Pocket some money with Matched Betting ~ How do you make money from Matched Betting?! - Part 2

So last time we talked about how to back a bet at a bookie. Now we are going to look at laying an event, odds and how to make money from this using the freebets bookies offer us.

So we said that you could back Man U at odds of 2.00 with £10 to make £20. This would be £10 returned of your money (1 part of 2) and your £10 winnings (the second part of the odds of 2).

The same works on higher odds say backing £10 at 5.0 - You get £10 back (1 part of 5) and then £40 winnings (4 parts of the odds of 5).

If we are also going to lay this off at the exchange we really want to be looking at close LOW odds for a qualifying first bet. This is when the bookie says something like bet £10 of your own money then get a £10 free bet. Bookies also often have minimum odds to use either on the qualifying (your own money bet) or on the free bet. Say this is bet £10 at minimum odds of 2.00 to get a £10 freebet.

If we bet £10 at 2.00 we get a return of £20 at the bookie. So we don't lose our money if the bet doesn't win here we go over to the exchange to lay a bet. This is saying that this bet will not win or that it will draw - thus meaning it hasn't won at the bookie. We would want to look for low odds around 2.04 or below.

So lets say we have found we can lay at 2.04. We have something here called a lay stake. This is the money that we want to win back from the exchange if the bet loses (to even out the loss at the bookie).  It would win at the exchange as a draw/loss where we are laying it down (betting for it) that it will loss.

We work out our lay stake by using a calculator online or in a spreadsheet. This can be also be done manually. Whilst it is ok to use a calculator for speed - and you 100% will ... I feel it is also good to have a back ground grasp of the maths of HOW things are calculated and you know what all the figures mean in the spreadsheets and how to get to those figures! The odds change your return on a bet paid out at the exchange. The higher the odds difference between your back and lay the less money you will receive back. So always look for close odds. Ideally you want to look for a 95% return on a qualifying bet and 80% from a SNR free bet. A lay of £10 at 2.00 returns back £10.00 When you lay you essentially say I want £10 if my bet wins at the exchange (as a loss/draw over all). However if you don't win this £10 that you want from the exchange then you will pay out to the exchange. The amount you payout is called a liability or lay risk. You are acting as a bookmaker for someone elses back bet on the exchange. So you pay out odds X stake. However the stake was someone elses in the first place so you include this as a -1. This is how you work out your lay risk manually.

So say it is £10 at odds of 4 (ignoring the commission at this stage)

If your backing at the bookie you risk £10 to make a profit of £30.
Profit = £10 x (4 -1)

If you are laying you risk £30 to make a profit of £10.

So liability at the exchange would be £30

This is worked out by: Lay Stake X (Lay odds -1) = Liability or Lay Risk

(lay odds of 4 - 1 = 3) = £30

So this is the amount of money we need to have in the exchange to cover the bet incase we lose it and it wins at the bookmaker.

How do we work out our lay stake??? Lets pretend our exchange has a commission of 5%.
We work this out by also factoring in the exchange commission. This is how they make their money. If you win a bet you pay a certain amount of commission on it. The most common exchange is called Betfair. The commission here is 5%. There are other such as Smarkets and Matchbook who charge around 2/3% commission but also offer 0% free offers from time to time.

The amount we need to stake here is worked out thus:

Back odds / (Lay odds – Exchange commission) X Back stake = Lay stake

4.00 / 4 - 0.0.5 (for the 5%) * X 10 = £10.126 (round up to 13)

* = 1.012


This is all quite complex and will take a fair few reads to get your head round it! As I say it's not essential as there are calculators that will work this out for you when you are "live". However it helps to give you a background and to know where all your money is going and why!

I will give a quick low down on the next article on how the freebet works now you have had an introduction to the back and lay betting.