Clever Punts Explained

Arbing & Matched Betting

Two ways of betting where you’re not really having a bet at all. No hunches, no “he looked well in the paddock”, no lucky pants. Just sums. Sharp Sid reckons if you can work out a round in the pub, you can work this out.

Arbing (short for arbitrage, which sounds French because it is)

Arbing is backing every possible result, at different bookies, and still coming out in front. That’s it. That’s the whole trick.

It works because bookmakers don’t all agree. One firm loves the home side, another has been hammered with money on the away side and has pushed their price out. On their own, both books are over 100%. But if you take the best bit from each shop and staple them together, the combined book can occasionally drop below 100%. When that happens, every result pays you.

Football example — the classic

Say a Premier League match is priced up like this, once you’ve shopped around:

97.07%. Under a hundred. That’s an arb. Stick £100 across the three results in the right proportions — £49.06 on the home, £26.42 on the draw, £24.52 on the away — and whatever happens you get £103.02 back. A guaranteed £3.02. Not exactly a yacht, but you didn’t need an opinion on the football.

The sum, if you want it: divide £100 by the book percentage. £100 ÷ 0.9707 = £103.02. Stake on each result = your total × (that result’s implied chance ÷ the book percentage).

Horse racing example — same idea, more legs

A five-runner race. You take the biggest price available on each runner, wherever it happens to be:

Again, under 100%. Back all five in the right proportions and one of them has to win, so you get paid either way. In racing this is called dutching the field, and it’s where arbing gets fiddly: five bets to place, five prices that can move while you’re typing, and a non-runner can blow the whole thing up. Football’s three results are a much easier day out.

Before matched betting: what “laying” actually means

Matched betting needs one more idea, and it’s the one that trips everybody up. On a betting exchange like Betfair you’re not betting against the house, you’re betting against other punters. Which means you can be the bookmaker.

Backing is what you’ve always done: you say it’ll win. Laying is the other side: you say it won’t win. If it loses, you keep the other punter’s stake. If it wins, you pay them out.

The money you’d have to pay out is your liability, and the exchange holds it while the bet’s open. Lay a horse at 5.00 for a £10 stake and your liability is £40 — the four times your stake you’d owe if it bolts up. That’s the bit that catches people out: laying a 20/1 shot for a tenner ties up two hundred quid.

Exchanges take a commission on your winnings — usually 5% on Betfair, sometimes less elsewhere. Every sum on this page has that 5% baked in, because leaving it out would be flattering.

Matched betting — arbing with stabilisers

Arbing needs two bookies to disagree. Matched betting doesn’t need anyone to disagree about anything — it needs a free bet. The bookmakers hand those out by the fistful to get you through the door, and matched betting is simply the business of turning that free bet into real cash without taking any risk.

It runs in two moves.

Move one: the qualifying bet

The offer says “bet £10, get £20 in free bets”. So you have to put a tenner on something. You back your selection with the bookmaker, then immediately lay the exact same selection on the exchange. Whatever happens, the two bets cancel each other out — almost. You lose a small amount to the gap between the back price and the lay price, plus commission. That small amount is the qualifying loss, and it’s the entry fee.

Move two: the free bet

Now you’ve got a £20 free bet. Free bets are almost always stake not returned — back a 3.00 shot with a £20 free bet and it wins, you get £40, not £60. You lay it off on the exchange again, but with a smaller lay stake to allow for that. Result: you walk away with real money regardless of the outcome. Typically you’ll keep 70–80% of the free bet’s face value, and you keep more by choosing a selection at a bigger price.

Take the qualifying loss off the free-bet profit and what’s left is yours. No opinion required. No idea who won. Sid’s idea of a good afternoon.

The football version

Exactly the same, and arguably easier, because there are only three results to think about instead of fourteen runners. The offer is usually “bet £10 on any match, get £30 in free bets”.

You back the away side at 4.20 with the bookmaker for £10. You lay the away side on the exchange at 4.30 — a lay stake of about £9.88, with roughly £42 of liability held. If they win, the bookie pays you £32 and the exchange takes £41.75 off you. If they don’t win, you lose the tenner but the exchange pays you £9.39 after commission. Either way you’re down about 60p, and you’ve unlocked £30 in free bets.

Then you do the free bets on something around 5.00 or 6.00 and keep the guts of £22 of it. Total damage: 60p. Total return: about £21.50. Not a living, but a nice Friday.

So what’s the actual difference?

Put simply: matched betting is the one to learn first. It’s slower, it’s more reliable, and the sums are gentler. Arbing is the same skill with the volume turned up and the safety net taken away.

Now the catch, because there’s always a catch

None of this is illegal, and none of it is cheating. It’s also not something bookmakers are remotely happy about, and they have a very simple answer to it.

• Gubbing. The polite word is “restricted”. One morning you log in and the promotions have vanished. You’re still allowed to lose money, you’re just no longer invited to the party. It happens to nearly everyone eventually.

• Stake limits. Before the gubbing you often get throttled — you go to put £50 on and it’ll only accept £2.37. That’s not a glitch, that’s a message.

• Palpable errors. If a price was obviously a typo, the bookmaker can void the bet after the event. Trouble is, your lay bet on the exchange doesn’t get voided. Now you’re one-legged and exposed. This is the classic way an “arb” turns into a real bet you never wanted.

• Commission and the spread. Every sum on this page includes 5% exchange commission. Forget it and your profitable-looking arb is actually a slow leak.

• Liquidity. A lay price is only real if someone’s actually offering it. A tempting price with eleven quid available behind it is a mirage.

• Time and admin. Withdrawals, ID checks, spreadsheets, twelve card statements. It’s a job. A legitimate one, but a job.

Sharp Sid’s house rules

1. Do the sum before the bet, not after. Every time.

2. Get the lay on first if the exchange price is the twitchy one. Exchange prices move faster than bookmaker prices. Whichever leg is more likely to run away from you, that’s the one you place first.

3. Check the liquidity, not just the price. If there’s only £20 available to lay at that price, your £100 plan is fiction.

4. Short prices for qualifying bets, big prices for free bets. This one rule is worth more than all the others put together.

5. Keep the money for liability separate. Laying a 12.00 shot for £10 needs £110 sat in the exchange. Run out mid-plan and you’re left holding one leg of a two-legged bet.

6. Read the terms. Minimum odds, qualifying markets, expiry dates. The offer that pays £30 for a tenner has a paragraph of small print, and it’s there for a reason.

7. It’s admin, not a hobby. If you find yourself having a proper bet “while you’re in there”, you’ve stopped doing this and started doing something else entirely.

The short version

Arbing is taking advantage of bookmakers disagreeing, by backing every result at a different shop. Real, rare, and gone in seconds. Worth understanding, not worth waiting for.

The price gap is arbing’s boring, dependable cousin, and it’s the one that will actually make you money. You’re not backing every runner — you’re backing the one you fancy, at the best price instead of the first price. On the panel above that was worth several percent, and on a favourite it’s worth roughly the bookmaker’s entire margin. Do it on every bet for a year and it dwarfs anything arbing would have paid you.

Matched betting is turning free bets into real money by covering yourself on the exchange. Slower, far more reliable, and the one worth learning.

Both are sums, not opinions. Neither is a way to get rich. Both are a perfectly sensible way to stop donating the overround to a company with a very nice carpet.

Today’s Racecards Football Hub DOBbing & TROBbing

18+. Every figure on this page is worked from real prices held in our own database, each one stamped with when it was captured. They are stored snapshots, not a live feed: bookmaker prices are refreshed roughly every ten minutes, and exchange prices step up from every half hour when a race is hours away to every few seconds at the off. We hold no exchange prices for football at all. Anything marked as older than a couple of minutes may well have moved — always confirm the price with the bookmaker and the exchange themselves before you stake anything. Matched betting and arbing carry no edge at all if the sums are wrong, and bookmakers are entitled to restrict or close accounts as they see fit. Never stake money you can’t afford to lose. BeGambleAware.org.