James's matched betting diary: August 2017

At Profit Accumulator, we're lucky to have some vastly experience matched bettors as part of our team. Among them is James and his matched betting diary offers an insight into his approach, the offers he targets and his profits.

You can read an interview with James here.

Thursday, August 31, 2017

MORNING

This morning was spent doing some of the Weekly free bet offers.
Real Deal and 10Bet's acca weekly offer.
Coral's Bet £25 get £5(it is bet £10 but I don't go in store for the second free £5).
Betsafe's Bet £60 get a £10 safe bet.
Betway Bet £25 get £10 free.

AFTERNOON/EVENING

I started the afternoon with a 10Bet VIP deposit bonus offer. Deposit £5,000, get £1,000 free. This will probably take me a while to wager through but the profit at the end of it will be worth it.
I also did the following offers.

Ladbrokes Risk-Free made £4.89
Betfred Bet £30 Get £10 Free made me £5.24
The odds boosts on Ladbrokes and William Hill todaymade me £2.46

I continued some mug bet challenges on the international matches in the evening.

Daily profit: £12.59
Daily mug bet cost: £0
Total profit: £12.59

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Morning

I am already starting to miss the domestic football and placing my accas first thing in the morning.
With the US Open being on later it means my mornings are pretty quiet.

Afternoon and evening

Ladbrokes risk-free made £5.87
Betfred Bet £30 Get £10 Free made me £4.13
The odds boosts on Ladbrokes and William Hill made me £4.01

A lot of people are doing 2up on the US Open Tennis but my Paddy Power account is severely restricted so this is not an option for me. A pity as this is possibly the best offer this week.

I did the SportingBet 50% refund on Bar Bar Black Sheep and surprisingly for me I came out with a nice profit of £36.45. Maybe I should start doing some more casino offers. We shall see.

The evening was about the greyhounds for me. I left the Betfred offer as I did their tennis one yesterday/today but did the Coral Bet £20 get 4x£5 free and made £7.56.

I also did the Bet365 lock-in offer. I did three races at £100 stakes this week and made a total of £22.10 with no winners.

No mug bets for me today.

Daily Profit: £80.12
Daily Mug Bet Cost: £0
Total profit: £80.12

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Not the busiest day for me today.
No advantage play accas for me as I don't like including just tennis or doing them all without any knowledge of the teams.
So it was all about the US Open today really.

Ladbrokes risk-free made £5.87

The odds boosts on Ladbrokes and William Hill made me £3.65.

That was all I did today.

Daily profit: £9.52
Daily mug bett cost: £0
Total profit: £9.52

Ongoing no-lay acca profit for the 2017-18 season: £620.76

Sunday, August 27, 2017

All I did today was the Bet365 in-play.
I got a very good price on Arsenal when they went 1-0 down and after the qualifying loss made a total of £38.15.

Daily Profit: £38.15
Daily Mug Bet Cost: £0
Total profit: £38.15

Saturday, August 26, 2017

MORNING

Saturday is here again!

I made £24.06 on Pricewise to start my days profits and the rest of the morning was spent getting on 2up matches and horses for the ITV Races.

I also placed my Bet365 qualifier for the Bet £50 get £50 free in-play offer that seems to be a weekly event at the moment.

AFTERNOON

I did both the in play offers for Coral, hit no winners but layed off the free bets and made £8.45 in total.
I had a good afternoon on the Horse Refunds hitting 3 Bet365 winners for a profit of £103.87.
It was not a good day for 2up for me though and I was left with losses of £37.80 as none of my teams went 2up and therefore I could not cash out any of them for profit.

Two of my in play mug challenges lost losing me £35 but one completed and made me £90(£10-£100). As i include the losses from these in my total I will also be including any wins in it, as this is still part of my profit overall.
Some people might not like that I am posting and including these but I am trying to do an honest as possible example of what I do these days.

I did some other in-play mugs as Saturday 3pm matches are the best time for these.

Daily profit: £153.58
Daily mug bet cost: £12.10
Total profit: £141.48

Friday 25th August

Morning

The morning started as normal by placing my Advantage Play(no lay) accas and checking the results from the previous day.
On a Friday I place all my Advantage Play Accas for the weekend on all bookies.
I got on the Pricewise Boosts this morning for £31.01 as I did some big stakes on some gubbed, but not stake restricted, accounts.
Then I placed the rest of my ITV Racing qualifiers.

Afternoon

I placed my WH and Ladbrokes Odds Boosts in the afternoon for the following profit.
WH profit today was £1.44
Ladbrokes profit was £1.05

I placed my Sunbets free bet from the York offer.

I watched the ITV Races but got no free bet refunds today.

During the whole of today if I saw a good price for the Bet365 2 up offer I placed it, the close matches thread is very useful for this.

Daily Profit: £40.13
Daily Mug Bet Cost: £0
Total profit: £40.13

Thursday, August 24, 2017

Morning

The morning started as normal by placing my Advantage PLay(no lay) accas and checking the results from the previous day. The evening was a very good one potentially(and in actuality) for no lays as lots of teams at 1.2-1.28 in the Europa League.

A quick note here that this is a risky method, the same as doing, for example, high-risk casino offers.

You can and will have long losing runs and losing weeks and even a losing month with this method.

You need to have a big bank and be prepared to take the losses, I certainly would not recommend this method for anyone new or anyone without a large bank.

Then I placed my WH and Ladbrokes Odds Boosts.
WH profit today was £2.16
Ladbrokes profit was £1.80

I then did the Sunbets qualifier again for their Bet £10 get £10 York Festival promotion and cashed in my free bet.

Then I got my Bet365 horses on for the afternoon.

Afternoon

No Bet365 2up for me today, so just ITV horses and as I am gubbed by quite a few of the main horse racing bookies it was just Bet365 horses. I did get one winner though so made a total of £33.78 after qualifying losses.
Unibet sent me a £10 risk free which I also did on the ITV races and made £6.48.

Evening

Nothing for me this evening.

Daily Profit: £49.34
Daily Mug Bet Cost: £0
Total Daily Profit: £49.34

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Morning

The morning started as normal by placing my advantage pLay (no-lay) accas and checking the results from the previous day.

Then I placed my WH and Ladbrokes Odds Boosts. - WH profit £1.63, Ladbrokes profit £1.46.

I then did the Sunbets qualifier for their Bet £10, get £10 York Festival promotion.
This cost me £1.16 (but won't be included in any totals until tomorrow when I get the free bet).

Afternoon

This was spent - on what is becoming a habit now - on getting on Bet365 2up matches (my favourite offer).

I only got on two teams today, though - Cheltenham and Nottingham Forest.
I had no losses on them but neither went 2 up (though Forest were very close).

As it was ITV Racing I did the Bet365 4/1 offer but had no winners only my qualifying losses of £6.37

Evening

The Bet365 (my favourite bookie as you can probably tell by now) 2/1 Greyhound offer was on tonight.
I did the lock-in method and did five races.

With greyhounds you have to be very quick and ideally have multiple screens up in order to catch the prices, also there is normally no liquidity before the final five minutes pre race normally.

I did varying stakes between £25 and £80 and made the following locked in profits:

Race 1: £4.13
Race 2: No profit as hit winner the race before.
Race 3: £8.10
Race 4: £15.11
Race 5: No profit as hit winner the race before.

I then continued my challenge bets and also placed some in-play mug bets on the Liverpool match in the evening and some of the League Cup matches.

Daily profit: £24.06
Daily mug bet cost: -£8.25
Total daily profit: £15.81

Ongoing no-lay acca profit: £402.98

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Morning

The morning started by organising and sorting out my accas.

I have been doing a lot of "no-lay accas" on which a thread is now available to members in the forum.

Here are my No Lay Acca results in the past 9 days:

WON 34
LOST 3/5 -20
FREE BET -20
LOST 3/5 -20
LOST 3/5 -20
LOST 2/5 -15
LOST 2/5 -20
FREE BET -4.04
LOST 3/5 -20
WON 42.68
FREE BET -4.47
WON 40.17
FREE BET -6.26
FREE BET -6.41
FREE BET -6.41
WON 34.02
FREE BET -4.43
FREE BET -2.93
FREE BET -3.93
FREE BET -4.47
LOST -20
LOST -20
WON 47.16
LOST -20
LOST -20
WON 56.36
WON 41.11
WON 25.97
WON 28.21
WON 46.67
WON 41.99
WON 42.86
WON 37.62
WON 54.96
WON 45.19
FREE BET -4.56
WON 46.92
WON 25.73

This has given me a total of £402.98 profit so far.

These are not to be undertaken lightly, though, and you have to understand the ups and downs.
Please see the thread now on it that we have.

I have decided that going forward I will only be doing no-lay accas. It saves me a lot of time as I don't need to lay, I don't have to worry about what time the matches start and it uses none of my exchange bank.
I will though be laying off the free bets that I receive.

Afternoon

This was spent getting on Bet365 2up matches(my favourite offer).

I got on these teams.

Aston Villa
Leicester
Brighton
Crystal Palace
West Brom

Again this overall resulted in a good profit of £135.42.
I love this offer!

I did nothing in the evening and no mug bets as I was busy.

Daily Profit: £135.42
Daily Mug Bet Cost: £0
Total profit: £135.42
Ongoing no-lay acca profit: £402.98

Sunday, August 20, 2017

Sundays I spend with my family, so all I did today was the Bet365 in-play offer on the Tottenham v Chelsea match, and continued some in play challenges.

Daily profit: £31.12
Daily mug bets: £0
Total profit: £31.12

Saturday, August 19, 2017

Saturday is here again! This was the warm and slightly overwhelming feeling I had this Saturday morning!
So much of my Matched Betting these days is based around a Saturday. There is ITV Racing, football for the Bet365 2up offer, loads of accas etc etc.

So let's start with accas.
I won't go into detail of every single acca bet I placed but I started some new ones today, continued ongoing ones and finished some off.
I use my own style with accas (as has been put in detail on the forum) and the ones that completed today made me £107.18
There are plenty more ongoing and accas had always been the backbone of my matched betting, this year though without Coral and with Hills dropped to £20, that is no longer the case.

Morning

The morning started me with updating my acca Spreadsheets before placing my Pricewise bets with both gubbed and ungubbed accounts.
Pricewise profit this week was £24.30
I then set up some new accas.
I placed a few Bet365 2up bets as well.
The rest of the morning was spent placing all my ITV Racing bets including my Bet £50 risk free from the week before. That made £42.08 and the rest of my bets cost £24.03. That left me with £18.05 profit, however I got no other winners at all today.

Afternoon

Early afternoon started with the Coral in-play on the Man Utd match.
I continued checking prices on Bet365 2up.
I ended up with bets on Southampton, Cardiff, Leicester, Hertha Berlin, Derby and Real Soceidad (although that was for a match on Sunday).
This went very well for me this week (and for a lot of people in the thread) with Derby going up very early and Southampton, Hertha Berlin and Leicester also going 2up. I netted £481.56 from 2 up today.
The afternoon ended with the Coral in play offer on the Arsenal match.

I also placed plenty of mug bets and in play challenges during the day, in fact 2 of my challenges came to and end losing me £60.

Total profit: £555.73

Friday, August 18, 2017

All I did today was to lay off my Coral free bet from the weekly bet club.
Other than that I did no matched betting today due to other work and family commitments.

Daily profit: £5.14
Daily mug bets: £0
Total profit: £5.14

Thursday, August 17, 2017

Today, I started by laying off my acca bets that were already ongoing and then placing a new acca with William Hill, Titan and Winner.

I didn't do loads of matched betting in the morning or afternoon today.
I did the William Hill odds boost which made me £2.85 and the Bet365 free spins which made me £7.25.

Most of my Matched Betting was done in the evening as I was doing the greyhound Bet365 2/1 offer.
I did the lock-in method and just did the first four races so I could do some in-play football after.

With greyhounds, you have to be very quick and ideally have multiple screens up in order to catch the prices. Also, there is normally no liquidity before the final five minutes pre-race.

I did varying stakes between £40 and £100 and made the following locked-in profits (without hitting any winners):

• Race 1: £4.55
• Race 2: £7.80
• Race 3: £15.12
• Race 4: £2.32

Then I continued my challenge bets and placed some in-play mugs too, all on the evening's football matches.

Daily Profit: £39.89
Daily Mug Bets: £4.31
Total: £35.58

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Today, I started by placing some accas with William Hill, Ladbrokes, Winner, Titan and Vernons.

I got on the Bet365 2Up offer on Sunderland and Norwich but didn't get a chance to cash out on either team so made a small loss here.

I also placed my qualifiers for the weekly ongoing free bet offers for Coral, Betsafe, Unibet and Betway.

Daily Profit: £6.67 (2up qualifying bets)
Daily Mug Bets: £0
Total daily profit: -£6.67

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

For those who are interested, my day started dancing around my front room to "Despacito" with my three kids.

Not the busiest day of Matched Betting for me today.
I had a lovely ComeOn reload of Bet £50 get £20 free (2x£10).

Also I did 2xBet365 2up bets. £250 on Bristol City at 4.6/4.6 and £1000 on Cardiff at 1.909/1.91. Bristol City lost but I locked in £64.05 on Cardiff at 1.04 as they went two up 10 minutes after half-time. My personal strategy with this offer is always to lock in straight away once a team goes two goals ahead.

The only other matched betting I did was to place some in-play mugs and continue some in-play challenges, I use very low odds for these challenges so they usually last quite a few bets even when they end up losing. This makes for a lot of mugs.

Daily Profit: £73.14
Daily Mug Bets: £14.73
Total daily profit: £58.41

Sunday, August 13, 2017

Not lots of Matched Betting for me today as I spent most of the day with extended family having a roast and a catch up whilst watching the football (COYS) and I took my little ones to watch Cars3 ( disaster but that is another story lol).

What I did do though was use my Betstars free bet from the golf offer on West Ham 12/13 for an overall profit of £10.67 from the offer. The qualifiers on golf were never too close but being allowed to place the free bet on anything really helped here.

Apart from that I just placed my Ladbrokes and Coral in-play bets.

Ladbrokes, I locked in a small profit on the Tottenham match (COYS) and punted over 5.5 goals on the Man U match for a big win but that lost.

Coral, I placed my free bet from Saturday's match and placed both my qualifiers but there was a technical issue so I couldn't place my free bet initially. As I am officially gubbed by Coral but still get a lot of free bets I didn't bother going on live chat and just let that one slide.

Daily profit: £22.35
Daily mug bets: £0
Total daily profits: £22.35

Saturday, August 12, 2017

First Saturday back with Premier League football and safe to say I was excited!!
Bet365 2up, Bet365 horses and continuing Accas are my focus this season on Saturdays.
PP do 2up as well of course but I am gubbed and heavily stake restricted, plus Bet365 prices are much much better.

Strategy

Morning

The first thing I noticed was that my Comeon Risk free bet that lost the night before had been returned to me in cash! That was a bonus! I bet it anyway and came out £5.14 up overall.

I then proceeded to place 2 more accas with William Hill, Winner and Titan and 1 more each with Ladbrokes and Vernons. All ending on different days and placed today because a) much more games if I start with Saturday's matches and b) I don't do much work on Sundays and Mondays if I can help it so wanted to set them up now.

8.30am is Pricewise time and I like to get on a few of these(as well as posting them for the forum). I hit some of my gubbed but not stake restricted accounts, such as Betway, as well as doing a couple on Bet365.
Total profit for me on Pricewise boosts this morning was £11.56

Upon checking my emails I had one from 888Sport giving me a £25 free bet to start the season with! That made me £18.20 very quickly, (EDIT the bet won so I mugged back quite a bit and ended up with £14.13 from it).

The rest of the mornings Matched Betting was spent getting on all the Bet365 races and starting to place Bet365 2up bets.

Afternoon

I continued to look for good matches for Bet365 2up and finalised my day with these stakes and odds matches.

£2000 Bournemouth 3.1/3.1
£500 Watford 7/7
£500 N.Forest 4.75/4.6
£200 Ipswich 3.1/3.1
£250 Sheff Utd 5.25/5.2

With Smarkets having 0% commission today, due to technical errors yesterday, I actually came away with a profit from my 2up qualifiers initially. I then mugged back the profit in small unlaid accas.

I placed my in play Coral risk free on Watford, which lost leaving me £2.81 down with a £10 free bet to come.
I then once again punted my £5 Ladbrokes in play free bet, and once again it won!! At 1-0 Watford I did "Both teams to score and a draw". This came in for £27.50 :)

Most of the afternoon was spent answering questions on the forum, but of course I was also monitoring the Bet365 horses and laying off accas.
I got 2 winners on the horses (Frankuus and Golden Apollo) making me an initial £31.40 profit with a £50 risk free bet still to come on the next day ITV Racing day.

I then backed my free bet from the Sunbets invite offer I got and punted the 2 scorecast free bets(both the punts lost). £6.52 profit was made from the offer in total.

Nottingham Forest went 2up and although I didn't notice it straight away I still managed to get on at 1.26 and make £500.40 from the lock in on my £500 stake!
You have to love 2up!
None of my other 2up bets came close to it today though.

I made absolutely nothing on the Bet365 free spins but the 2up made it a succesful day.

Chelsea losing hit most of my sequential lay accas pretty hard and as it is I will be closing out most of them at around break even.
I still have a few on that did not have Chelsea in them and hopefully I will get a couple wins in those to make some profit from them.
This season is not going to be all about accas for me though as previous ones have been.
A good day has been marred slightly at the realisation that without WH at £50 and the unlimited Coral Accas(especially when I was VIP getting £100 ones) that accas are not really the way forward for me this season.

I finish the day by doing the Coral and Ladbrokes in plays.
Ladbrokes I made £3.63 off Brighton 11/13 early on in the match (no punting this one this time) and Coral I do not yet know my result as I am writing this before the match has finished.

Profit

Daily Profit: £588.28
Daily Mug Bets: £0 (challenges or using profits already made and mentioned**
Total daily profit: £588.28**

Sunday and Monday entries will be posted Tuesday as I will be away from the forum until then.

Friday, August 11, 2017

The Premier League was back today!

It had been a long hard slog this summer for me with no major international football tournament and most extra place bookies now paying out at 1/5 so I am very happy that football is back! I know a lot of people who did very well this summer with tennis in plays and higher risk casino offers but they are not really my thing. I did well out of some of the horse racing festivals but my bread and butter is football so I am now ready to step up my matched betting again.

Let's address the Elephant in the room first, changes to Acca offers.
Obviously, I was disappointed that William Hill dropped their offer from £50 to £20 and also that Coral dropped their insurance offer altogether. Those two were my main acca bookies, particularly Coral. No point in dwelling on it though, still plenty of money to be made both from the acca offers that are still there and from other offers too.

It was nice to see a lot of offers in play on the Arsenal v Leicester match and I had some nice invite only offers in my inbox too so I knew I was in for a busy enough day. I check my emails morning, afternoon and night to make sure I don't miss any offer the bookies might send to me.

Strategy

Morning

I logged onto Bet365 and deposited £100 for the fantastic deposit bonus they had sent me by email. I do a lot of betting with Bet365 anyway and I know I will get through the wagering comfortably in the next 90 days (probably well within a week or two) just by doing my normal bets with them and their offers. So for me this was literally just a £100 profit they had given me.

I also placed my qualifier for the in-play offer whilst I was there. Arsenal to win 1.5/1.54. I did £200 though not £50, it looks muggier and was more in line with my normal betting with them. The qualifying loss of £6.58 will easily be swallowed up by the profit I will make. I then placed a bet for my continuing mug bet challenge with them before logging out.

Next I went to Betstars and placed my 2nd qualifier for the Bet £60 get £20 free golf offer. Matches weren't great and I ended up taking a £2.54 loss on Rickie Fowler, I just did the best match going at the time. Time is money and I wasn't going to spend ages, potentially hours, looking for a better one or to keep coming back and checking.

Then I went to Come On who had sent me a £10 risk free bet by email. I placed this on Leicester to return £7.78 if they won and lost me £2.22 with a £10 free bet to come if they lost.

Then I placed my Sun Bets qualifier, costing me 99p, for an invite offer they had sent me where I will get a £10 free bet, 2x£5 goalscorer free bets and some free spins.

Next I logged onto Ladbrokes and placed my qualifier for their in play offer.

Afternoon

I started the afternoon with the William Hill £5 bonus offer and came up dry.

Then it was Acca time!!

I placed an Acca with William Hill, Ladbrokes, Stan James, BetMclean, Winner, Titan, McBookie and Vernons.

I then checked the health of my accounts in the Account Health Check thread that I do and that was my afternoon of Matched Betting.

Evening

All about the Premier League being back.

First of all, WHAT A MATCH!! Three goals in the first half an hour, four by half time and seven overall! Great comeback by Arsenal (Up the Spurs, of course) and a very entertaining way for the Premier League to return!

The only player in my fantasy team was Rob Holding so not the greatest start for that for me, anyone with Vardy will have done well and I know a lot of people have Lacazette and he scored (though I rate Giroud as better than him).

Matched betting-wise I had 3 in play bets to place as well as plenty of in play mugs and challenge bets, so it was a busy time for me.

Of course any laying had to be done on Betfair due to Smarkets AGAIN failing to cope with the busy times. This is why I always have plenty of money in Betfair as a backup, Smarkets really fails at busy times..

Bet365 In Play I got Leicester 7/7.6 for £38 profit.
Coral In Play I got Leicester 6/7.4 for £6.48 profit
Ladbrokes In Play I actually just advantage played it.

I bet on Draw/Arsenal 5 minutes before half time when Leicester were winning 2-1. This actually came in at 8/1 so I made £35.

I am not suggesting everyone should do it this way but this is something I often do when I only have a small qualifying loss and the free bet is only £5. Especially with Ladbrokes in play odds.

Today's profit

For the daily profit totals I will only be including finished offers in here.
So I wouldn't count qualifying losses incurred on an offer today if the offer is not complete. I would count them in the daily total on the day I finish the offer.
Same with my mug bet challenges that I do(£10-£100 etc). I will only include them in the total if they lose on that day or hit profit target on that day.

Profit: £172.90
Mug Bets: £13.26
Total: £159.64