As always, if you’ve landed here and don’t know what matched betting or advantage play is, you may want to head to the Matched Betting and Advantage Play explainer pages.Secondly you might find my previous post useful on what you’ll need to start matched betting.
This post will go into a real life example of a sign up offer to show you exactly how matched betting works in practice. In this step-by-step matched betting guide we will be using the sign up offer of the biggest players in the UK gambling industry – William Hill.
Before we start you will need:
- To head to the William Hill website here (you should have a pop up prompting the sign up offer).
- An Oddsmonkey Premium membership (if you haven’t got one sign up here).
- An account with an Exchange such as Betfair or Smarkets (if you haven’t got one you’ll need to set one up)
Matched Betting Guide – Step-By-Step
Now we’ve got everything let’s go ahead and make a start on this (hopefully) easy to follow matched betting guide. Upon entering the William Hill website, you should get the following pop up (or something similar):
Now click on the “join now” button (don’t worry if you didn’t get the pop up, just click “Join Now” button in the top right-hand corner). Start filling in your details on their registration form. MAKE SURE YOU USE THE PROMO CODE “C30” in the promotional codes box. (note: this code may change over time, ALWAYS check on Oddsmonkey what the latest code is).
Deposit into your account using your bank card (either debit or credit). I would personally advise that you deposit more than £10, as by depositing the exact amount required for the sign up offer may arouse their suspicions to your matched betting activity.
Once you’ve signed up with the promo code, change your odds from fractional to decimal using the drop down button towards the top on the right hand side of the screen.
Qualifying Bet
Now we need to go to Oddsmonkey and use the Oddsmatcher tool to find a suitable matched betting opportunity setting the filter to show results only from William Hill and only from the Betfair exchange (use whichever exchange you have). We must make sure that the odds are over 1.5 to qualify for the £30 free bet.
Once you have found a close match head to the Oddsmonkey matched betting calculator (one below the Oddsmatcher above). Make sure it is set on “Normal” mode at the top. Enter your stakes and adjust your exchange commission accordingly to find out your ideal lay stakes:
As you can see my qualifying loss is going to 40p no matter what the outcome. Now it is time for us to place the bets at the bookmaker and the exchange respectively. Sometimes you will given the option to “boost” the odds on this bet.
It may be best to avoid using it on this first bet as it may break the qualifying terms and conditions (read them at your own leisure). You may well be able to get away with the boost, it’s just something I wouldn’t recommend on your very first bet with them as they are such a valuable account to have in your matched betting arsenal.
In this case I’m betting on the horse Midnitemudcrabs (what a stonker of a name!) The ideal lay stake has been calculated as 10.10 so that is what I place for a liability of £40.40 (note: I had already placed the bet I entered it again to show you as an example hence the cash out bar, the liability of £80.60 and the reduced odds of 4.9 being available).
Now we have completed the qualifying for the free bets and we can move on to the second half of this matched betting guide, still with us?
Good. Now time to make some money!
Maximising Profit From The Free Bet
Immediately after you place the bet at William Hill, there should be 3 x £10 waiting for us which will reflect in a dropdown box when we add anything to our bet slip. So it’s time to head back to the Oddsmatcher (see above) but this time on our filter we want to increase the minimum odds to 5 and we want to rank our results by SNR% (Stake Not Returned). To do this simply click on the SNR% percentage button and it will rank them in order of the stake returned.
Once you’ve found a suitable opportunity head back over to the matched betting calculator and change the format in the top drop down to “Free Bet SNR” and enter your stakes. Remember despite it is 3 separate £10 free bets you can re-use your selection on the same bet.
As we can see I will make either £24.89 of £24.90 regardless of the outcome. Now it is time to place the bets and release our risk free and tax free profit. I re-used my selection until I’ve used up my £30 (3 x £10).
I then placed the ideal lay stake at the exchange.
Wait for both bets to settle (in my case the exchange side won) and hey presto we are the best part of £25 richer for 5-10mins work. That’s an hourly rate of £150! Not too shabby.
Conclusion
Hope you enjoyed reading this matched betting guide, if you have any more questions stick them in the comments section below and I do my best to answer your query. Meanwhile you might want to head back to matched betting section of this site to get more help, guides and opinions on the world of matched betting.
You may find my guides on avoiding gubbings and how to do price boosts useful.