If for some reason you’ve landed here by mistake and want to know more about matched betting then head to my explainer page here.
As you are all probably aware by now us matched bettors make the majority of our money from taking some kind of free bet/bonus from the bookmaker and laying that free money at a betting exchange to guarantee profit from that gift provided for us.
However, even if the majority of those free bets lose, the bookmaker is providing us with that value free of charge (in the hope they’ll make it all back and then some!), so if we continually take this value from them and decide not to take up their terrible value odds then unfortunately they will eventually stop giving you freebies! This is known in the industry as getting “gubbed”.
What does getting “gubbed” actually mean?
Getting “gubbed” is actually a very simple process. The bookmaker in question will simply write to you (email) to let you know that they shall be restricting any/all promotions to your account for the foreseeable future (usually forever).
Some bookmakers will mark your account as gubbed without actually having the politeness to make you aware they are doing this. You may find out by noticing that suddenly offers have disappeared from your view on bookmaker websites, or by chasing up a free bet only for the live chat agent to say you’ve been restricted from their promotions. This is known in the industry as a “stealth gubbing”. This is what happened to me when I had my Betway account gubbed (they gub absolutely everyone by the way, so make hay while the sun shines!).
Once you are gubbed with a bookmaker you will really struggle to make much money out of them because at the same time they tend to also stake restrict you, making arbitrage betting the account to death even more difficult. If they stake restrict you before you are gubbed it is likely that you are on thin ice and these stake restrictions are rarely (if ever) lifted.
How to avoid getting gubbed
Although by matched betting’s very nature there is an inevitability of getting gubbed by most (in some cases all) bookmakers there are steps that we can take to minimise the chances of this happening and prolong the health of our bookmaker accounts.
I have taken a slightly different approach to what you will see on other matched betting websites and I have found it is working really well for me personally. I have been matched betting since November 2017 and I have only lost two accounts which was the aforementioned b**tards at Betway (😡) and Sky Bet.
How I’ve managed to keep all of my accounts
Never take an “Arb”
I mean this is common sense and almost goes without saying. We take enough value from the bookmaker with the abuse of free bets and bonuses, however arbing hurts them even more.
Bookmakers make their money on something called an overround.
It’s a tad complicated so I won’t go into detail here but just think of it as their profit margin, it’s the guaranteed profit they make regardless of the outcome of a sporting event (usually between 2-5%).
Therefore, if their odds are priced too high for a particular market they lose bucket loads of cash in lost profits because the market is no longer rounded in their favour. When people arb (arbitrage bet) that overpriced market they not only miss out profits they also begin to lose money (before they readjust their prices).
It’s a massive job to monitor the prices on the exchanges and react accordingly making sure their prices are always lower. Sometimes some of the prices will slip through the net and leave huge arbitrage opportunities.
So it goes without saying if the odds of the bookmaker are higher than the exchange do not take that match. A lot of the pricing is managed by bots and software programs and if you take an arb it will immediately flag your account. It is then up to a trader to decide whether it was just a coincidence or there is a pattern of arbitrage abuse.
What’s worse is if they thinking you are consistently arbing they won’t just restrict your promotions they will shut down your account completely. In some cases, one large arb with a lot of funds behind it will be enough to see this happen to you. Just don’t take the risk.
Be careful where you place your lay
As part of the ongoing amalgamations of the companies in the betting industry there are now bookmakers who own exchanges and vice-versa.
For instance, if you were completing an offer for Paddy Power by laying your bet at the Betfair Exchange you could see yourself in a bit of trouble since they will be sharing account information with each other.
If they find out that you are laying your back bets they are sure to restrict you from promotions. Make sure you use Smarkets, Matchbook or Betdaq to lay any Paddy Power promotions.
Ladbrokes own the Betdaq betting exchange so make sure to use another exchange such as Betfair or Smarkets for laying off bets with them. Smarkets is always your safest place to lay as they are the best of the remaining independent exchanges.
Be consistent and do not bet on obscure markets
Again this comes under the title of common sense.
When completing offers think about how your activity looks to a trader sat in the office of the bookmaker. If you are betting on the second division of Swedish football because you’ve found a really close match to minimise your qualifying loss or maximise the profit from a free bet, how do you think that looks?
It is best to stick to the major leagues when completing any offers on football.
Horse racing, for me, is a bit different. Some people advise to stay clear of mid-week horse racing but I disagree. I think it’s all about consistency. If you set up your account and from the start bet on the horses, then I don’t think it’s a problem. You can often get closer matches on the nags as the odds fluctuate so much.
Let’s also be honest here, most bookmaker offers revolve around horses so you will have to touch them sooner or later. As I said before just be consistent, don’t bet on the odd horse every now and again when the odds are close. Use them for qualifying bets too (do these a few hours before a race as the odds in the last 20 minutes can get a bit hectic!).
This goes for any other sport really. Even punters have their market niches. So if you want to bet on tennis, then consistently complete your offers using tennis (hard to do as odds are often so low).
If you have been consistently hitting the horses and football and then cross over to tennis because there is an unbelievable offer on, how do you think that will look to a trader?
A lot of people have come unstuck recently at Sunbets for smashing their darts offers and then never touching them in between, resulting in the inevitable gubbing. So if you know you are going to target a particular offer with a particular bookmaker, make sure you use that sport for standard backing and laying to build your betting profile as someone who follows that particular sport.
Age your accounts
When I started matched betting I already had a Sky Bet and Bet365 account, both of which I set up doing my university days. I had these accounts for roughly 5 years before starting to abuse their promotions and I haven’t seen so much as a stake restriction.
I think in the early days of your account you are watched more closely for what you bet on and how frequently you bet, probably more for marketing purposes than anything else. But that extra scrutiny will flag up any strange betting patterns straight away.
I think because I hadn’t bet anything in years at these bookmakers, my accounts must have been tossed aside somewhere into a pile labelled “lost cause”.
Now I can use and abuse promotions with seemingly a lack of care on their side. I often hit the Sky price boosts twice and during the football season that be 2/3 a week meaning 6 bets on deliberate arbs.
I have opened accounts with lesser bookmakers such as Sunbets, 188Bet and a few others with the deliberate purpose of doing the same thing.
I don’t touch them in the hope that I get chucked into a pile of accounts that warrant no investigation whatsoever and so when I lose other bigger bookmakers I can hopefully turn to them to recoup some of my lost profits.
Avoid Withdrawing
I think this is a massive one that never seems to get talked about. I rarely withdraw money from a bookmaker. I’ve been doing this for over 8 months now and I can count on my fingers the amount of times I have withdrawn.
Why is this important? Well if you look at your screen at the withdrawal screen it will often say something in small print along the lines of “your withdrawal will be processed with all the necessary security checks and your transactions will be monitored for any suspicious betting activity.” Or words to that effect.
In other words, we will check that you are not laundering money and that you not matched betting/arbing us.
If you never withdraw you don’t draw any of that attention to yourself.
The only times I have ever withdrawn are because a very long odds horse has won and completely wiped out my exchange and because I don’t have the biggest bankroll in the world I have to withdraw my profits (usually £400+) to get it back into the exchange.
Of course I always make sure to leave hundreds of pounds in there to make them aware I will still be spending my hard-earned with them!
When I build up a big balance I just find close matches and bet it back into the exchange. Any qualifying loss I take I see as a little tax on my profits.
This only seems to happen to me with William Hill (flash odds horses seem to win fairly often) and luckily they have a boost token with a max bet of £200. So you can reduce your balance with a close match boosted to create a small arb (this is fine as it’s not a “true” arb) and end up in profit whilst refilling your exchange account!
Hit Their Casinos
If you think bookmakers make too much money, you don’t want to look at how much they make from their casinos!
This is a huge proportion of their profits because the games have much larger inherent edges built into them.
So if you start putting money through the casino/live casino/vegas/bingo arm of their operation they are likely to keep you hanging around since there is the chance they can make even more money off you.
I would never “mug spin” or anything similar. You can just complete their offers and treat it as advantage play, a lot of them will have positive EV anyway. With a bit of luck you will end up in profit after your wagering.
Why I don’t bother with “Mug Betting”
Some matched betting sites preach that mug betting is a tried and trusted method of prolonging your accounts. The idea is that you place several “normal” bets that aren’t anything to do with offers or free bets in the hope that you will through bookmakers’ monitoring software and traders off the scent.
I’m sorry but I think that is total nonsense.
Just think about it for a second, if you hit every single offer a bookmaker is offering it won’t matter how many accumulators or “mug” bets you do. Any trader worth their salt will still know you’re hitting the offers as much as you can. Normal punters sometimes get gubbed too because they like a particular offer too much.
I haven’t placed a single mug bet in the entire time I’ve been matched betting and I’ve still got all of my accounts.
If you’ve read between the lines above, you’ll notice that I think the art of keeping your accounts is not drawing any attention to yourself so a trader never even looks at your betting profile.
Having old accounts, never withdrawing, and never taking an arb to flag yourself are key components to keeping your account “hidden” amongst the thousands of other punters.
Other factors that may or may not prolong your accounts
Blocking IE Snare
This is a piece of software bookies try on stick on your computer as an “anti-fraud” measure. It tracks your web traffic and tries to see which other sites you have been visiting. Obviously if they can see you have been visiting Oddsmonkey or any other matched betting sites such as this one then you are going to get hit with the gub-stick.
It’s a simple process to stop them putting it on, I’m not going to go into detail here as it’s different for Windows and Mac. Just google “How to block IE Snare on (your device) and you’ll learn how to do it no time.
Why this might not be beneficial? Well to be honest IE snare is just one of hundreds of software programs that do the same thing, so blocking just one of them probably isn’t worth it. But it can’t harm you, so just take 5 minutes to do it and that’s one more thing ticked off the list.
Matched Betting On Mobile Devices
There are two elements to this. Firstly, download all of the bookies apps and use them when you can.
Why? Because that is very punterish behaviour. Traditional punters often bet on the move (or down at the local pub) and so place bets on mobile will demonstrate you like a flutter on the go and get you in the bookies’ good books.
Secondly, when using mobile data on your phone you are “sandboxed” as the IP address will keep changing. They will be able to glean much less information from you as you aren’t using a Wifi connection provided by an ISP (Internet Service Provider). This will prevent them from putting things like IE Snare on to your mobile device.
Incognito/Private Browsing Mode
If you have to do matched betting on your laptop/desktop, then it probably won’t hurt to do your betting activity on private or incognito mode on your browser.
It stops them being able to place cookies on your computer, again tracking where you go and what you do off their site. It probably makes very little difference if you’ve taken the precautions above.
But again, it can’t hurt you, so just do it.
Avoid using SafeURL on Oddsmonkey
I never click the links that are placed directly on the Oddsmonkey site through to the bookmaker site.
Even though they are routed through the SafeURL software it just makes more sense to copy and paste the link straight into your private browser.
What difference will it make?
Well in their website back-end it will state you are “direct” traffic as in you typed the exact web address in to get to their site. If you go through SafeURL it will say “unknown” or something to that effect.
Will that make a difference in the grand scheme of things?
Perhaps not, but if I was the bookie I would be more comfortable with a punter who I can accurately say where they have come from, as opposed to someone who they have no clue and they know matched betting sites use this cloaking technology.
Just think, would a normal punter use SafeURL to get to website?
Nope.
Can you ever be “un-gubbed”?
You sometimes see people on the Oddsmonkey forums saying they managed to ungub themselves by place a few non-offer bets here and there. But they don’t tend to last very long, as soon as they start hitting the offers again it’s back to square one.
The only time you seem to be able to get fully un-gubbed is when a bookmaker completely changes its website (Paddy Power) or when a betting company buys another (GVC acquiring Lads and Coral) and the records seem to get a bit messed up, allowing you to get back on the offers.
But alas, it seems that they do eventually get round to updating their records and quite quickly their gubbing is re-applied.
Conclusion
When (yes when, not if) you receive your first gubbing you can’t help but feel gutted or like those times you got a massive telling off from your teacher at school in front of everyone (just me? ).
But as that feeling subsides you will start to feel emboldened and wear the gubbing as a badge of honour.
You will see Oddsmonkey members in the forums state how many gubbings they have in their signatures; it almost becomes a bit of a competition. The more gubbings you have the more experienced you are!
Also, getting gubbed in the first place shows you that are doing something right, don’t forget that!
Unfortunately, there is an inevitability about it all.
When you start matched betting you are immediately raging against the dying of the light; continuing to rack up as much profit as you can before you lose accounts and then constantly battling to eek every last penny before you lose all the big accounts.
If you accept from the start that this won’t last forever, then you will go into this adventure with the right mind-set. Make hay whilst the sun shines!