How the £50k actually happened
I've always been a sucker for making money online, and about 90% of what I'd tried had flopped: harder than the YouTube gurus made out, or a straight-up scam. Then, in 2017, an article sent me to MoneySavingExpert, MoneySavingExpert sent me to OddsMonkey, and I found the one that actually worked.
Not all of the £50k came from the safe stuff, and I'm not going to pretend it did. Here's how it went, in order.
I used to teach this in mastermind sessions that sold for over £1,000 a seat. Everything on this site is the same material, free.
- 1
Free bets: about £1,000 in four weeks
Every UK bookmaker gives new customers a free bet. I took them one by one (Betfred, Coral, Ladbrokes, Bet365) and, instead of hoping they'd win, I laid each one at a betting exchange. That means betting against the same result, so whatever happened I kept most of the free bet's value as cash. About £1,000 in my first four weeks. When the sign-ups ran out I moved to reload offers like acca insurance, aiming to keep about 80% of every free bet.
- 2
Bet365 2-up: the big earner
Bet365 paid a football bet out as a winner if your team went two goals up, even if they then drew or lost. Back at Bet365, lay at the exchange: usually a small, known cost, but when a team went two up and didn't win, both sides paid. That promo was a tremendous earner and a large share of the total.
- 3
+EV casino offers
Slots pay back about 95% of what goes in, on average (that's RTP). When a bonus or free spins add more than the missing 5%, the offer is +EV, positive expected value: profitable on average, even though any one session can go either way. These were worth a lot.
- 4
Each-way no-lay and Lucky 15s
A red-hot favourite pushes the other horses' odds out, but bookies still pay place terms as a fixed fraction (1/4, 1/5) of them. Compare that with the exchange's place market, where a horse still has to come 2nd, 3rd or 4th, and the each way bet can be worth more than it costs. You back it and don't lay it. An acca compounds the bookie's margin against you. A Lucky 15 of those each ways compounds the edge instead: a +EV lottery ticket, usually 50p or £1 each way. I made almost £5k on one Lucky 15 and over £1,000 on several others. One £4k day got that account closed.
- 5
Betfred slips and shop runs
Online, I'd been gubbed (restricted) by nearly every bookie, Bet365 included, and weirdly my family got gubbed too. That's when I started to focus on the high street and advanced tools like Bookie Bashing: each-way no-lay, Betfred slips and boosted coupons. Once I had trouble getting paid. Later I taught matched betting to beginners.
The bit most people skip: the plain matched betting in step 1 is low-variance. You know the outcome before the event starts. Steps 2 to 5 aren't. They win on average and swing hard. Matched betting is what built the float, the pot of money that let me ride those swings without stopping. And that's where the big money eventually is.