As always if you need a reminder of the reasons and rules behind this challenge have a read of the about me page. To see last month’s matched betting profit visit March’s results post here. If you’ve landed here by mistake and have no idea what I’m talking about head over to either of Matched betting or Advantage Play explainer pages.
Well April came and went so fast I felt like I was running out of time pretty much from the get-go. I had to attend a conference in the second week which really hampered my efforts, and as you can see from the graph it was a real slog just to get to £100 pounds!
April’s Matched Betting Profits
It seems April was also a month of firsts. This is my lowest ever monthly total in the £500 to £5000 matched betting challenge and it is also the very first time I have failed to meet my £416.67 target (although I didn’t miss it by much!). However, this is actually one of the months I am proudest of. Why? Because at the 26th of April with 4 days to go (April is a 30 day remember, as are June, September and November just in case you forgot 😜) I was staring at £197.96 profit. A truly disastrous month.
However, I managed to have an un-interrupted (apart from the usual work day) 4-day marathon push to do every offer I could which returned a whopping £201.92 in 4 days. To put that in perspective, that’s better than the 4 day Cheltenham Festival was for me last month! It just goes to show, “it ain’t ever over till it’s over!”.
Increase In Profits From Casino Offers
Going into the profit breakdown advantage play accounted for £261.42 of my matched betting profit. That represents a monumental increase, but I am not surprised because since William Hill have been offering their “Wager £5 for £5 bonus” I have been cleaning up using my roulette strategy. If you want to read up on this strategy (it’s something I’m still experimenting with and tweaking), you’ll find it in the Advantage Play section of this website.
My biggest slot win was £19.60 from a very simple wager £10 at Sky Casino for 5 free spins on any Batman slot. I was £1 up after wagering and decided to go for the “Batman vs Catwoman Cash” slot. A few spins later I ended up cashing in on a huge bonus round winning £18ish off a 20p spin. I’m guessing it must be a medium to high variance slot with that kind of win, but you can never complain when you are on the right side of mother variance!
As I mentioned before it really was a month of firsts, it was my highest ever advantage play amount AND it was the first time it had accounted for more of my profit than traditional sports matched betting had. Will this trend continue?
Total Profit: £399.88 Average Transaction Value: £3.28 Days Active: 24
Cumulative Percentage of Overall Target: 39.91%
Cumulative Profit: £1995.58
Under/Over Monthly Target: – £16.79
Sports Matched Betting Profit Slumps
I’m not sure to be honest, I think for some reason I got lazy on the sports offers this month, or perhaps they just weren’t as good as they were in preceding months. I feel the bookmakers are all preparing for some insane offers during the imminent world cup. Hopefully they are nice and tasty so all of us matched bettors can make some very appetising profits!
There wasn’t particularly anything exotic on the sports side just my usual haunts, bet X get X, price boosts, bet and spin offers (which are getting progressively worse) and anything else that maximise my profit/time ratio.
Something that has really helped this month and going forward is the stonking deal Oddsmonkey have put together with Smarkets. If you continually bet through the Oddsmonkey integration once every 30 days you are entitled to 0% commission on your Smarkets account until…wait for it…15th January 2019!!! Absolutely nuts 💥!
Of course for price boosts, which have become one of the biggest staple for matched betting after the decline of bet X get X offers, 0% commission is a god send. It significantly increases profits, with the boosts that allow larger stakes returning a £4-£5 difference in profit, just for using a different exchange.
Needless to say make sure you get signed up to Oddsmonkey Premium, watch their video on how to set up Smarkets integration, place a lay bet through the integration and then hey presto 30 days of 0% commission! Then it’s just a case of rinse and repeat until January 2019.
Smarkets Mounts Serious Challenge To Betfair
This really is game-changing as it makes the Betfair commission (5%) look incredibly steep and us matched bettors are already starting to witness the shift in liquidity. Just go and look for yourself at British horse races, Smarkets now (apart from the major festivals) has more money traded on the horses than Betfair (until all the BF traders pile in 5 minutes from the off).
Ok, obviously this isn’t the case for every sport (although football has seen a similar shift in liquidity) but Smarkets is, for the first time ever, giving Betfair a genuine challenge to its previous betting exchange market dominance. What is also interesting is that Smarkets is looking to release the API for its exchange in late 2018 which will surely tempt Betfair traders over and squeeze Betfair even more. I will certainly monitor the situation with interest.
As an aside, I think Betfair must have noticed I’ve all but emptied my account as now I’ve been invited to become a Betfair “Select” customer. Hopefully, they will give me some nice offers I will be able to write about in next month’s profit report.
Looking forward to May
So we move on to May and because I’m writing this profit report later than usual I can already tell you that I’ve already made a much better start and I’m already just shy of the £150 mark. Hopefully this momentum stays with me so I can record another £500+ month. We shall see in June’s report!