing odds are not on Betfair.com after all. And odds comparison websites now make it easy to compare and contrast the bookies with the exchanges. Also, bookies don't charge commission. Whereas if you place a winning bet at betfair.com, you will hand back 5% of your winnings to the website for the luxury of administering your little flutter. Bookies can only dream of being able to do that to you! b) Betfair.com allows you to place different sorts of bet, including lay bets and trading options. Well this certainly is true, but often these work best when used in conjunction with related bookmaker bets. We've already seen in section 3 how bookmakers' bonuses can be exploited by combining back bets at the bookie, with lay bets on Betfair.com. We shall look at this phenomenon in more detail later. So ok, we need bookmakers and Betfair.com – right? Yes – and there's another reason why too. In the world of horse racing, bookmakers offer one attractive feature that Betfair.com does not: something which, in my view, is worthy of a lot more attention than it appears to get from the online betting community. I am talking about “Best Odds Guaranteed” (or BOG for short). This extraordinary little offer from an increasing number of major online bookies ensures that you will always receive the higher of (a) the odds you took when you placed your bet, and (b) the Starting Price. This feature can be worth a small fortune, and make the difference between an average day and a great one.
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Lucy's Handy Little Tip 5 – Many punters will put a disproportionate amount of effort into making a good betting selection, but then simply take whatever price is currently on offer! This is a major miscalculation. Over the long term, taking the right price may, in my view, be more important than making the 'right' selection!
As often as possible, when considering betting via a bookmaker's site, you should think about placing your bets with BOG bookies, so you benefit from drifters. Doing so can drastically improve your overall profits. Oddschecker.com allows you to identify BOG bookies quickly (as a capital 'B' is displayed at the head of all “bookie columns” which offer it). Unfortunately the other major odds comparison site (Bestbetting.com) doesn't currently provide the same feature – so for bookies that are only listed here, you will need to click through to the bookie's own website to check whether they offer BOG terms. Bookmakers can add or withdraw BOG status at short notice so it's worth checking from time to time. For instance, Stan James recently withdrew its BOG offer.
6.
Arbitrage
In my view, the easiest way to make consistent profits, including achieving our £1000 per month target with a minimum of fuss, is to use sports arbitrage techniques. We've already looked at one such strategy in section 3, where we talked about Mike Cruickshank's Bonus Bagging service. However, there are several others, as follows. a) DIY arbitrage You don't have to use a third party service to find arbs; instead, you can easily find them for yourself. All we do is search for opportunities to play the bookies off against each other by focussing on arbs in events with only two or three outcomes. And by avoiding Betfair, we ensure we don't pay commission, and thereby keep a bigger chunk of the arb profits for ourselves! For instance, look at the tennis coupon on the Oddschecker.com service. Wherever you see a percentage figure less than 100% next to a particular match title (which happens a lot), you should click on “all odds” on the right to expose the available odds, then click on the underlined, bold odds that Oddschecker will offer you.
Assuming the bookie site you click through to confirms the same odds, you can place matching bets to lock in a guaranteed win (And don't worry, for more detail on how to work out the precise bets to place, read on...!!). This approach also works with football matches, via Oddschecker's 'bumper coupon'. This remarkable resource page can take a little while to load as it lists an enormous number of matches in precisely the same way as the tennis screen above for quick evaluation. This process doesn't take more than a few moments however, as once again all we are doing is scanning down the right hand column for combined match odds below 100%. •
Lucy's Handy Little Tip 6 – Bear in mind with this approach that profits on any single match can be modest so you do need to keep at it. But then – it's all back to being professional! All you have to do is lock in £35 per day in profit and you're on track to banking £1000 per month. So a few pounds here and there will soon get you to where you need to be.
Continuing the football theme, if I told you there is a website that allows you to review every single soccer division for the week ahead, and automatically highlights potential arb opportunities across all European and international leagues, on markets from Match Odds to 'Draw No Bet' and 'Half Time Result', would you be interested? Well, there is - it's called bestbetting.com, and it works like a charm. All you do is go to bestbetting.com, then click on 'Football' in the left hand column, then select one of the competitions – e.g. Champions League – and keep clicking through, if necessary, until you get to a list of individual matches. As with the examples at Oddschecker above, we're simply looking for a 3-way arb where the total percentage shown in the right hand column for the best available, combined odds is below 100%. Look for instance at this example:
There are clearly several possible arbs here, with the most attractive being the AC Milan v Arsenal tie on 15 Feb 2012, which is showing a best possible percentage of 97.59%. So we click on the Arsenal match and we get the following table:
We can now see that by backing AC Milan at Boyle Sports, and by backing the draw and the Arsenal win at Pinnacle (who are the ultimate arb-friendly bookmaker by the way!), we can lock in a guaranteed profit. b) But I'm no good at sums! How do I do all this 'calculator betting'? Effective arbing can depend on your ability to make accurate calculations quickly, and to compare your options just as quickly. • Should you bias the outcome to the favourite? Or the outsider? • Should you round off to the nearest pound in order to conceal your arb from the bookies? Or just guarantee an even outcome no matter what? • And how long is all this "calculator betting" and decision-making going to take, and will the odds change whilst you think? Well, my immediate response is to remind you of Clive Dunn in the BBC comedy classic, Dad's Army: in short, “don't panic, Mr. Mainwaring!!!”. There are a lot of solutions out there, so trust me, you don't have to be any good at maths. I almost hesitate to plug Oddschecker.com's online utility, as if I mention them one more time, you may think I'm on the payroll! (I'm not by the way!). But if you are still unfamiliar with this one, go to their home page, click on the Tools dropdown in the top right hand corner, and you'll see a variety of options under the heading "Calculators". I prefer the Dutching one for arbing. However, my current favourite calculator doesn't actually run on the web at all: instead, you install it on your PC. It's available from a site called Windows Arbitrage Calculator (fair enough name I suppose), where you just click on the 'Download' button to get started. It is simply the cleanest introduction to "Calculator Betting" I have ever seen. Specifically, it has an 'Arbitrage' tab that could transform your arbing - making it faster, more decisive, and ultimately more profitable.
I love the four options at the top. Once you've keyed in the available odds, and the Total Stake you're prepared to work with, you simply select the type of arb you require: • Equal (i.e. same winnings irrespective of outcome) • Favourite (i.e. bias winnings towards outcome where favourite wins) • Outsider (i.e. bias winnings towards outcome where outsider wins) • Smooth (i.e. round off stakes to nearest pound - something I am very keen on as it stops the bookies getting suspicious about what we're up to!) So, taking the Arsenal example, what I've done below is select the “smooth” option, then keyed in a total bet of £500 (to be spread across the 3 bookies), together with the available odds, to find out what stakes I need to place to lock in some nice profits. As you can see, once I've placed my bets as below, I am certain to win between £8.75 and £15.50 – which is a healthy contribution to my £35 daily target.
If however, I'd wished to skew the result, say, towards the favourite, I could have bet as follows:
This would deliver a very handsome win if AC Milan triumph at home, and no loss if Arsenal were to get a result. It also makes watching the match on television a lot more exciting! •
Lucy's Handy Little Tip 7 – I always round off stakes prior to bet placement to avoid flagging myself as an arber to the bookmaker. I place bets to the nearest £5: which is why the “Sm0oth” option above is so attractive.
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Lucy's Handy Little Tip 8 – I placed the bet above at Boyle Sports before the bets at Pinnacle. This is because Pinnacle will never close you down and openly welcome arbers; however Boyle may conceivably query such a large bet, especially if you haven't bet with them for some time. Thus I waited to ensure that Boyle had accepted my bet before placing the bets at Pinnacle. If Boyle had restricted my bet – e.g. only accepted half my stake – I would have reduced the bets at Pinnacle by the same percentage amount. As it is, I had no problem, and have now locked in a profit. It therefore pays to exercise a degree of caution with some bookies, particularly if you are not familiar with their betting policies. Always confirm your bet first at the bookmaker that you think may be least willing to accept your bet.
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Profit Target – You should easily be able to make £10 per day via DIY arbitrage, which equates to a monthly income of £300 per month tax free. This is a conservative estimate, that is likely to be constrained more by the size of your betting bank than by the available opportunities.
c) Reloads Reloads never cease to amaze me. They are, in effect, arbs that come looking for you! They work in almost precisely the same way as account opening offers, with the difference that they involve an existing bookmaker of yours incentivising you to start betting with them again (if, perhaps, you've not visited their site for a few weeks) – and as before, they do this by offering you free money to drop by their site and place bets. As with account opening offers, you can simply lay off your bets at Betfair.com, to lock in risk-free profit. You simply back a horse (or whatever) at your bookmaker, and then lay it off on Betfair.com; then get rewarded with the free cash from the bookie once you've placed enough bets (usually a certain amount of cash has to be staked before you are allowed to withdraw your reload bonus money). By the way, if you've subscribed to Mike Cruickshank's Bonus Bagging product, he will once again guide you through precisely what reload bets you need to place... I know I'm plugging his service somewhat, but it is a steal, and his customer service is remarkable. You tend to hear of reloads directly from your existing bookies via email. Bet365 do a lot of them, but so do most bookies from time to time, as the betting market is ultra-competitive.
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Lucy's Handy Little Tip 9 – Reloads sometimes require a bit more patience to 'cash out' than an account opening arb, as you may have to place a whole series of arbs to cross the required staking threshold. I imagine the bookies rather hope you won't have the patience to see the reload through to the bitter end... well, this is where professionalism comes in again, right? Ensure you keep good records of how much you've staked so far, and see the task through to its conclusion. You'll be glad you did!
If you want to see how it's done... I recently conducted a reload arb on my site, whereby I had to place £600 worth of bets with Bet365 to extract £100 in cash. It sounds a pain but it wasn't: it was just about being organised and well, counting up to £600! For the details of how I did it... see http://www.laybackandgetrich.com/?p=1778 for the start of the process and http://www.laybackandgetrich.com/?p=1828 for the finish! The steps I went through on the second of these two pages were mixed in with an ongoing trial of an expensive product called Rebel Betting (which you can ignore for now), so you'll have to scroll down a bit to the comments section halfway down the page, to find the actual bets. The bottom line however is – with the proceeds, I bought a new pair of shoes!! •
Profit Target – You should easily be able to make at least £50 per week from reloads – however, assuming you have bought Mike Cruickshank's Bonus Bagging product, then, to avoid double counting, I shall score this technique here as £NIL income. (i.e. I have counted the potential monthly income from reloads in section 3a on Mike's Bonus Bagging service, so I do not think it “fair” to count it again here).
d) Bookie Shop Arbing A lot of people say to me that they like the idea of arbitrage but they can't be bothered administering all those bookie accounts. Well, to a certain extent, I can't help feeling that some folks don't deserve to make money – after all boys, it ain't difficult! - but I guess, we all have different tolerance levels for admin, and some people just can't stand it. So, for these folks, I would like to suggest a way of arbing that involves not a single bookmaker's account. All you need is a Betfair.com logon. And (ideally) some form of transport, or at least some strong shoe leather, as you may be walking up and down your local high street rather a lot! Every week, the major UK bookmakers publish fixed odds coupons at the start of the week in their betting shops for the upcoming football fixtures. Usually these run up until and including the following weekend: i.e. they look almost a week ahead. But the odds are printed on paper at the very start of the week... I hope by now you can smell an opportunity!
A bookie may quote odds on (say) a Monday, only for a key player to be injured on the Wednesday – a fact which may well have a material impact on the likely outcome of the following Saturday's match. In this instance, if you had picked up your coupon on the Monday, you would still be free to compare it with Betfair's (or indeed any bookmaker's) odds at any time later the same week, to see if an arbitrage opportunity had presented itself. If it does, you simply walk into the bookmaker's shop in the high street, place your bet using Monday's coupon, then step outside, and (maybe using your smart phone!), lay the same bet on Betfair.com at shorter odds. You thereby lock in an arbitrage profit without opening a bookmaker's account! •
Profit Target – You should conservatively be able to make £10 per week from Bookie Shop Arbing.
e) Sports Punter Finally, I would like to bring to you the gold standard in sports arbitrage. It's called sportspunter.com, and it appears to cover every sport under the sun. Just follow this link, and you will be presented with an arber's dream - basically, a series of dropdown boxes that allow you to search for arbs across a huge range of sports leagues all over the world. All you have to do is specify the sport, the country and the league in the first three dropdowns at the top. Try 'Soccer', 'England' and 'Premier League' to get the idea. And exactly as previously, you are looking for a combined percentage outcome of less than 100% for all possible results. •
Lucy's Handy Little Tip 10 – Sportspunter.com also offers an amazing paid-for service that works out at a shade over £50 per month, and provides you with a constantly refreshing page of live arb alerts across over 100 bookies and 1500 competitions (and which I tested here). This is the next level in sports arbitrage, and one that positions you to earn a real primary income from your betting.
For starters however, you can just use the free sportspunter.com link, apparently indefinitely. (To try the paid-for service, you click on the 'arbitrage betting' link on the right hand side of the page you land on, then follow the instructions under the heading “Sign Up Information”). •
Profit Target – You should conservatively be able to make £8 per day from the free sportspunter.com service. This equates to £240 per month. If you are using the professional service, I believe you should be able to make at least twice this amount, even after allowing for the subscription fee.
7.
Trading
By now, using the techniques above, you should be well on your way to making £1000 per month tax-free from betting. Some of it can seem a bit unexciting whilst you're doing it, or at least require a certain degree of patience and persistence, but our goal here is not thrills and spills, but profit, and as I keep saying, professionalism is the key. All that said, there is undoubtedly an attraction – and dare I say, a degree of greater excitement? - in adopting a different route to money-making in the sports markets. I am thinking of the thrill – and also the risk! - 0f sports trading. Now this subject is worthy of an entire manual in its own right, and I almost hesitate to introduce it here. However, it is a natural extension of the subject of arbitrage, which can be regarded indeed as a form of ultra-low risk trading (though purists won't thank me for saying so). So what is trading, and how do I recommend we approach it here? Well, sports market trading is effectively a real-time technique whereby we aim to buy and sell risk for an overall net profit. Thus, for example, imagine that • We buy the risk (i.e. a 'back' bet) that Lucky Ned wins his next race at odds of (say) 5-1.... • ...then later we sell that same risk (i.e. 'lay' the same outcome) at odds of 7-2. • If we have managed to do this, in both cases, for (say) a stake of £20, then we would have succeeded in locking in a risk-free bet on Lucky Ned. For, if Lucky Ned were now to win the race, we would make £30, by winning £100 on our back bet, and losing £70 on our lay bet. • If Lucky Ned doesn't win, then our net position is zero, so no harm is done. Which all begs the question: how is this little miracle done? a) Heavy Trading on Betfair.com The classic approach to trading is to use Betfair.com to buy and sell risk. This can be done via the usual website interface within your browser, but this is not recommended. Odds can move too quickly on Betfair.com for your browser to handle, so specially tailored software is preferred. This manual is not designed to be a Betfair.com trading manual, so if you do go down this route, I strongly recommend you get some specific training before you start investing serious money. There are a number of products you can use to get started, of which probably the most impressive is betangel.com. However, it doesn't come cheap, so please, if you choose to bet in this way, try the free trial first! A totally FREE alternative to Bet Angel (that I personally use) is the extraordinary Geek's Toy. This is an amazingly powerful product, supported by an active forum of users, that has the power to take over your life! Perhaps the very best part of the whole product is the range of training videos that come with it. Please, if you do use the Toy, watch the videos first!
b) Lucy's Light Trading Technique So... do I recommend trading? Answer – yes, but. And the “but” is: there is a much easier way. As mentioned before, I believe there is a lot of value to be had by exploiting the BOG (Best Odds Guaranteed) feature provided by a lot of bookmakers. Essentially, this guarantees the punter that his/her odds will be the higher of (a) the odds taken when the bet was placed, and (b) the eventual Industry Starting Price. Oddschecker.com allows you to identify BOG bookies quickly (as a capital 'B' is displayed at the head of all “bookie columns” which offer it). Unfortunately the other major odds comparison site (Bestbetting.com) doesn't currently provide the same feature – so for bookies that are only listed here, you will need to click through to the bookie's own website to check whether they offer BOG terms. • Bookmakers can add or withdraw BOG status at short notice so it's worth checking from time to time. For instance, Stan James recently withdrew its BOG offer. • Currently Bet365, Boyle Sports, BetFred, Victor Chandler, Paddy Power, Ladbrokes, Corbett Sports, ToteSport and William Hill all offer the BOG service. Lucy's Light Trading technique works on horse racing only. It involves comparing BOG bookies' backing odds on Oddschecker.com and Bestbetting.com with the equivalent laying odds available at Betfair.com, and, where a particular bookie's backing odds are favourable, then backing the horse at the bookie, and then laying at slightly lower odds on Betfair.com. The key is that we don't simply take whatever Betfair.com odds are available. Instead, we ask for lower odds than those currently available on Betfair that are level with the current average odds on Oddschecker/Bestbetting. We then use the Betfair.com Keep option to provide insurance in the event that we don't get matched on Betfair prior to the race starting. Take the following example:
Boyle Sports and Ladbrokes are currently offering odds of 6.5 on Spes Nostra, which, as you can see, is significantly better than the average available odds, which are between 5.5 and 6. I therefore just bet £50 on Spes Nostra at Boyle Sports, and laid it off for £52.75 (to cover the 5% commission) at Betfair.com, at odds of 5.8. Now there is a very good chance that my 5.8 lay bet will get matched on Betfair prior to the race (which, at time of writing, is a couple of hours away), as this is the current consensus price amongst the bookies, according to Oddschecker: i.e. I am not asking for outrageous odds. But the 5.8 price is currently unavailable at Betfair, so I have changed the Status of my Lay bet from 'Cancel at In-Play' to 'Keep at In-Play' as shown overleaf.
This one little change has the happy side effect of ensuring that, if my lay bet is not matched before the off, then it will go forward into the in-play betting market to be matched there. Now of course there is no absolute guarantee that my lay bet will be matched inplay either. However, the odds are massively on our side that it will. The first two or three favourites in a race typically yo-yo around in price in the five minutes before the off, and even more so once the market goes in-running, and so our very conservative lay bet is almost certain to match up during the race if not prior to it. •
Lucy's Handy Little Tip 11 – The key is that we don’t get too greedy: which of course, we haven't done, as we have merely attempted to match up against the general market consensus. Remember the goal is to set your lay odds in line with the bookies' average odds, then having done so, select the Keep option to ensure your lay bet goes in-play if necessary.
There is also the possibility that having been matched on Betfair.com (usually well before the race), the horse's price then drifts in the market prior to the off. In this fortunate situation, we will benefit from the longer SP odds, as the BOG bookie will pay out (if our horse wins) at the longer price. When this happens, we should be lucky enough to lock in significant margins between the back and lay side of the arb, which in turn delivers dramatically enhanced profits. e.g. In the example given here, a win for Spes Nostra at 8, against a betfair.com lay of 5.8, would deliver a net profit of £96.80. Another happy outcome can occur owing to a curious quirk in Betfair.com's handling of non-runners. UK bookmakers handle the possibility of non-runners
via the notorious “rule 4” deductions, which effectively reduce the value of any winnings you achieve by a mathematical progression. However Betfair.com, for reasons best known to its designers, uses a different method to downgrade its prices, that always seems a little more draconian that the equivalent rule 4 deduction. This often leads to the Betfair lay odds being reduced by more than your bookmaker's back bet, thereby “widening the gap” between the two sides of the arb – and hence delivering more profit to you. In summary then, Lucy's light trading technique is a low-risk way of exploiting small odds movements to create gaps between back and lay bets, that convert into profit if and when our selections come home in front. However, this is gambling. Unlike many of the arbitrage examples above, there is the small risk that the Betfair.com match is not made, in which case you can lose your backing stake entirely, and not have a balancing lay bet for compensation. In practice, you should win a lot more by this method than you lose over time, but if you cannot face the possibility of losing at all, you should not use this technique. •
Profit Target – You should comfortably be able to make £50 per week from Lucy's Light Trading technique. There are usually several such trading opportunities each day.
c) Lay the Draw Many novice punters, particularly in the UK, often know a lot about football, so for them a quick route into effective gambling is by exploiting their existing knowledge of this sport. This approach can often turn them into effective punters much more quickly than trying to learn how to “study form” in horse racing – a sport that basically involves trying to guess which one of a bunch of wild animals can run most quickly across a field! The oldest online football trading system going is the ‘Lay the Draw’ approach. It is emphatically not my system, and indeed is widely (and freely) available across the world wide web. I am therefore conscious here that a lot of readers will groan at the prospect of reading about it again. Don't! When adjusted for a couple of minor issues (as below), the basic principle of laying the draw between two evenly matched sides that each have a record of leaking goals, then trading out when a goal is scored, remains a solid way of making money from betting. Lay the Draw is a bookie-proof system as it is operated exclusively at betting exchanges. Not only do you therefore not have to worry about getting your bookie account limited, it also means you can bet with large or small stakes, entirely as you wish. For example, English Premiership matches often offer millions of pounds of liquidity at Betfair, so there is plenty of scope for very significant profits (and of course, significant losses if you get it wrong!). So what's involved in running the Lay the Draw system? (i) Basic Lay the Draw System
The basic principle of “Lay the Draw” is to find games on Betfair featuring evenly matched teams where, according to the Match Odds Market, any of the three possible win/draw outcomes is fairly likely: with ideally, decimal odds of less than 4 being offered for each of the three as below:
The chosen games also need to be flagged as being in the Betfair “In-Play” list (as we will want to place bets on them during the match). In practice, all major matches do go forward into the in-play markets, however Betfair provides a convenient filter via daily “in-play coupons” so you can be sure, as below:
You should now further screen the match(-es) you have found by selecting only those where punters believe the respective defences are likely to concede easily. The simplest way to do this is to rule out any matches where, in the Over/Under 2.5 goals market, the odds for there being “over 2.5 goals” are longer than they are for “under 2.5 goals”. In the traditional version of Lay the Draw, you then place a Lay Bet in the Match Odds market on all selected matches before the kick-off. Once the game(s) go(es) in-play, you sit and wait for a goal to be scored by either side. When it is, the Match Odds market will be automatically suspended and re-loaded by Betfair, with the back odds for the draw usually coming back much higher than the lay odds you took at the start. You now back the draw at longer odds than you originally laid it at, thus locking in a small profit no matter what the result. •
Lucy's Handy Little Tip 12 – You can play around with the exact stake required in Betfair itself, as keying a potential back bet into the Match Odds Market without submitting will give you “trial balances” in green under each of the 3 outcomes. Submit when you've found a stake of the right size to lock in profit no matter how the game finishes.
(ii) So What Can Go Wrong With Lay the Draw? By far and away the biggest problem is goalless matches; as the system depends on a goal being scored by someone before the back bet is placed. If no goal is forthcoming, the system cannot be used properly. (Which is why we filtered for teams with leaky defences above). A common solution is to trade out of goalless games when (say) a certain period has gone (70 minutes maybe?), or when the Draw odds have come down to (perhaps) 2.0 – as the Draw will have been getting more and more likely the whole time that the game remained scoreless. Both of these options involve placing a back bet for less than you originally laid, and accepting a net loss to offset against all the other times when you will have made money with the same system. However, although minimising losses is often a valid betting strategy, there is an additional factor to consider here, around the almost inevitable “Murphy's Law” effect - whereby you can almost predict that the moment after you decide to trade out, one or other of the teams will score the decisive goal that could have made you a lot of money. It has to be said that the trade-out approach has its supporters, but I remain unconvinced as some of the losses arising can be significant, thereby undermining the system's overall profitability. I therefore recommend an alternative strategy (see below). The other key weakness of the basic system relates to unbalanced matches. If, for instance, Manchester United are playing a bottom of the table team, you can expect United's odds to be significantly shorter than their opponents'. If you were to lay the draw in this match, and then United were to concede first, the odds of the draw
would probably shorten, not lengthen, thus stopping us locking in a profit. This is why I have proposed selecting only “even” matches above. (iii) My Preferred Solution to Goalless Matches with Lay the Draw The problem with goalless matches arises from the big disparity between the odds against a draw at the start, and the odds against the same event at (say) the 70 minute mark when no one has scored. My preferred solution is therefore to •
wait till half-time before you place the original lay bet (which you obviously only do on matches that still remain level at this point).
•
Never trade out. Instead, wait right until the final whistle, if necessary, for a goal, and only place your back bet if a goal is scored.
These small changes in overall approach will drastically reduce the lay odds that you initially commit to (therefore limiting your overall potential liability), whilst still giving you a full 45 minutes to secure your all-important goal. Given that defenders unquestionably tire in the second half, and that managers are tempted to 'go for the win' later in a match, this solution is more attuned to the way football is actually played. This approach also allows you to forget about expensive trading out solutions (as you’re not losing as much if there are no more goals). It may sound risky as you now only have 45 minutes to find a goal, but the flipside is that very late goals can make you a fortune (as the back odds will jump out much further once Betfair reloads the market). And running multiple matches in parallel on a Saturday afternoon often then becomes really exciting and rewarding. (iv) Lay the Draw In Action As discussed earlier in this guide, I recommend you try the Lay the Draw system with small amounts of real money. I'd avoid totally risk-free paper trading as it isn't realistic enough for you to learn about the emotions you will experience. Then as you make a little money, reinvest your winnings in increased stakes. Make sure you have access to good quality real-time score data (Radio 5 live and Sky Sports News are popular for the English Premiership, but my favourite is Victor Chandler's goals feed at http://vcbet.goalsfeed.com). Which ever service you use, find one that contains all the games you are tracking in a single place. And give it a go! •
Profit Target – You should comfortably be able to make £50 per week from my amended version of the Lay the Draw system – potentially a lot more.
d) Lucy's ArbTrader I cannot complete the Trading section of my manual without mentioning my very own trading solution, Lucy's ArbTrader! It is not covered in this manual, but is
available for download from my website, and comes with a 90-day no quibble moneyback guarantee. •
Lucy’s ArbTrader is the first system that shows you how sports arbing can be done at realistic stakes (i.e. staking normal bets instead of 3 figure sums) in such a way as to generate a valuable income without attracting lots of unwanted, account-limiting attention from the bookies. It does this by using a special twist to ‘widen the gap’ between the back and lay sides of the arb to produce better returns at lower stakes. This in turn gives you far less risk, and less stress, whilst delivering long-term, higher profits.
•
Lucy’s ArbTrader is very low-risk – though not absolutely risk-free, as it provides a number of options for you to select the risk/reward profile you require. Thus it is actually more flexible than traditional arbing systems. For instance, there is a ‘pure arb’ mode and a ‘punter’ mode, the latter being more suited to the true gambler. However, both exploit the novel ‘twist’ that allows you to ‘widen the arb gap’ and thereby make more money at lower stakes. You can therefore use either method to generate a significant income stream.
• The system has nothing to do with bookies’ “new account” or re-load offers. All bets are placed as normal without reference to any such incentive schemes. •
Lucy’s ArbTrader has been robustly road-tested by subscribers to laybackandgetrich.com, many of whom have made practical enhancements to the product as they’ve gone along.
APPENDIX A - Back to Basics Betting Class PLEASE READ THIS APPENDIX AND SAVE YOURSELF SOME MONEY! There are a number of timeless betting lessons that it seems that every new punter has traditionally had to learn the hard way. Please save yourself time and money, and don't skip this section. It may not seem glamorous, but it is important, and really could make all the difference between success and failure. There are four key sections in the appendix: 1. bankroll 2. loss recovery – how not to do it! 3. 8 ways to stop bookies limiting your account 4. 4 great staking plan secrets
A1. Bankroll If you’re even thinking about Bankroll management, you are being professional. And that’s a great place to start! The key issues with Bankroll are: - how big should it be? - where should I hold it, and how should I move it around and manage it? Taking these in turn then…. a) Size No matter what you’re told, size does matter! Now obviously, absolute size is up to you – but please remember, do only ever bet with money you’re able to lose. If you ever feel tempted to bet with money that is needed for stuff that really matters, please go to Gamble Aware nd get help. The way to look at your Bankroll is like this: once you have deposited money at Betfair, at a bookmaker’s, or in an e-wallet, it’s gone. You should consider your money spent at this point. If however, you don’t feel entirely comfortable, and are mentally reserving the right to withdraw that chunk of money again if things go wrong, then you’re investing too much in your betting, and you need to deposit less in the first place. Remember Mike’s Bonus Bagging! Build up your bank first with the bookies’ money and your betting will be far more confident and assured (and therefore successful) as a result. As explained earlier in this report, you should have a separate bankroll for each type of betting you are planning to do. So if you are planning to back, trade and lay, you should have three separate bankrolls. This approach will create focus (and thereby help develop persistence) as you will be able to see what you’re doing best at, and where any problems are. b) Location location location – where to hold all that lovely money! Your laying bankroll can be deposited into Betfair, but the rest needs much more careful management. Now, it is an indisputable fact that a good way to get your accounts limited at the bookies is to keep moving money into and out of your account. Especially if you do so with debit and credit cards, as the bookie will have to stand the transaction charges arising (or worse still, in certain cases, try and pass them on to you!). It is a common complaint from punters that bookmakers will allow you to deposit instantly but then make you wait up to about 5 days to get your money back! Thing is, this is telling you something: namely, that bookmakers really don’t like you doing too many withdrawals! And it’s not only that they want your business; it’s also that they wish you’d stop running up their bill for bank charges! You will be far more bookie-friendly if you deposit and withdraw via an e-wallet, such as Paypal or Skrill (the new name for Moneybookers), as the associated costs
for bookies are negligible. Consequently, your friendly bookie will reward you by allowing you to move your money out much faster. Which in turn increases your betting power: because of course, the longer your cash is tied up, the harder it is for you to leverage your bankroll and make money! So: less in and out; and, please, use an e-wallet! Also, most importantly of all, ask yourself: do I really need to make a withdrawal? If you find yourself withdrawing – and then depositing – at the same bookmaker’s within a short period, you are probably over-trading. Try instead to track what’s where (it only takes a little spreadsheet, where you can also store the passwords for each site!) and then only withdraw cash when you really need to. Finally, remember also that the “right” location for your funds depends on what you are planning to bet on: so think before you deposit, and don’t simply respond to a bookie’s advertisement! For instance, back-and-lay arbers will need a small percentage of their bank in a series of bookie accounts, with some float in an e-wallet, and a big chunk of money to cover laying liability at Betfair. However, if you’re mainly trading with a product like Total Football Trading, all you need to do is deposit the bulk of your cash straight into Betfair.
A2. A lesson from history – how not to do Loss Recovery – aka Martingale! Here are two immutable laws of betting: 1) Losing is emphatically part of winning. Strange but undoubtedly true – no matter whatever the latest overblown system claims are out there on the interweb...you are going to have to work your losing into your winning, if you are going to come out ahead. If you cannot accept this, you shouldn't be betting. Yet people refuse to accept it, and instead chase losses instead. Which brings me to law 2... 2) The quickest way to the poor house is to chase losses.
Yet when you've lost a large-ish sum of money, it is so tempting...... Whenever you are tempted therefore, I want you to repeat to yourself the story of Martingale, the most infamous betting system of them all.... So what is Martingale? It is odd that a system as (in)famous as Martingale should actually be so very simple. The Martingale system involves placing a sequence of bets on a 50/50 outcome, and doubling your stake every time you lose, to ensure you always end up ahead. The idea is that each sequence of bets should produce a 1 point profit, irrespective of the strike rate achieved. This might work as follows. • Imagine a phantom punter, Phil, walking up to the roulette table in Lucky Lou’s casino, and placing $100 on Red. A sultry young croupier spins the wheel, up comes Red, and phantom Phil is $100 better off. He smiles at the croupier as he takes his winnings off the table, sips his gin and tonic, and contemplates his next move…. • Phil now places a further $100 on Red, and awaits the croupier’s next spin. Unluckily for him, his sultry friend spins the wheel to Black, before raking his hundred bucks off the table, without smiling back. Unperturbed, Phil places $200 on Red, and waits for the next spin. Unfortunately that loses too, so he punts $400, and (as that loses too) he stakes $800. The croupier looks at him dubiously, thinking she has yet another desperate punter on her hands. But Red comes up this time, so Phil wins $800 (to offset the $700 he has lost to date on this sequence), and visibly relaxes as he picks his winnings off the table. • But Phil does not leave the table. All is actually going to plan. Instead, he simply starts a third sequence by placing $100 on Red again…
The idea therefore is that each sequence should produce a 1 point profit, irrespective of its length. Thus in the example given, Phil has won $200 after the 2 sequences have been completed, even though he has only had two winning bets out of five. In practice, this makes Martingale the ultimate loss-chasing system, as every stake in a sequence is equal to the sum total of everything lost to date, plus one point. Where did Martingale originate and how did it get its name? No one really knows the precise origins of the system, or of the name Martingale. Wikipedia claims that the term refers to a “class of betting strategies popular in 18th century France”, but doesn’t cite a source. The French link is often also made with the town of Martigues, and a particularly scholarly article I came across(http://www.jehps.net/juin2009/Mansuy.pdf) lists a whole series of French connections, including references to Provençal terms for absurdity, and derivations from words relating to items of clothing, equestrian harnesses and even prostitution. Good points and bad points The attractions of the system are its simplicity, and its ability to produce a long series of winning sequences in spite of the random nature of the underlying bets. However, this is where the good stuff ends. Martingale presupposes a very understanding casino, and, on the part of the punter, very deep pockets. Its clear flaw being the risk that the occasional long, losing sequence either bankrupts you, or (if you’re lucky) gets you barred from the casino first. A losing Martingale sequence that begins with the bet of a single dollar would require, by its 21st bet, a stake in excess of a million bucks. ($1,048,576 to be precise). It is a sure fire road to perdition. It seems almost insignificant in comparison but it is worth being aware that that 5050 punt on the roulette table isn’t quite as even a chance as all that either. Roulette tables usually have a ‘zero’ on the wheel, which counts as neither Red nor Black, nor Odd, nor Even. This guarantees the house a long-run edge. Finally, Martingale itself suffers from the lack of an “edge”. All good systems consist of an edge (i.e. the reason why the system works in the first place), and a staking plan. Martingale is actually just a staking plan, and a particularly irresponsible one at that. Can Martingale be used online, specifically with online casinos? Martingale has had something of a renaissance with the advent of online casinos. After all, a piece of software is unlikely to notice the sweat running down your brow as you place that $50,000 bet, whereas our sultry croupier friend would surely have alerted her “pit boss” by this point (and given the game away to you with a series of withering “who’s the loser?!” glances).
All that said, most online casino systems contain automated checks and balances, and inevitably monitor betting patterns. So the chance of you getting your $1,048,576 bet accepted on your virtual roulette table is likely to be zero. Is Martingale limited to casino-style betting only? In principle, no, Martingale can be used on any 50-50 style bet – or indeed, on any series of short-priced punts. Though trying it on (say) a series of Manchester United home matches (for which the odds can often be as short as 1.2) will have the effect of exponentially accelerating the stake’s growth rate. Or put more simply, the shorter the odds you take, the faster you’re able to go bankrupt. Are there variants of it that work better? The reference to Manchester United isn’t entirely flippant. The classic Martingale is based on a sequence of bets that have no relation to each other. Every spin of the wheel is a stand-alone event. However, you could argue that football matches are not as disconnected. After all, if Manchester United were to fail to win 3 or 4 home games in a row, surely the manager would take action? Maybe he would change the strike force, or perhaps even buy another centre-forward? Thus you could argue that this is an improvement on the roulette situation – as you would have the management team of a giant football club doing everything in their power to get your betting sequence back on track. This is the logic of the poor house; please don’t buy it! Although I suppose losschasing on this scale would probably give you a heart attack before it bankrupted you, so you would retain the possibility of dying solvent. Are there any variants that you recommend? No! The lesson of Martingale is to avoid loss-chasing systems. Even today there are so-called “stop at a winner” systems available on the internet (try typing it into Google!), which adopt various types of loss recovery strategy, and can be trusted to deliver you a whole series of winning days, followed by one monumental disaster that breaks both your bank and your heart. Today’s lesson therefore boils down to this. If a system doesn’t work at level stakes, walk away! And if you still don’t believe me, try watching this scary video I found on Youtube!!
A3. 8 Ways to stop bookies limiting your account A repeated complaint from newly successful punters is that bookmakers close or limit their accounts. You spend all your time perfecting your betting skills, and then you’re barred for using them. Is it really worth the effort?! The answer, I’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear, is a resounding yes. There is no good reason why you should get your accounts closed or limited by the bookies if you follow these simple rules. a) Bet round numbers (i.e. stakes ending in 0 or 5, without any pence). Betting very precise amounts (e.g. £46.56) will mark you out very quickly as an arber. And most bookies don’t like arbers. This is because they really want to attract so-called “mug punters” who are happy to take random punts in a spontaneous way, and who traditionally lose money hand over fist. In contrast, arbing suggests you are aiming to milk the bookies in a systematic way. And frankly they could do without the aggravation, as life is too short and anyway these days their margins are paper-thin. If you’re arbing, use calculation software that works out rounded stakes (see my article on calculator betting for the best option), or use a system like SkewTrader Pro (coming soon) which is designed to work with round stakes. Only bet pounds not pence, and stick to sums ending with a ’0′ or a ’5′. b) Consider using the basic fake-a-loss technique by laying your bets off at Betfair (though a better option follows at steps c and d!) It may seem like stating the obvious, but bookies don’t like winners. You therefore have to think about how to fake losses effectively, with the classic way of doing so being to (a) back an event at the bookies (e.g. Lucky Ned to win), (b) lay the same event off at Betfair (Lucky Ned not to win), then (c) hope that the event doesn’t happen (e.g. Lucky Ned falls at the first). This approach can often work but may prove expensive or back-fire entirely and get you shut down. In particular, things can go wrong if you’re tempted to back-and-lay longshots to “make sure” you lose, as longshots are often only available at much longer prices on Betfair than they are at your bookmaker’s. So if you back Lucky Ned at 30, you might be offered lay odds on Betfair of 40 or 50. Such an arb could cost you up to £400 on a £20 stake if the Law of Sod kicks in, and Lucky Ned comes home in front. This, in my opinion, is way too much stress for the pleasure of making your bookie twenty quid richer. With the punchline being that, if your longshot wins, your bookie will probably close down your account anyway. This will follow as night follows day, if you’ve been taking money off him prior to the race. He’ll now figure you’ve moved on to successfully backing rank outsiders and are therefore not worth the trouble. There is also the additional cost of Betfair commission to factor into your lay bet, so you may end up locking in a loss no matter what. Arbs that are guaranteed to lose,
and in some cases lose you a lot, are an unnecessary price to pay for making your bookie smile; so my advice is to use this approach with caution. So instead, here is a more sophisticated way to manage your bookmaker accounts… c) Rest winning accounts in favour of losing ones. Keep records of where you are with each bookie. I keep records of bookie balances in my bookmaker passwords file (it’s only 1 row per bookie so it’s really not onerous), and then I track whether I am up or down this week with each of them. This should be easy if you’ve been recording all your bets (which you have been doing, right?). Obviously, if you’ve lost money at a given bookies this week, no further action is required, but if you’re up, review your progress over the last month and quarter. If I am ahead across all three periods, I will take action (see below). But if I’m only ahead at a given bookmaker’s over any one or two of these periods, I will usually decide to ‘rest’ him, and switch to the accounts I’m losing money with. There is usually no need to fake losses if you’re managing your bookmaker accounts carefully. Now I do a LOT of arbing so there are always some accounts that, by chance, end up ahead, with others falling behind. The obvious long-term goal is to take your profits in Betfair, but you can give the natural cycling of bookie balances a helping hand simply by leaving successful accounts alone for a bit. In my experience, this actually only means resting two or three accounts at a time when I’m arbing (as of course bookie odds are designed to help the bookie profit over time, via the over-round, so usually the majority of accounts end up overdrawn). But what do you do if you are still ahead at a particular bookie over the last week, month and quarter? Well, after kicking yourself for not resting the account earlier, try this…. d) Back-and-lay short-priced selections (between 1.5 and 3.0) until you lose enough money. This approach may sound counter-intuitive (as you will worry that favourites will win), but it is actually a sure-fire way of making losses on your bookmaker account. After all, the bookies make the bulk of their profits by laying favourites, so it shouldn’t be hard to lose to them by blindly backing anything in the required range. Plus, if you’re backing favourites or second favourites, you are going to look like the mug punter they so want you to be. And if your short-priced punt does come home in front, you’re likely to win such small amounts (relative to your stake) that your bookie is likely to let matters run, sure in the knowledge that your mug punter behaviour will soon find you out. Now I know what you are thinking – haven’t we, in step 2, questioned the value of backing-and-laying on account of (a) the odds disparities between the bookies and Betfair, and (b) the Betfair commission issue? Well yes, but Betfair rarely offers long lay prices on favourites. All you do is use a site like Oddschecker, combined with a separate Betfair window, and find back-and-
lay options where the lay odds at Betfair are equal to the backing odds at the bookies. Then lay your horse/team/whatever at Betfair for the same (or lower) odds as those on offer at the bookmakers, for a sum equal to the backing stake. If your selection wins, you will finish level, or possibly even ahead if you got better odds at the bookies. And if it loses, you will be down by the amount of your Betfair commission: typically £2.50 on a £50 stake, which is, I feel, a price worth paying to put the smile back on a long-suffering bookmaker’s face! That said, if you follow the guidance on pages 14 to 20 above, you should even be able to make money from your short-priced arbs. Which in turn makes the whole thing that little bit more pleasurable! e) Avoid moving money into and out of your accounts any more often than is absolutely necessary. I can’t stress this enough. Bookies incur quite significant banking costs (that thankfully they don’t usually pass on to you) if you use bank cards. If they are already having doubts about your account, there is nothing quite like a whole pile of bank fees to tip them over the edge. Just because you don’t see this cost doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter to them. Remember – bookies’ margins are wafer-thin, so naturally they are tracking this stuff. A really good way of getting accounts limited is to open an email about a reload offer, make a debit card deposit, milk the offer, then withdraw all your money again. Please don’t do this! Instead, focus on the long game. f) Use Skrill (formerly Moneybookers) or Paypal to deposit or withdraw. This follows from point 5. Save your bookie bank charges and he will smile on you. Moreover, he will let you make much quicker withdrawals, so your bankroll can be turned over more quickly. So everybody’s happy! g) Use arb-friendly bookies. No article on this subject would be complete without a plug for Pinnacle Sports. This bookie is a punter’s dream. They offer great odds, openly welcome arbers, and, as far as I’m aware, have never closed down a soul. If you don’t believe me, read this! Reward them with your custom (and no, in case you’re wondering, I do not benefit, financially or otherwise, from saying this!). They really are in a class of their own. h) Use a system that allows you to bet at modest stakes. Arbing is all very well but if you are placing £200 bets on League Two football matches in order to drive out £2.70 worth of profit, it won’t be that long before your
bookie limits you (Pinnacle aside). It would be better to place four arbs of £50 across a whole range of bookies, so the risk of unwanted attention is reduced. I developed Lucy’s ArbTrader specifically as a way of widening the gap between the back and lay sides of the arb, to allow you to make enhanced profits at lower stakes. This system will be superseded by the more powerful SkewTrader Pro on 31st March 2012, to deliver even faster trading performance at moderate staking levels. So that’s it. Spread your bets around, using the techniques in this manual, and open lots of bookie accounts. Then adopt an organised approach to bookmaker management. Having an account closed can happen to any of us (sometimes the bookies simply do random things!) but it usually isn’t inevitable. You simply need to plan ahead to minimise the chance of it happening.
A4. 4 Great Staking Plan Secrets If there is one simple thing you can do to get better at betting, it’s to use a robust staking plan. There is no glamour to it, and very few systems providers explain it properly (except occasionally to go a bit mystical about Fibonacci or something similar!). But in my experience, good staking is the bedrock of successful betting. Do it right, and you’re already halfway there. Do it wrong, and you are almost certain to haemorrhage money. Here then are the four rules that I personally follow. There are other approaches but I don’t believe you can go far wrong with these four ideas. 1. When you’re trying out a new system, please use level staking only.
Any decent system can benefit from a good staking plan, but until you’ve proven it’s a decent system, you should be using level stakes. Otherwise the staking plan will distort your results (for better or worse), and cloud the issue (which should simply be – ‘is this system any good?’). 2. There is one exception to rule 1. I will allow myself to adopt a level
liability approach for laying systems that permit high prices (i.e. laying to SP), but only as a risk mitigation strategy (which is a fancy way of admitting to cowardice). Like the bookies, I’m scared to death of the Foinavon effect (i.e. getting torched by some runaway longshot), but unlike them, I am unable to persuade mug punters to take lousy odds from me on rank outsiders. So SP laying it sometimes has to be. But even then, you should keep records of what would have happened if you’d used level stakes. I have switched to using a wonderful new spreadsheet (produced by regular site contributor Chris!) to test ZeroHype’s Laying service, precisely because it allows us to track to both fixed liabilities and fixed stakes. 3. Once you have a great system, use ratcheted staking.
This means betting with a set percentage of your bank, in such a way that your stakes grow gradually as your bank balance rises. For a low-risk system (e.g. betting at short prices), 5% is an acceptable figure. For higher risk methods, you may wish to consider 3%, or even 2%. The most important points though are that the chosen percentage should: •
“feel right” – i.e. you don’t get too down if you lose, because you know you have a winning system that will come right in the end
• be a figure you decide on in the morning then stick to all day. Don’t try working it out on the fly as you’ll only get confused. Ratcheted staking also protects your bank balance if you start to lose, by making it last longer. A 5% ratcheted stake might sound a lot, but it lasts a lot longer than the 20 bets that first come to mind. In fact, after 50 straight losing bets on a £100
bank, you would still have a little money left (£7.69, assuming 1 bet per day). Such is the joy of exponential mathematics! (do I need to get out more!?) You may be tempted, during a dry spell, to keep on going with the same stakes (a flat £5, in my example) in order to accelerate a recovery, but this is seriously flawed thinking. Be professional and stick to your percentage. If you have a sound system, then it will only be a matter of time before things improve, and your bank starts to climb again. And of course when you do start to make progress, ratcheting benefits from the miracle of exponential mathematics when going upwards too, so that the results can be extraordinary. ◦ I digress slightly, but I love the old ‘wheat on the chessboard problem’, which, paraphrasing Wikipedia, illustrates this point quite wonderfully: When the creator of the game of chess showed his invention to the ruler of the country, the ruler was so pleased that he gave the inventor the right to name his prize for the invention. The man, who was very wise, asked the king this: that for the first square of the chess board, he would receive one grain of wheat, two for the second one, four on the third one, and so forth, doubling the amount each time. The ruler, arithmetically unaware, quickly accepted the inventor’s offer, even getting offended by his perceived notion that the inventor was asking for such a low price, and ordered the treasurer to count and hand over the wheat to the inventor. However, when the treasurer took more than a week to calculate the amount of wheat, the ruler asked him for a reason for his tardiness. The treasurer then gave him the result of the calculation, and explained that it would be impossible to give the inventor the reward. The ruler then, to get back at the inventor who tried to outsmart him, cut off the inventor’s head to discourage such trickery! On the entire chessboard there would be 264−1 = 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 grains of rice, weighing 461,168,602,000 metric tons, which would be a heap of rice larger than Mount Everest. This is around 1,000 times the global production of rice in 2010 (464,000,000 metric tons). Nowadays of course, you are more likely to find that your account is simply closed by your bookie without the need for decapitation, but it is still a problem that a sensible staking plan can easily leave you with… so do read section A3 above on 8 ways to stop your bookie from closing you down. 4. Never chase losses.
It really is the fastest way to the poor house. Everyone knows this deep down, but somehow it’s easy to forget when things are going against you. Why do so many people do it? Because they keep losing, and they want a quick way out, that’s why! Hence the popularity of systems like Fancy Fillies, which has a cute name, but is little more than a well-packaged, loss-chasing plan.
I ditched the Fancy Fillies system after a handful of bets on account of its suicidal approach to staking. This sort of stuff should be avoided at all costs. And that’s all there is to it – you just need to implement and make it happen!
8.
Conclusion
This brings to an end my guide on how to make £1000/month from betting systems. I trust I've convinced you that it represents a very realistic target. Taking each of our systems in turn, we arrived at the following portfolio: • Bonus Bagging (inc. reloads) - £250 / month • DIY Arbitrage - £300 / month • Reloads - £NIL / month (as I have counted this profit within the Bonus Bagging total) • Bookie Shop Arbing (£40 / month) • Sportspunter.com (£240 / month) • Lucy's Light Trading (£200 / month) • Amended Lay the Draw System (£200 / month) In total, I make that £1230 per month, which clearly gives us scope for poor performance on certain systems, whilst still achieving our overall target of £1000 / month profit. It also provides you several options from which you can choose, according to your personality type. Please feel free to share this guide with your friends and family. As long as you acknowledge its source (i.e. me!) and do not modify it in any way, then I have no problem with it being issued to any interested punter. Any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to contact me at:
[email protected] Happy punting! love Lucy xxx
