Here we are again, tackling another confusing betting term to help you get past the jargon. It can be difficult understanding so many terms, particularly if you have not done any betting before; we aim to remove any complexity so you can get down to the betting without having to worry about what it all means.

Arbitrage betting is more unusual than the most of the types of bet covered on Honest Betting Reviews, as it is not the kind of betting bookmakers will look to offer you like they would an accumulator or lucky 31, for example. Why? Because it is almost a risk-free way of betting.

How do you place an arbitrage bet?

Arbitrage betting – also known as arbing, matched betting, miraclebets and sure wins – is the opposite of how attractive a proposition the bookmakers would like it to seem to the punter. It is about capitalising on errors and gaps in the betting market to make a guaranteed profit.

It is particularly prevalent on betting exchange websites like Betfair, where a discrepancy may exist between the backing price – the odds an outcome will occur – and the laying price – odds an outcome will not occur. This difference in pricing means that if you bet on both outcomes, you will lock in a profit no matter what the actual outcome of the event is.

Unsurprisingly, arbitrage betting is not particularly popular with bookmakers, who try to stop these kinds of discrepancies occurring so they cannot be seized upon by opportunistic punters that keep an eye out for them.

One of the issues with arbitrage betting is that it can require a large stake for a relatively small return, so you need financial liquidity in order to pursue it successfully, especially if you want to place more than one arbitrage bet at a time.

Can you lose money arbitrage betting?

There is no such thing as betting that is 100 per cent risk-free. Bookmakers that do not welcome arbitrage betting can confiscate your stake and you can lose money if you do not pay close attention when placing arbitrage bets.

It is generally advised that you only try arbitrage betting if you are an experienced punter, and that you begin by betting small to minimise losses as you learn the ropes.

Is arbitrage betting legal?

Arbitrage betting is entirely legal – it is just taking advantage of differences that occur in the market. However, some bookmakers see arbitrage betting as a threat to their profits and they are entitled to suspend punters who do it.

Who should you place arbitrage bets with?

Arbitrage betting is not generally as frowned upon by betting exchanges as it is by regular bookmakers. Exchange betting is a free market-type arrangement where the punters themselves set the prices and bet against each other, so it is more likely that discrepancies will occur as the backing and laying prices often do not match up entirely, or at least not before people notice and correct the trend.

Arbitrage betting requires a great deal of care and attention with regard to exactly what you are betting on, but done correctly it guarantees a return.

For more explanations of complex betting terms, check out the other Honest Betting Reviews guides.

If you are looking for some top arbitrage software, you should check out 100% winners here.

FXTM – also known as Forex Time – is an international online forex broker. The company was formed by the entrepreneur Andrey Dashin.

They offer a special forex portfolio program known as PAMM, which sets up a portfolio of forex strategies for you from the world’s top traders, based on your risk profile and financial requirements.  

Competitions

There are also lots of fun additions on the site, such as their “Game of Pips” online trading competition with a prize pool of $100,000 – including a first prize of $50,000.

Trading Platforms

They offer the Metatrader 4 (MT4) and 5 (MT5) platforms for trading and cover a wide variety of markets.

Special Offers and Promotions

There is a special 200% cashback rebate for new accounts. You just have to log in to your account and select the relevant promotion, deposit and for the next 30 days you will receive $2 for every lot that you trade – click below for more details:

In addition, there is also a special “switch offer,” such that if you switch to Forex Time from another broker, you will get $4 back for every lot you trade for a certain period – see more below for this offer:

Both of these offers are available until 30.04.2016. 

Currency Pairs

FXTM offer a wide range of currency pairs to trade, offering over 50 in total. 

These include the major currency pairs such as Euro/US Dollar (EUR/USD), British Pound/US Dollar (GBP/USD), US Dollar/Japanese Yen (USD/JPY) and Australian Dollar/US Dollar (AUD/USD), as well as the more exotic pairs such as  Swiss Franc/Singapore Dollar (CHF/SGD). 

Spot Metals

As an alternative to trading currency pairs, a very popular form of trading is on spot metals. As the media is often keen to point out, in times of market turbulence investors tend to flock to the safe havens of precious metals such as gold and silver. This means there tends to be good opportunities for trading and large amounts of liquidity. These spot metals are not affected by inflation and gold is seen as the chief of all precious metals as it is a highly valued item with the back up of the ultimate “safe haven” status.

You can trade both gold and silver at Forex Time, with leverage up to 1:500 and spreads from as low as 0.1 and 0.2 on ECN MT4 and ECN MT5 accounts respectively. 

CFDs 

CFDs – or Contracts for Difference – are contracts stating that a buyer will pay the seller the difference between the price of a commodity at the time the agreement was made and its current valuation. These instruments have become extremely popular amongst traders in recent years.

Forex Time offer CFDs on a range of commodities including oil, gold, corn, silver, wheat and soybeans. 

They also CFDs on ETF (Exchange Traded Funds) and Indices such as the FTSE 100 and individual shares.

Blog

FXTM also have a very handy blog which includes news and articles on all things forex and market-related. Well worth a read if you want to keep up to date with market developments and exchange views with fellow traders. 

Trading Hours

The forex markets never sleep and neither do Forex Time – or should we call them “Forex All the Time!” That means you can access their trading services 24 hours a day, 5 days a week.

Prizes

They won the prize for “most promising forex broker” at the cnforex.com awards in January 2015.

Overall Verdict

Forex Time is a great new broker to the market and one we would highly recommend. They have some very innovative features and we particularly like their competitions with prize pools of $100,000. 

The site is very well designed and user-friendly, which we feel steals a bit of a march on some of their rivals. In this fast-moving marketplace it is important to be ahead of the game and it seems FXTM are right there.

We particularly like their 200% cashback offer which offers great value to new customers – or $4 per lot if you switch from another broker. 

Their prize of most promising new broker seems well deserved and we wouldn’t be surprised to see Forex Time go from strength to strength and start challenging the dominance of the big players. 

Good luck to them! 

Ruby Walsh has been classified as one of the best jockeys in the world and he has been the recipient of a number of awards and achievements. He has been the Irish National Hunt champion jockey on 10 occasions and he was named the leading jockey at the Horse Racing Ireland National Hunt awards for 5 consecutive years. Above all he has managed to achieve the award for International Jockey of the Year three times.

But where did this young jockey start and what is his driving force? What is it that makes him such a sought after racer and rider of horses? It is clear that Walsh comes from a long line of respectful animal lovers and passionate horse riders.

Early Days

Ruby Walsh was born on May 14, 1979 to former Irish champion amateur jockey, Ted Walsh, and his wife Helen. This was the perfect platform for Walsh to be exposed to horse racing, the ins and outs of the jockey industry, and cultivate a love for the majestic animals he rides on time and time again.

From a very young age, Walsh has shown interest in competitive horse racing and he showed great potential in this field. At 19 he already won the Irish amateur title twice – in 1996/7 and 1997/8. After this he was propelled into a professional career track where he gained a lot of exposure as each race commenced.

Breakthrough Win

He won his first English Grand National on a horse trained by his father in 2000 when he was a mere 20 years old. Together, the father-son team went on to win the Irish Grand National in the same year.

In the 2004/5 season, Walsh went on to dominate 3 of the 4 nationals. As the years passed, however, he came back for the fourth one he missed out on and won it with pure skill. In 2015 he became the only jockey who was still currently riding to win all 4 nationals  in his entire lifetime. Since his initial race, he rode on over 2000 winners and in 2007 he won the British Horseracing Board Jockeys’ Order of Merit Award.

Breaking Records

In January of 2007 he reached the fastest ever century of winners in Irish jump jockey history. He ended the season with a combined total of 198 winners, which is more than any other jockey in the history of horseracing. In 2009 when he competed in the Cheltenham Festival where he rode over 7 winners in 4 days setting a new record. On the second day he officially became the jockey with the most wins at the Cheltenham Festival.

Injury Setbacks

However, not all was rose coloured during the course of his career. There have been many obstacles that Walsh had to get over in order to continue with his illustrious career and these were by no means easy feats. He had sustained a number of injuries over the course of his life that influenced his career negatively. But with his constant passion for riding and his determination, he was able to get back on the saddle in no time flat.

His worst injury was in 1999 at Pardubice in the Czech Republic. He was here visiting a course in order to complete The Great Pardubice Steeplechase and during this visit he broke his leg. This leg continued to be a stroke of bad luck for him as he broke it again later in his career. This set him back in a recovery period of 5 months, but he recovered in time to win his very first Grand National on his partner, Papillon.

Walsh has also fractured his wrist twice and he dislocated his hip while fracturing the other. He also fractured his elbow, dislocated both of his shoulders, and suffered cracked and badly bruised vertebrae. He also had to have emergency spleen operation after he fell at the Paddy Power meeting at Cheltenham in November of 2008. Even though this would have set back any other jockey or athlete, Walsh returned to the saddle a mere 27 days after the operation commenced.

In 2010, during the run up to the Grand National, he broke his left arm after a nasty fall. His horse fell and he toppled over with it. Both of them were fine for the moment until a horse behind them trampled over his arm mid-run. He broke his arm in two places. In the same race in the year 2012 he suffered another injury after falling of a horse, which prevented him to compete in the Grand National 2012.

At the Cheltenham Festival of 2014, Walsh sustained another injury where he fractured his humerus. In 2015 he participated in the Gran Premio Merano in Italy where he rode on the horse called Perfect Gentleman. During this race the horse fell over and died in front of a crowd of 10 000 people. The horse had died of a neck fracture, but Walsh walked away unharmed and unscathed.

Taking a Step Back

Ruby Walsh has taken riding down a notch to spend more time with his family. He has 3 daughters with his wife Gillian called Isabelle, Elsa, and Gemma. His sister, Katie, is also one of the more renowned female jockeys, and his brother, Ted Walsh Junior, is married to top female jockey, Nina Carberry. Ruby Walsh has appeared on a number of TV productions during his injuries and even appeared on a few segments on Channel 4’s racing programme, The Morning Line.

He is currently the Cheltenham Festival’s most successful rider with 45 wins and by winning the leading rider’s award nine times within the past 12 years. Up until this date, Walsh has been Irish jump jockey 10 times. His dominance in English and Irish races has led him to live in Calverstown, County Kildare with his wife, Gillian. Here he frequents his two Irish stables on both sides of the coast line. Walsh still takes the occasional ride for his father as well as a range of other impressable trainers.

For most gamblers, everyone knows that the house always wins, or the bookie, depending on your forte.  This may be true for the general public, but did you know there are so-called “risk free” bets that you can place, also known as matched bets? 

This is usually a technique that is reserved for highly experienced and math-oriented gamblers, but it has become much more accessible lately, thanks to online betting products that specialise in matched betting.

Outwit, Out-smart

When you browse online for online gaming websites, typically you will find every company offering freebies, or introductory offers to get you to try their betting service.  These are genuine offers, from all the reputable websites like Bet365, William Hill and Ladbrokes, where you do get free money to place your bets. 

The reason why they can offer free money is because they know that gambling is an itch that must be scratched more than once.  That £50 free bet is often not enough for the average person, especially gamblers.

It all sounds fairly easy on the outside, to take your free bet and place it on something that has a low risk, but low reward, then cash in those winnings and be ahead, at minimum, the free bet investment that you started with.  

How to Play

Risk-free betting websites essentially do all the work for you, so that anyone can try it without needing to have previous experience in betting.  The key is in the quality of the online platforms that you are using to place these bets.  The concept of matched betting relies heavily on following offers and making calculated bets so that you always come out on top using the “free bet” offers and the betting exchange systems.

These risk-free betting websites, which operate on the premise of making minimum bets on the results of sports are perfectly legal and used by thousands of people every day. 

The best one we have come across is Profit Maximiser, which allows you to make up to £500 per month risk free from matched betting. 

There is also Profit Accumulator, which is very similar to Profit Maximiser and works on the same basis.

Other profitable matched betting products we have tested here on the site include Accumulator Generator, Bonus Bagging and Each-Way Sniper. These are all highly recommended if you want to take risk-free cash off the bookies.

Not gambling – investing

What makes this strategy work is that it doesn’t actually count as gambling.  Half the reason why people gamble is that they find the risk exciting.  The other half is obviously to win, but the activity itself is what makes you addicted.  You can become addicted to anything if you ignore logic and become obsessed over it.  Risk-free betting requires self-control and proper research into the programs and bookies that are being used.

Begin with small offers so that you limit your risk from misunderstanding rules, instructions, or inputs.  This should be treated like any other financial investment, not as something to toss money at and hoping you will get lucky.  Never bet with money that you can’t afford to lose, that’s always rule number one for anyone who unsure if they might acquire a gambling addiction.

The Honest Betting Reviews series of guides offers simple explanations of complex betting terms in order to break down barriers for betting novices by clearing up areas of confusion and making the uninitiated aware of the types of bet available to them. This guide looks at what rule 4 is when it comes to betting, what exactly it entails.

When does rule 4 apply in betting?

Rule 4 applies specifically to horse racing and greyhound racing when there are non-runners in an event. If there is a non-runner, but all final declarations have been made and the odds fixed to reflect this, there are industry-wide standards that apply in terms of deductions.

For example, if you have picked the second favourite in a race at odds of 6/1, and the favourite is declared a non-starter right before the race, then the second favourite will become the favourite, even though it had odds befitting that of the second favourite when you placed a bet on it.

If the new favourite then wins the race, under rule 4 a set value will be deducted from your winnings to reflect the fact that your selection was the favourite rather than the second favourite. The bookmakers will offer refunds to those who placed a bet on the non-runner..

Rule 4 can only be applied after all final declarations have been made, and this is when those who have backed a non-runner will be refunded. The final declaration stage usually occurs 24-48 hours before the race.

How much can be deducted from winnings under rule 4 in betting?

Set rules apply in terms of the deductions that can be made under rule 4 in betting, which are followed by all bookmakers in the UK. 

The amount deducted depends on how likely the non-runners were to win; if the favourite withdraws it makes it much easier for the second favourite to win, but if an outsider withdraws the second favourite still has to beat the favourite, so it is still difficult for the second favourite to win the race.

The exact amount deducted is based on the last price the non-runner was offered at because this equates to its chances of winning.

So for example, if a horse was 3/1 to win, this means it chances of winning were 25% (i.e. 1oo% divided by the decimal odds of 4.0 = 25%).

If that horse is withdrawn and declared a non-runner, then all other horses would suffer a deduction of 25% in their odds if they win.

When does rule 4 not apply in betting?

Rule 4 in betting does not apply to any ante-post races or futures markets, which involve betting on a race before final declarations are made.

If you are unlucky enough to have backed a non-runner before the final declarations are made you will not get your stake refunded. 

Why is rule 4 in betting called rule 4?

Rule 4 in betting is called rule 4 simply because it was the fourth rule in the list of rules devised to govern horse racing by Tattersall’s, one of the organisations that originally coordinated and codified horse racing in the UK and Ireland.

So that is another complicated betting term explained. We hope you found this guide helpful and, if there are other betting terms you would like to see an explanation of, check out the other guides on Honest Betting Reviews.