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 April’s results post here.
Well I think I gave myself the “commentator’s curse” with the last few words of my last profit report. As you can see I raced up to £150 and then was never really able to build on my good start.
I’ve carried on my trend of posting my worst ever full-month’s profits since I began matched betting. I took some time off as well. I had a full four days off without so much as a price boost on the second bank holiday which is that long flat-ish line you can see towards the end of the graph.
I was on holiday in Wales with family and I just couldn’t get any time to myself to get my laptop out. I need to master doing matched betting on the move. I really wish Oddsmonkey had an app.
I feel as more and more people spend time on their mobiles this will be a no-brainer for them. Let’s hope it’s in the pipeline.
Having said all that, I find their mobile site is brilliant compared to lots of other sites I use on a daily basis. No horrible collapsing “burger menus” where it’s impossible to find anything, so hat’s off to their website developers there.
Anyway, getting back on topic, let’s have a look at where I made my pathetic amount of money this month!
Matched Betting Profit Breakdown
Having a scan through my excel spreadsheet I can see advantage play offers accounted for £235.06 of my profit. As a percentage that’s 61%, which I found astounding. I think that confirms two of my suspicions about this month.
The first of which was that sports offers really dipped because of that small football tournament starting in Russia this month.
Bookies have had loads of fantastic offers on for the World Cup but the problem is I can’t put those profits into May because I don’t get all those free bets I’ve qualified for until the 14th June onwards. Meaning I’ve just been racking up qualifying losses without anything to show for it…yet.
The next, and slightly more worrying, reason for a dip in profits from sports is sheer and utter laziness. I’ve had a look back over what I was doing during my bumper start to the year when I built up a big lead in this challenge and the answer seems pretty clear, working harder!
I thought it was odd that I couldn’t even remember the last time I logged into Betfred, who used to be one of my go-to bookmakers for offers. The truth is that I’ve just seen their (and other bookmakers) offers as too much hassle for the reward e.g. “Bet £10 get £5 free bet in play etc.” when it’s those £3.50-£4 profit offers that slowly but surely rack up come the end of the month.
When you think about it if I did just one of those offers a day (30 x £4) that’s £120 I’ve been missing out on, just because I simply can’t be arsed.
Well it’s time to get arsed! (That sounded better in my head than written down)
Total Profit: £386.09 Average Transaction Value: £2.78 Days Active: 24
Cumulative Percentage of Overall Target: 47.63%
Cumulative Profit: £2,381.67
Under/Over Monthly Target: -£30.58
Casino Offers
In terms of highlights, I won a tasty £22 on a £5 deposit match on Ruby Walsh at Betfair’s Arcade. I was once more heavily reliant on roulette offers (the William Hill daily wager £5 for £5 has now finished 😢), winning anywhere from £13 to £40 using my usual strategy.
But it was more a month of lowlights. I got stung badly on two simple “Wager £20 for £5 free bet” offers. One at Paddy Power and one at Sky Vegas.
After wagering a combined £40 I was only left with £11 😳, I’ve never had such a bad run of spins on an offer.
I used King Kong Cash and Wild Gambler respectively which are usually kind slots, but evil on this occasion. Of course it’s not uncommon to end up down on these offers but not to that extent!
I also tried a low-risk “Wager £10 for 10 free spins” offer on a slot called “Astro Babes”.
F**k me. It was brutal.
I should have known better with the minimum spin value being £1 that this was going to be a high variance slot, but if you don’t buy a ticket you never win the lottery so hey ho. I spun my 10 x £1…I won 40p.
So add that £9.60 loss to those above and I’m looking at a loss of £38.11 over the space of just three small low-risk offers.
Lady variance can certainly be a b*tch when she wants to be.
Imagine if I had only broken even (never mind winning anything) on those offers, I would have been comfortably over target for the month!
Matched Betting The World Cup
So I move on battered and bruised to June, and with it, the start of the biggest sporting tournament in the world.
I haven’t done many of the qualifying bets yet because they will tie up my exchange for a long time because they are often on the “outright” markets. But the time is fast approaching and I particularly like the William Hill offer of a fiver every time your team wins and every time your pick for golden boot scores.
I’ll back one of the favourites and hope they get to the quarters/semis. My hope I £25 in free bets when all said and done. I’m sure there will also be all manner of price boosts every day so it will be a time to refocus and get my head down!
I will also be ramping up my efforts on the sports side. As mentioned above, there will be no offer too small. Profit is profit. Even if it takes me 10 mins for a £5 free bet. That’s still nearly £30 an hour. Not too shabby.
See you all in July, when England are hopefully still in with some kind of chance of progressing further! See June’s results here.