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Video Transcript
Hello and welcome to the fifth and final video of the Sports Arbitrage Guide fast track video series. So far we have created a Moneybookers account, we have funded bookmakers, claimed freebets and bonus money, and started match betting those freebets out and rolling that bonus money over. You now have everything in place in order to start calling yourself an arber – so the rest of this video we’re going to look at how you go about placing those arbs and make sure you’re thinking of the right things and doing everything as safely as possible.
Before we move on with that though, just look below the video to the usual assortment of links. You’ll find a link to CompareBookmakers.com with another four bookmakers that you can register at. And also in the alert services section you’ll find a link to an alert service which does not have a free trial and a link to the free trials page on Sports Arbitrage Guide. Now at this stage your current free trials are probably starting to run out, so you are going to need to make the decision whether you are going to try to survive off the free services that are available, which are usually of lower quality, or whether you want to move to a paid subscription service. So have a look around the alert services page of Sports Arbitrage Guide, compare some of the free trials, and figure out what is best for your situation.
Hopefully by now you have already seen a significant profit just through the freebets and bonus money that has been added to your accounts. Keep claiming this money as you open more bookmaker. This video series has already given you 21 bookmakers, but there are hundreds out there. As you find yourself limited in the bookmakers you are currently using – and this will happen – just move on to the next bookmaker. Just make sure that the next bookmaker that you move on to is a safe reliable one. There is a great article in Sports Arbitrage Guide about a process that you can go through to help eliminate the risk when you are doing this. And then there is also Sure Bet Bookies which is a great resource for identifying the next best bookmaker to open up based on the alert service you are using.
Now when it comes to placing arbs, hopefully you are already following the advice that has been given in the previous two videos which is to take your time and triple check everything. You’ll need to keep doing this until your skill and experience levels increase significantly. One of the aspects of placing arbs has to do with the order in which you confirm the two or three bets which make up the arb. Now I disagree with blanket statements which I had been taught along the lines of always place the favourite first or always place the underdog first – I don’t think that they ever really work. My advice is to always place the bet first which is at the bookmaker which is likely to deny your bet. The second priority is to place it at the bookmaker which you don’t know how it’s going to react to your bet.
So I’ll explain them a little bit better.
You’ve got a range of bookmakers out there that accept bets in a different way. Some of them tell you what your maximum bet will be – what they will allow – and some of them won’t. Some of them you will try and place the bet and then you get a confirmation screen which will tell you whether they will accept it or not. Some of them don’t tell you whether they are going to accept it or not – they expect you to place the bet – and then they tell you whether they have accepted it or not. These are the ones that you want to place the bet at first. Because, what happens if you have an arb between say Pinnacle Sportsbook – they tell you what the odds are, what the maximum bet acceptable is and they will give you a confirmation screen. They are very easy to use. And then you get someone like Bwin who don’t tell you what your maximum bet is going to be and won’t tell you whether you have placed the bet until after you have tried to place it.
If you place it at Pinnacle first, you lock the bet in, it gets accepted – you now have to cover the other side on Bwin and if you go to Bwin and place the bet second and you try and place $200 – you press the confirm button and then Bwin comes back saying sorry your bet has been denied, we will accept $50. It’s too late at this stage, you’ve already got this bet riding, this bet has been denied, you’re left open – you’re left exposed. The better move is to place the bet at Bwin first; Try and place $200, it gets denied they’ll accept $50. You can still close that bet at Pinnacle by just betting a smaller amount. So you still get a safe arb without leaving yourself exposed. That is the only reasonable way to order your bets.
Now the problem with this is being new you don’t know which bookmakers are going to accept bets certain ways until you have used them a couple times. So that’s why the second stage – the second part of this advice comes in, which is place the book which is least known to you. If you’re placing Bwin vs someone you don’t know at all, then place Bwin first because you know that they are a problem bookmaker (not problem as in bad, but I mean in accepting bets). They may deny your bet, you know that, so place them first. But if you are placing someone you don’t know vs pinnacle you know that pinnacle will accept a bet up to whatever they indicate – you know that that’s reliable, so place the unknown bet first.
They’re the two scenarios you have. If you have two unknowns or two limiting books, then that’s a pain in the butt and you’ve just got to ride it out you just got to place the two bets, pick one or the other, place it see what happens… that’s the most annoying situation, but you have to deal with that sometimes.
If you do find yourself in a situation where you have two or three bookmakers which are unknowns to you and you don’t know how they’re going to accept your bet… other factors that can help you determine which one to place first have to do with which bookmaker is most out of line with the rest of the market. So if you’ve got an arb between two books and you don’t know whether they’re going to accept your bets, what you need to do is look at an odds comparison service – or your alert service will hopefully have this feature – and if you know that the odds at this bookmaker are by themself and no other books are close to them and the odds at this bookmaker have three or four other books that are similar to them, then place this one first. It’s the most valuable one if this bet gets denied, then you can go to the next book which has the next set of odds available. That’s the safer way to go on that one.
No matter how well you apply these principles you will eventually find yourself stuck with one bet placed and the second or third bet being rejected. It’s inevitable, it’s part of arbing, what matters though is how you react to it. Never let the placed bets ride out. If you want to be a gambler and just, you know, try and make winnings through luck, then fine, you can do it; but if you’re here to do arbitrage – if you want to make long term profits, safely, guaranteed – guaranteed profitability for the life of arbing – then you need to lock in every arb, even if it’s a guaranteed loss. A guaranteed loss of 5% is better than the potential loss of everything that you’ve placed on the first bet. Never let a bet ride, always close it off.
Well that’s about all I have to say about that. So that pretty much marks the end of the fast track video series. The goal of the fast track was to take you from wanting to be an arbitrage trader, to a position where you are trading and able to continue trading for as long as you want. Hopefully we’ve achieved that goal sufficiently. All I can do from here is provide you with links to articles at Sports Arbitrage Guide which are relevant to your position. Primarily there is a link below to the article on how to spot palpable errors. Palpable bet error is the bane of every arb trader. The bookmakers can cancel any bet because they think they’ve made a mistake. Nothing you can do about it once they have decided to cancel your bet, but knowing how to avoid them is always helpful. And also I mentioned earlier about picking new bookmakers, a process to go through to try and verify that you’re not about to be ripped off by a dodgy bookmaker. It’s always important. They should help you as you continue to grow and develop in your arbitrage trading skill and style. You can’t stop learning when you’re an arbitrage trader. You’ve got to keep reading and studying and improving your methods and techniques. The market’s constantly changing and you’ve got to keep up with it, but from this position you’ve got everything in order, you’ve got the basics down and there is nowhere but up from here. Like I said in the last video, your income is 100% in your own hands now. You will only make as much money as you put in time.
So keep practicing, keep trying, keep learning new tricks, keep opening new bookmakers, keep learning to juggle your money between the different bookmakers so that its used most effectively and just keep practicing and doing your best to avoid the mistakes.
So I hope you’ve enjoyed the video series I hope you’ve learned a lot from it and it’s got you off to a good strong start into arbitrage trading. I’m always interested in hearing any feedback from any of you who have managed to follow through the series and follow its advice. I’d love to hear how it’s going for you, and hopefully I’ll see you around for many years to come making a good profitable home based living as an arbitrage trader. Best of luck and I’ll see you around.
