The question of what is the easiest sport to predict is a tough one to answer. Each sport has certain markets and match-ups which can make it easy to predict the outcome.  

It is also perhaps more pertinent to ask: “what sport can deliver the best return on investment (ROI)?” as that is more important than simply whether you can guess the result. For example, anyone could guess that Manchester City are likely to beat Watford at home at odds of 1.10, but would that make you any profit in the long run? 

What we should be interested in are issues such as: what sport tends to have the best over-rounds (or value for the punter), the best liquidity and the most opportunities to profit. 

We’ll have a look at these questions below. 

 

Are Any Sports More “Predictable” Than Others? 

In essence it shouldn’t be the case that any sport is inherently more “predictable” than others. Betting markets are essentially very efficient so if you are betting at odds of 2.0, then regardless of the sport, the outcome will happen 50% of the time over the long run, or if the odds are 3.0 it will happen 33% of the time and so on. 

Some sports may have more instances – and markets – that throw up very short favourites however. Football often has odds-on favourites, such as teams like Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester City playing at home against lower-table teams. Or markets like over 1.5 goals where odds are often in the 1.10-1.20 range. 

Tennis also has lots of odds-on favourites, such as Djokovic and Nadal in the early rounds of grand slams, when their odds can often be as low as 1.01 or 1.02. 

So in simple terms, these sports may be “easier to predict” than sports like horse racing and golf, where the favourite is usually odds-against and in the case of golf, often over 10/1. 

If your aim then is simply to find the sport that gives you a high number of wins, then football and tennis would be a good way to go. 

This might not necessarily provide you with what really matters though: profit. 

We’ll take a look now at the other factors you should be looking at when choosing what sport to bet on. 

 

Which Sports Offer the Best Return on Investment?

Having reviewed hundreds of betting services here at Honest Betting Review across a range of different sports, we have developed a good idea of which sports offer a good return on investment. 

Return on investment (ROI) – in case you aren’t familiar with the term – means how much you would receive back for a certain amount invested. So for example a tipster with a 20% ROI would mean they had produced a $20 profit for every $100 invested. 

Interestingly, when we look at those sports with the best ROI, it tends to be ones that aren’t always the easiest to predict – such as horse racing and golf. 

Some of the best horse racing tipsters can achieve returns on investment of over 20%. For example, tipsters such as Hanbury Racing and Loves Racing have achieved long-term ROIs of over 25%, which is extremely impressive.

At the same time, some golf tipsters like the Golf Insider and Bookie Insiders have achieved even more impressive returns of over 30% ROI. 

On the other hand, finding a football or tennis tipster with a long-term ROI of over 10% can be quite challenging. It is normally considered a good performance to have achieved an ROI of above 5% in these sports. 

This shows it is important not to overlook sports that on the face of it are harder to predict, because they can offer better returns than those that are easy to predict.  

 

What Sports Offer the Best Value for Punters? 

Another way to look at it is in terms of which sports offer the best value for punters. This can be seen by looking at the “over-round” – or in other words, the edge that the bookies give themselves over a punter in a betting market.

The over-round is in effect how much profit a bookie can expect to make on a market. It is worked out by adding together the percentage chance implied by the odds. So if the over-round is 105% for example, the bookie would expect to make 5% profit from the market. If the over-round is 110%, they would expect to make 10% profit and so on. 

Typically, the higher the number of outcomes in a market, the bigger the bookies’ over-round tends to be. 

Once again, this isn’t good news for sports like horse racing and golf. An analysis by the website Golf Forecast found that the average bookies’ margin in golf outright markets is a huge 42.5%! That is obviously terrible value for the punter. 

Horse racing can be equally bad at times, with big races like the Grand National having over-rounds of 150% or 160%! More normal races typically have over-rounds of 20-30%, which aren’t good value either from the punter’s point of view.

Sports like football and tennis, with just two or three outcomes, tend to have much lower over-rounds. A typical football match might have an over-round of 110%, whilst markets with only two outcomes like Asian handicaps and over/under 2.5 goals tend to have over-rounds of around 105%. 

Tennis matches can often have even lower over-rounds of 102-103%, as can American sports in markets such as points bets and handicaps.

On the basis of over-rounds it would be better therefore to stick to sports like football, tennis and American sports. The bookies over-round in these sports is lower, meaning their advantage over you is smaller. 

 

Explaining the High Over-round Paradox

Given the above, you may be wondering why it is that tipsters in sports like golf and horse racing can achieve much better returns on investment when they face these much worse over-rounds than in other sports. They have to overcome a seemingly huge disadvantage against the bookies.

The reason for this is whilst the bookies overall advantage in a betting market may be large, they can still mis-price individual selections within that market. A horse might be priced at 20/1 for example when its odds should actually be 12/1. It is finding these “errors” that allows tipsters to make such a substantial return. 

It also means that with prices in golf and horse racing being so much bigger – with prices going over 100/1 for some selections, the potential difference between the bookies’ odds and what the true odds should be can be much greater than in sports like football and tennis. 

If a tennis player is priced at 1.50 by the bookies for example but their price should actually be 1.45, that only represents a 0.05 tick difference.

In a golf market though a player that was priced 81.0 that should be priced at 67.0, would mean a 14-point tick difference – or a much bigger return in other words. 

To put it simply then, there is much more scope in sports like golf and horse racing to make a big profit from bookie errors, versus sports where you are betting at low odds in two- or three-way markets. 

 

How Exchanges Change the Picture

All of this discussion so far has focused on how bookmakers price up betting markets, but with the addition of exchanges to the mix, the picture changes considerably. 

With most exchange markets, the over-round is reduced considerably. For football and tennis, it will normally be as low as 100.6%, presuming there is a decent liquidity. 

Even for horse racing and golf, the over-rounds tend to be much lower. As race time approaches, the over-round on horse races on Betfair will normally reduce to less than 101%, meaning much better value than with the bookies. 

In golf markets the over-rounds tend to range from 105-110%, which whilst not quite as low as on horse racing still represents a huge improvement over the bookies. The over-rounds don’t tend to get quite as low on golf as there will sometimes be a gap in the spread between the back and lay odds of higher-priced selections, e.g. those at 500+ in odds. 

What all this means is that sports like golf and horse racing become much better value for the punter on the exchanges, with the over-round problem being largely eliminated. 

On the downside, you don’t get the extra places with the exchanges when betting each-way that the bookies often offer these days. You also have to factor in commission on your winnings, which on Betfair these days can be as low as 2%.

Overall though, the exchanges have made betting on sports like golf and horse racing more attractive for the punter and in turn forced bookies to be more competitive by offering extra places and other incentives. 

 

Conclusion – The Easiest Sport to Predict Isn’t Necessarily the Best to Bet on

If you are looking for the easiest sports to predict, then it is probably best to focus on those with markets containing short-odds favourites like football and tennis. You will be able to find plenty of selections at very low odds, which will give you a high number of winners and the bookmakers’ advantage over you (the over-round) will be small. 

However, it is important not to confuse “easy to predict” with “profitable.” You can find sports that are easy to predict in terms of being able to pick lots of winners, but you could still be losing money overall if the bets you are making don’t represent value. 

The tipsters with the highest returns on investment are generally found in golf and horse racing. This is because there is more scope in these sports to find big differences between the bookies’ odds and the “true odds,” meaning larger profits. 

With the advent of betting exchanges, in these sports the over-round is greatly reduced, meaning there is also better value in the market now. In turn this has forced bookies to offer extra places and other perks for punters. 

So it’s worth weighing up other factors such as return on investment and profitability when choosing which sport to bet on, rather than just which is easiest to predict. 

 

 

 

 

There are a number of advantages to a high strike-rate betting system. It can mean lots of winners, a smaller betting bank, shorter losing runs and the potential to grow your bank more quickly. 

In many ways, it is the ideal betting strategy. So you might wonder why there aren’t many high strike-rate systems out there. 

The reason may be that many bettors – and tipsters for that matter – prefer to bet at long odds to get the thrill of backing a big winner. There’s nothing quite like landing a 100/1 winner for example and being able to brag about it to friends and fellow bettors. 

However, it is tough to find value at long odds and you will also have to endure long losing runs. Focusing on short-odds selections is a more prudent and sensible approach to betting. Slow and steady wins the race, as it were. 

 

The Favourite-Longshot Bias

Indeed, backing at long odds is not only tough to endure emotionally when you hit long losing runs but has actually been shown in studies to be a less effective strategy. 

Two academics from Nottingham University looked at thousands of runners in UK flat races and found that backing horses of less than evens (2.0) resulted in a return on investment of -7%, versus losses of -40% from backing horses priced at more than 40/1. 

A separate study of English and Scottish football produced similar results, finding that betting at short odds produced a negative return of -2%  but when backing at over 4/1, the losses were -15%. 

There is much speculation about the reasons for the favourite-longshot bias. Most experts think it is because the bookies know they can get away with offering poor value on longshots because most punters will still back them, hoping for that “big win,” whereas they need to offer more competitive odds for favourites to attract punters to back them. 

Whatever the exact reason for it though, it is clearly in the punter’s interest to back at short odds. There is more value there and statistically returns will be better over time. 

 

Advantages of High Strike-Rate Systems

As mentioned, there are quite a few other advantages to high strike-rate systems in addition to the better value you are getting. 

That includes:-

• High proportion of winners – meaning regular returns which is easier to handle psychologically than having continual losers with a low strike-rate system. A high strike-rate system often has a 50% or higher winning rate, meaning over half of bets are winners. 
• Smaller betting bank needed – a high strike-rate means the losing runs and drawdowns will be shorter, so you don’t need as big a betting bank to start with and can stake at a higher level.
• Bank can grow more quickly – it also means the bank can grow faster. If for example you only need a 20 point bank for a high strike-rate system, versus 100 points for a low strike-rate system, then less profit is needed to double or treble the bank and so on.  

So there are lots of advantages to a high strike-rate, low odds strategy. The only obvious downside is that you don’t get the thrill of having a big winner, but that should be more than balanced out by the considerable upsides described above.  

 

Three High Strike-Rate, Low-Odds Strategies

We’ll take a look now at three high strike-rate, low odds betting strategies. These are strategies we have tested out here on the site and found to produce reliable results. 

 

1. Backing Short Odds Favourites in Football

The favourite-longshot bias has been shown to apply in football just as strongly as in other sports. We see all the time that certain teams dominate their domestic leagues. For example Real Madrid and Barcelona in Spain, Manchester City in England or Bayern Munich in Germany. These sides can go on long winning streaks, particularly when at home.

Whilst the odds of such teams will be low – often around 1.10 – 1.20 at home to weaker opposition – and therefore putting many punters off backing them, it does not mean that those odds don’t represent value.

When looking at the performance of such teams at home, they will often win nearly all of their matches against weak opposition, sometimes by big margins. Here is a run of games of Man City for example in the 2021/22 season:

As you can see they are very dominant and can win extended stretches of matches during a season.

A strategy that has focused on backing these dominant teams in leagues around the world is a service called Banker Bets. As the name suggests, it selects the kind of “bankers” we have been referring to – those teams who are at short odds but still represent value. If a team is priced at 1.2 for example but the real odds should be 1.15, that is still value.

Banker Bets provides tips from leagues around the world and has a strong record, with 145% profit made on their tips if betting as singles and 410% if betting as accumulators. The strike rate of the bets has been extremely high at 79% and the typical odds are around 1.30, so this strategy is the very definition of a high strike-rate, low odds strategy.

We ran our own trial of the service and it made 126 points profit in an 18 month trial, which is very good going. It has now been going for nearly eight years so is a well established service and has shown the effectiveness of the approach of backing strong favourites in football matches.

 

2. Backing Top Class Horses in Ideal Conditions

There’s an old saying in sport: “Form is temporary, class is permanent.” This is an adage that particular applies to horse racing, where the very best horses tend to win time and time again when it comes to the biggest races, even if they have temporary lapses in form. 

Think of Stradivarius or Yeats at the Ascot Gold Cup, or all-conquering horses like Frankel and Sea the Stars. When push came to shove they could always deliver the goods, much to the delight of their adoring armies of fans. 

When these top class horses run, it is generally in listed and group races, rather than handicaps. That means they do not have to worry about carrying extra weight compared to other horses and being artificially restricted to try and suit the handicapper. They are free to run their own race and for the best horse to come through and win. 

That means these high class races are often the most fair and should be the most attractive for punters to bet in, particularly as they have the most liquidity. They also tend to be dominated by favourites who can show their true potential in these races. 

One betting expert who takes advantage of all these factors and focuses solely on Class 1 racing is Mel Gee with his First Class Racing service. Backing horses at short odds and using decades of experience betting on the sport, he has made managed to more than double his members’ betting banks in 14 months. 

Betting is very selective and sometimes there are only one or two bets per week. That is because Mel waits for the ideal conditions for the horse – when it has everything in its favour – the ground, distance, course, jockey, etc. Then he backs them heavily with his own money whilst also advising them to his members. 

The strike rate for this strategy has been very high at 59%, and because there is such a high winning rate, just a 20 point betting bank is advised for following the service. Losing runs tend to be short and there has been a good rate of return so far for the service. 

So backing top quality horses in high class races as Mel Gee has done in his First Class Racing service has proven to be an effective high strike-rate, low odds betting strategy. 

 

3. Backing Over 1.5 Goals in Football Matches

Another high strike rate system involves backing over 1.5 goals in football matches. In case you are not familiar with this market, it means you are looking for there to be at least two goals in a football match. It doesn’t matter how many more goals or which team scores them, just that there are at two or more goals. 

As you can imagine, the strike rate for backing over 1.5 goals tends to be pretty high. In most leagues, 70-80% of matches finish with over 1.5 goals. In the Premier League for example, the strike rate was 77% in the 2021-22 season. The odds are typically in the 1.10-1.40 range.

However, just backing over 1.5 goals blindly is unlikely to make you a profit over the long term. It is important to have a strategy that finds value in the over 1.5 market. We have detailed some strategies you could use here, but perhaps the best one we have found involves waiting for the games to go in-play and seeing how they develop. 

Using a large stats database of thousands of matches, a team of professional traders called Trade On Sports have developed a strategy that looks for matches where a goal in the first half of a match gives a high chance of there being at least one goal in the second half. 

We tested this strategy out in a live trial for over a year and it made over £5100 profit to £100 stakes. Essentially it involved backing over 1.5 goals at half time and waiting for there to be a goal in the second half. Normally you would only back at odds of 1.6, so there would need to be a goal after 60 minutes for those odds to be reached. 

The strategy performed very well though and relies in part on how many late goals there are in football matches, which if you have watched football for any length of time you will know is quite often. The strike rate for the strategy during our trial was 67%, which is a very decent winning rate to have achieved and resulted in very healthy profits. 

For a tried and tested football strategy with a high strike rate betting at low odds, Trade On Sports’ strategy of backing over 1.5 goals in football matches in-play is well worth a look. 

 

 

 

 

Over the years we have looked at hundreds of betting strategies here at Honest Betting Reviews, across a host of different sports and from every conceivable angle.

Whether that’s laying strategies, backing strategies, using form and stats, market movements, trading, scalping and just about everything else you could think of!

People are constantly innovating and trying to find a way to get one over on the bookies. 

Sadly, it is easier said than done and there are only a small number of betting strategies we have found that actually work. 

Even fewer are able to stand the test of time and continue to work for an extended period. 

Thankfully though, there are a few that have proven profitable and can be considered as effective betting strategies. Some of them have even been working well for many years. 

Below we’ll take a look at the best of these betting strategies and how you can get the most out of them. 

 

Top 10 Betting Strategies

How do you know if a betting strategy will work? It can be tough to know with so much rubbish and so many scams out there these days. Here at Honest Betting Reviews we put betting systems through a full test here on the site, recording all results in full so you can see for yourself what works and what doesn’t. 

Here are the top 10 Betting Strategies we have found through our comprehensive testing. The list is in descending order from ten to one and the strategies cover a variety of different sports. 

Please let us know in the comments below if there are any we have left off this list that you think should be on there.

 

10. Dobbing 

If you’ve watched horse racing for any length of time you will know that there are certain horses that tend to follow a pattern. Some like to wait patiently towards the back of the pack for most of the race before sprinting for the finish, whilst others like to lead from the front. There are also horses that tend to often finish in the places but not actually win very often. 

Patterns like these present opportunities for backing and laying certain horses. If we can find a horse that is 6.0 before the start of a race but we see often races prominently and goes much shorter in-running, it could be worth making a back bet at 6.0 but then laying them at 3.0. 

This strategy is known as “double or bust,” or “dobbing” for short. You are looking for the horse’s odds to half in-play, so that you can double your money on your stake. Using historical figures from Betfair via Timeform or sites like Inform Racing, you can research horses who fit these patterns. 

Now of course the strategy is flexible and you don’t always need to pick horses that half in price. You might find a horse that normally shortens 30% in-play and so put a lay bet in 30% below your back bet for example.

Either way though, Dobbing can be a powerful betting strategy when used correctly and many traders use it as part of their daily routine. 

 

9. Betting on over 1.5 Goals – Home/Away Strategy 

Goals bets have become increasingly popular in football betting in recent years, with a lot of liquidity flowing through over/under goals markets. One of the major markets is over/under 1.5 goals. 

In this market you are looking for there to be two or more goals in a game if you are backing the overs. So the obvious play, you might think, would be to go for high-scoring teams. 

However, the trouble with this is teams that are known to be high scoring will normally be short odds on the over 1.5 goals market. A more effective approach can be to look for teams who are a bit more “under the radar” so to speak. In particular, it can pay dividends to look for teams who have particularly stand out-stats on their home and away form. 

You can see the strategy in more detail here, but in short it revolves around checking the stats and finding teams who have a propensity for hitting over 1.5 goals either at home or away. If you can find a match-up where a team at home has a high propensity for over 1.5 goals at home versus an equivalent away team, that is ideal. Utilising team news is also important to be sure that key attacking or defensive players are going to start the game. 

When you do the research and find good opportunities, the win rate on over 1.5 goals can be very high and represent a solid betting strategy. 

 

8. Concentrate on Specialist Horse Racing Markets

To become successful in just about anything these days requires specialisation. The same is true in betting, where spreading yourself too thin across multiple sports (or even across too many markets in one sport) is unlikely to lead to success. 

If you look at how professional bettors operate, they usually concentrate on just one sport and then within that sport, have a particular niche. In football that might be a particular league that not many others follow or a specialist market like corners. In horse racing it could mean focusing on certain types of races –  sprint races, handicaps, or novice races, for example. 

Some pro punters concentrate on racing from a country outside the UK, marking them out from the vast majority of tipsters and experts who focus on UK racing. Two such examples we have come across who have done so very successfully are the USA Racing Tipster and Irish Cash Consortium. Both have developed their own niche in their respective country and found an approach that works for them – whether that’s studying pace and speed figures, or using a network of contacts. 

The key point in developing a betting strategy is to think about how you can focus on a particular market or sector that the masses aren’t looking at and isn’t already saturated with information, making find an edge very difficult. Find something that works for you and preferably that you are interested in, which will make the learning and development of a strategy more enjoyable at the same time.

 

7. Laying Odds-On Favourites

 

The idea of laying odds-on favourites is an attractive one. It means your potential profit is greater than your liability and limits the downside. 

One betting strategy that has been built around laying odds-on favourites in horse racing is Little Acorns. It has been around for over 14 years now and in that time has established itself as one of the most popular and reliable betting strategies. 

Essentially it involves following a small number of simple rules that identify odds-on favourites  who are vulnerable on a given day. You can check these rules in 10 minutes or so via the Racing Post or another suitable racing website. 

We ran our own trial of the system and it performed very well, making 189 points profit after over 100 bets. The strike rate was good at 51%, which is impressive considering they are laying at odds-on and sometimes at quite low odds. 

Little Acorns has won numerous awards over the years, including our very own Best Horse Racing Service award, voted for by our members. The system has stood the test of time and made a profit every year for 14 years now. 

One thing to be aware of is that it uses quite an aggressive staking system, whereby you increase your stake if there is a losing run, up to a certain point. So you need a good size betting bank and plenty of nerves if using this staking approach. You can of course just use level staking, but the profits are not as high with level staking. 

Either way though as a proven, long-term betting strategy, Little Acorns deserves a place on this list. 

 

6.  Tennis Double-Break Strategy

Tennis is one of the most-gambled sports in the world, with huge volumes traded in-running on tennis matches. That means there are opportunities aplenty to back and lay with the aim of making some quick profits. 

One of the most effective tennis betting strategies is the double-break strategy. This is where you wait until a player has achieved two breaks of serve in a set. So they could be 3-1 or 4-0 up, for example. 

At that point you lay them. This may sound slightly counter-intuitive as at that point most people will be thinking they have the set wrapped up. However, that is actually why the strategy works so well. If that player does indeed go on and win the set, their odds will hardly change at all, meaning you won’t have lost anything.

If they drop their own serve just once however, you will get a nice movement in odds, allowing you to cash out the trade for profit. You could just remove your liability at that point and see if they get the other break back – there are different options depending on how aggressive you want to be. 

The point is though that this is a very low risk approach to trading and can deliver good profits when it comes off. It is generally better to focus on women’s matches for this strategy as they tend to have more breaks of serve and seeing a double break back is not that unusual, whereas it is quite rare in the men’s game. 

 

5. Using xG Data For Football Betting

The tools and information available to football bettors these days are far advanced of where they were a few years ago. There is now a wealth of stats and info at the click of a mouse that punters can use to try and find value in a football match. 

One of the most powerful type of stats these days is expected goals data, or “xG” for short. This tells you how many goals on average a team (or player) would normally score based on the chances they created and shots they had in a game. 

It has become quite sophisticated these days, including information such as where shots were taken from, at what angle and how powerful they were. The xG data can therefore give you a much more accurate picture of how a team played than just the scoreline itself, or even data such as how many shots on target they had.  There is also data on xG conceded, so you can see how well a team defended. 

Putting all this information together, you can start to see patterns of where a team has been under- or over-performing their xG. One betting service that has done so very successfully is Bookie Insiders Football, which is run by a team of professional bettors who used to work for the bookmakers. 

They analyse xG data, as well as team news and playing styles, to find value on football matches. It has worked very well for them, with over 400 points profit made since 2014, which would be £20,000 profit at $50 per point. During our own trial they also performed impressively, making £2053 profit.

The bottom line is to get ahead of other punters and the bookies these days you need to take advantage of the best data out there and xG data is some of the most comprehensive tools available. 

 

4. Using the Power of Goal Times in Football

Another powerful strategy is to use the effect of goal times in football. This is something that is not considered by most football punters and tipsters, so is quite an under-the-radar strategy. 

The impact of goal times in football is considerable, particularly when they come early in a game. It can completely change the way that sides play and the dynamics of a match. It can mean a side that had been planning to “park the bus” and play very defensively now have to come out more and attack if they are 1-0 down. 

A system that has looked very closely at the effects of goal times in matches is Trade On Sports. They are a team of professional bettors who have built a stats database of thousands of matches from leagues around the world, based on the effect of goal times. From this database they have developed an app called the “Gamestate App” that is able to identify value on games in-play. 

They have built various strategies around it and you can be alerted (via Telegram) when a value opportunity has arisen on one of these strategies. For example, when it is HT in matches and the stats suggest there is likely to be at least one more goal in a game based on the goal(s) scored in the first half. 

We ran a trial of this strategy – known as the “HT Overs Bot” and it made an excellent £5120 profit during our review. They have developed various other strategies that have shown promising results and the team are constantly innovating. 

Looking for under-the-radar strategies like the effect of goal times can really pay dividends then in football betting. 

 

3. Betting on the Draw

Another powerful football strategy is one that has grown in prominence in recent years and that is betting on the draw. 

Often ignored by most punters, the draw odds can frequently be inflated by bookies as they know they won’t take much money on it, with the majority of bettors wanting to back one side or the other to win a game. However, there are certain low-scoring leagues around the world where draws are very common. Some of the South American leagues like Brazil and Argentina for example, as well as certain European leagues like Greece and Spain, tend to fit this pattern. 

Within individual leagues there are also certain teams that draw a lot of games. Again this tends to be low-scoring teams, as in such games the chances of a draw are higher (a lot of 0-0 and 1-1 games). Picking out these teams can prove very profitable if done right.

One bettor who has figured out how to do it right is a guy called JK Diego, the self-styled “draw king.” He spent a number of years studying the factors that tend to lead to draws in football matches and identified eight key traits. 

Based on this information he built his Draw Betting System, which has made over $100,000 profit to date. We ran our own trial of the strategy and it made over 100 points profit in our trial, which would be $10,000 to $100 stakes. 

The only downside is the subscription costs are high with this service so it is for high-rollers only. However, whether you are able to join JK Diego’s group of members or not, focusing on finding value in the draw on football matches is a valid and proven betting strategy. 

 

2. Matched Betting

One of the most effective – and certainly lowest risk – betting strategies is matched betting. In essence, matched betting means using the bookies’ free bets and bonuses to set up risk-free or low-risk bets, using the exchanges to offset the original bet.

So for example you might be offered a £20 free bet if you place a £20 bet on sports. What you could do therefore is place a £20 bet with the bookie, but lay the same selection on Betfair, so you are not actually risking that £20. 

Let’s say for example you placed a £20 qualifying bet with the bookie on Man Utd to beat Arsenal at 2.40. Then you would go on Betfair and lay Man Utd at 2.42. All you could lose is the small difference between the back and the lay odds and the commission (if the lay bet is successful on Betfair). 

You have then got yourself a £20 free bet – and that is how matched betting works in a nutshell. Now of course you may wish to use matched betting for the free bet aswell and you can set the free bet up in a similar way to guarantee profit whatever happens. 

There are now various matched betting websites and packages that bring together all of the offers together in one place. With so many bookies these days all competing for our business, there are a lot of these offers around each day. 

In our view, the best of the matched betting packages is Profit Maximiser. Developed by the original matched betting guru Mike Cruickshank, it contains lots of useful instructional videos and guides explaining how to do the offers, as well as matched betting calculators, live software and a calendar with all the daily offers available. There is also a lively Facebook group with over 50,000 members, where people post the best offers for the day and any new ones that pop up. 

The only thing to be aware of with matched betting is that it is not viable in every country as it depends on whether the bookies are allowed to offer free bets in your country – it works best in the UK and Ireland. So it is advisable to check first on whether you are able to make the most of it in your country before signing up to a matched betting package.

 

1.  Taking the Each-Way Value

One of the great quirks of betting is the way each-way bets are set up by the bookies. In case you aren’t aware, each-way means putting half your stake on a selection to win and the other half on it to finish in the places (top four, top five etc depending on the event). So if you are betting £5 e/w on a horse for example, you would be betting £5 on it to win and £5 on it to finish in the places (£10 total). 

The quirk comes from the fact that the place odds are always based on the win odds – e.g. a quarter, or a fifth, of the win odds. So if a horse is 10/1 to win and the place terms are a fifth, then the place odds will be 2/1. 

However, it doesn’t always follow that the place odds should be a fifth or a quarter of the win odds. Sometimes they should be much lower, and sometimes higher. This is because there are certain horses – or golfers, tennis players, etc if you are betting each-way on other sports – who have a high propensity for finishing in the places and not winning. That means there could be extra value in the place odds. 

There are also certain races – for example where there is a strong odds-on favourite or the bookies are offering extra places – where there is in-built value on the place, without you having to study form or anything. 

Impressive software has been built that constantly scans the markets and finds these opportunities. In horse racing there is the Each-Way Sniper Software and in golf there is the 20 Minute System. The software alerts you when there is a suitable bet, with the applicable odds and then all you have to do is place the bet. 

We have tested these systems extensively and found them to be clearly profitable, as well as having sound logic behind them. You can’t really ask for much more from a betting strategy to be honest!