Advanced F.A.Q.

1. Which Alert Service Should I Use?
2. How long does the average arb last?
3. Should I use bookmaker X/Y/Z?
4. Why use a major currency?
5. What can I do – Bookmaker X won't pay out/allow me to withdraw?
6. How can I avoid bookmakers cancelling my bets under their Obvious/Palpable Error rule?

Also see the Basic FAQ's in the "Introduction" section of the Guide.

1. Is Sports Betting Arbitrage Legal?
2. Should I pay for an E-book on Arbitrage Trading?
3. Do people really do this?
4. Why are you providing this information for free?
5. How much money can you make by doing this?
6. If I start with $XXXX, can I make $XXX per week?
7. How much money do I need to get started?
8. Can I arb from the USA?

Which Alert Service Should I Use?

Which ever one suits your needs best. I don't like recommending any particular alert service over any other because I am not intimate with how they all work, nor am I able to tell how the alert service will work in with your particular style of trading. The good alert services are constantly being updated and improved and worked on, and I have attempted to highlight 'the good ones' on the alert services page by keeping the "Inactive" alert services separate from the active ones. You will also find that the list is roughly in the order of the alert services with which I have the most contact with. If I am able to easily and readily make contact with an alert service owner, than that strongly indicatess to me that they are reliable and readily available to help out their customers and improve their product.

Should I use bookmaker X/Y/Z?

In order to answer this question you must figure out whether the bookmaker in question is firstly desirable, and secondly, reliable.

A desirable bookmaker will either produce a good volume of decent profit arbs (real ones!), or they will offer a good quality worthwhile signup bonus. Either of these qualities are enough for the book to be desirable because both provide profit for your time, and profit is the name of our game.

Finding a desirable book gives you a reason to investigate its reliability – never ever ever invest your money into a bookmaker betting account without first researching how safe that bookmaker is.

Firstly, see if the bookmaker is listed at SureBetBookies – what is its rating there, and what comments have been left for it? If the books is an A or B and has no negative comments, you can be pretty confident that it is a safe book straight away. If you want to be certain, or SBB lists it as a C or lower, you should go through the more thorough investigation to ensure your money is safe.

A thorough investigation, in my opinion, is to then refer to two different bookmaker rating sites and arbforum for several different opinions. SportsBookReview, BookmakersReview, TheOnlineWire and World Online Sports Bookmakers are good references for this purpose, and give a couple of different perspectives on the same book. Then go to ArbForum and search the forum (make sure to select 'All Time' when searching) for the sportsbook in question – read what is said. Similarly, go to the SBR Forum and search that forum too – read what they say.

With a good range of opinions on the subject, it is now up to you to make a decision...

How long does the average arb last? How fast should I be to guarantee arb placement?

Arbs can last anything from second(s) to days. Most arbs will be gone within 2 minutes. One problem with timing arbs, is that you really don't know when the arb was actually created - all you can know is when your alert service alerted you to it, or when you found it. There is a technological limitation to how often alert services can scan each individual bookmaker and how often the updated odds list and calculations can be done and sent out to their users. Sometimes arbs are gone before you receive the alert. Sometimes arbs never even existed, it's just that it downloaded the odds from one bookmaker seconds before that bookmaker changed their odds, and then downloaded the already changed odds from another bookmaker. Because their is a gap between the odds feed from each of the two bookmakers, it looks like an arb, but the odds never actually existed online at the same time.

There is no such thing as a perfect arbitrage alert service because there is no such thing as a perfect bookmaker or perfect odds data feed. You simply have to work with the tools available, and when it comes to having a realistic time from to 'guarantee' placement of an arb - you cannot. There is only one answer to how fast you need to be - As fast as you can be.

Why use a major currency?

A full detailed answer to this question can be found in the Sports Arbitrage Guide Blog in the article titled: The Advantages of Using a Single Major Currency (coming soon!)

What can I do – Bookmaker X won’t pay out/allow me to withdraw?

A full detailed answer to this question can be found in the Sports Arbitrage Guide Blog in the article titled: What to do When a Bookmaker Won’t Pay Up...

How can I avoid bookmakers cancelling my bets under their Obvious/Palpable Error rule?

A full detailed answer to this question can be found in the Sports Arbitrage Guide Blog in the article titled: Palps – How to Spot Obvious Errors