How many times do you come across a free bet bonus and wonder how to make money off it? You could try to stake it on several bets, but you must overcome the wagering requirements. Matched betting gives you an opportunity to make money off all those free bets that online sportsbooks you find online.
What is Matched Betting?
There are many welcome bonus offers like “bet ₹50 with us and get a ₹25 free bet!”. In this betting technique, you make your bets in a way that guarantees you win, whatever the outcome. The goal is to make a profit from the bets you wager on a betting site and a betting exchange.
How Does it work?
There are so many different bet offers new customers claim in order to make a profit. You use these bets with bets from betting exchanges to make two bets that ensure a guaranteed profit outcome. This system works with two bets:
Wager a Back Bet
A back bet is the bet you make to support the outcome you believe will happen. For example, you can pick a good football bet e.g. Barcelona to beat Valencia. In this bet, you are backing Barcelona to win. You wager the back bet at your favorite betting site (sportsbook).
Wager a Lay Bet
A lay bet goes against your back bet. In this example you bet Barcelona will not win. You cover your first bet. You wager a lay bet at a betting exchange. This gives the name matched betting.
Here are the steps you follow to make a profit:
- Open an Account at a betting site with a free offer
You must have a free bet for a matched bet to work, so the first task is to hunt for a sportsbook with a generous free bet. There are plenty of sportsbooks with matched deposits as high as 150% of your first bet. Be careful when picking your free bonus because some sportsbooks have very difficult terms and conditions for their bonuses.
- Open an Account at a Betting Exchange
Betting exchanges exist to offer lay bets to cover bets on traditional sportsbooks. The betting exchange must offer the betting markets you desire for this to work. It also works better if the betting exchange shows odds in an odds format you can understand. It helps you do easy odds comparisons.
- Hunt for a Qualifying Bet
A qualifying bet allows you to claim your free bet. You should hunt for bets higher than 1.4 for reasonable profits. Hunt for an event that has very close odds on the sportsbook and the betting exchange, for example, 1.47 and 1.49. It can get tedious to find bets, but you can make it easier with an odds comparison tool.
- Wager the bets:
Wager the back bet at your sportsbook and the lay bet at the bet exchange. The outcome of the qualifying bet doesn’t matter. You will make a tiny profit or loss because the difference in odds between the sportsbook and the bet exchange were very minimal. For example, If you had a stake of ₹50 with an odds difference of 0.02, the profit or loss will be ₹1. But now you qualify to claim your free bet.
- Claim your free bet
Claim the free bet in your betting account and use it to wager another matched bet. The amount of the free bonus will be on top of the profit or loss you make from the matched bet. In the above example, if you make a loss of ₹1 but have a free bonus of ₹25, you still make a profit of ₹24.
There are many free bonus offers you can use to do matched betting and make a tidy profit. The good news is that you can have as many matched bets as you can handle running simultaneously.
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