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25% Discount for all New SportsPunter Accounts

Posted by Aegist on February 14th, 2007

It is no secret that SportsPunter is my favourite alert service, so when I wrote to the SportsPunter Admin and asked what I could do to work with them some more and help them out, it was with surprise and great pleasure when I received a reply saying “Offer a 25% discount to all first time subscribers to SportsPunter.” What a guy. SportsPunter is already considerably cheaper than most other services available, they find more arbs than pretty much any other service, and they are the one long running service which continues to regularly upgrade, correct, and improve their service. And now, just because they can, they are offering 25% discount to Sports Arbitrage Guide visitors. How can any arber say no?
One note of caution though, they are most certainly a service for experienced arbers. If you are only beginning to look at arbitrage, I highly recommend you start out with one of the new services for a month or two while you learn how it works and learn to identify mistakes, palpable errors, and how to place trades safely. Part of the beauty of SportsPunter is that they draw arbs from the most far abstract combinations, hence the extra arbs (often of a good percentage return and lasting quite a while), but the problem with that is that there is also heightened chance of an error sneaking in. SportsPunter clearly says on its site that its service is for “punters that are either fairly experienced with betting, or experienced with Arbitrage Betting. “Sure Bets” are a feasible way to make ‘guaranteed’ profits over time. However, punter errors, discrepency between sportsbooks rules and not reading the sportsbooks’ fine print can result in lost profit. SportsPunter does not educate arb hunters - it is merely a service for providing information on potential arbitrage opportunities.”

If you want a safer service which only finds more standard arb types, then there are many of them listed on the Alerts page. Practice on them for a month or two on one of those, read the rest of SAG, ask questions in the forum, learn how it works, then convert to SportsPunter. SportsPunter is sort of the extreme alert service of the arbitrage world. It will go where other services dare not go. And that is one of the reasons why I love it.

Click here to register for the Surebet Alerts at SportsPunter with a 25% discount

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Alert Super Comparison - SBP, SP, NV, JT, AE

Posted by Aegist on February 9th, 2007

It is very hard to do anything else when you have 5 different alert services running at once, and very few if any filters on any of them. Just for the record.

Particularly when the Friday night NBA and NCAA games are all about to start. I get 3 or 4 alerts a minute. As great as that sounds, remember, I have no filters on, so it is only great if I have money in all of those bookmakers…which of course I don’t.

But regardless of this, the objective here is to simply compare many services at once. I have Nickel Vacuum, Sports Punter, ArbExpert, SureBetPro and Juice Trading all running at once, and I am just trying to get a feel for how each performs. And a few things stick out. Of the new services, ArbExpert is the only one which is really performing at this time. In fact, I dare say that it is even out performing the two longstanding arb services (SportsPunter and SBP). SBP seems to consistently have the longest list of arbs, with ArbExpert and Sports Punter on pretty even ground for second. Nicke Vacuum continues to only ever have one or two arbs at a time, usually low returns and more often than not with BetFair. Juice Trading did manage to find one arb during the basketball peak hour amongst the few bookmakers I used with them (they only have 9 to select from, and I don’t use all of them. If youdon’t have an account with the bookmaker, then Juice Trading can’t collect the odds for that bookmaker), but until they fix that european and american odds mismatch, their service is very very limited in its application.

Meanwhile, the usage of each alert service is very distinctive and most worthy of mention. ArbExpert and SportsPunter stand out as the best options in this regard too. What both of these services do which most don’t, is they clearly display the extra details which are often important to know with an arb. That is, you can see at a glance 1. The age of the arb, 2. How long until the arb is played out. Every alert service displays the Arb percentage, and they all with varying degrees of accuracy display the sport, country, and league the event is taking place in (although again, ArbExpert displays this most clearly because it displays the actual location for EACH bookmaker, not simply one single general heading). SBP has always irritated me in this regard. They have the most awkward display, everyone who uses it has surely thought exactly the same thing, and I have no idea why they haven’t fixed it…they make it actually difficult to figure out where the sport is being played and what league or tournament it is in. This is the sort of information you NEED to know in order to place your arb quickly!

With all of that said, I know for a fact that both Juice Trading and Nickel Vacuum are targetting their service at beginners at this stage. They are both focussing on simple sports, simple bet types, and focus on arbs which are in essence very hard to make a mistake on. And also, they are starting small and building up, hence the fewer arbs. It is definitely something worth noting about alert services, and something which I probably need to incorporate into the basic summary of each alert service on SAG; a rating system to indicate arbitrage experience required to safely use a system. SportsPunter is currently right up my list of favourite services, but the truth is, you wouldn’t want to start out with SportsPunter if you are just starting in arbitrage. They often find error arbs which you need experience to identify, and they find confusing bet type arbs, for instance they find “Home asian - Away - Draw” arbs (try doing the maths on them!!). ArbExpert seems to be much more reliable than SportsPunter in this regard, so again I guess that means ArbExpert is right up there. As usual, it looks like you need to pay for the highest quality.

ArbExpert - £100/month
SportsPunter - $75/month
SureBetPro - $139/month
Nickel Vacuum - $50/month
Juice Trading - $99 Once Off

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First Impressions of Juice Trading

Posted by Aegist on February 8th, 2007

Juice trading (JT) is actually one of the more novel arbitrage alert programs I have used. It seems like every other alert system uses XML feeds which the bookmakers make available for odds comparison websites to access and create traffic for the bookmakers, instead it logs straight into the bookmakers from your login details and collects the odds that are displayed to you should you be surfing the pages. After using many alert services, I can certainly see the advantage of using the displayed odds in this way. There are too many times I have had an alert service report odds only to go there and have them distinctly different, and yet the alert service continues reporting the wrong odds. In some cases I have seen services report odds on a sport which the bookmaker doesn’t even seem to be offering odds on! I suspect that some bookmakers may ‘display’ odds differently to what odds they have set in order to remove odds which are errors, or odds which they have decided to take no more action on, or for whatever other reason they might want to stop receiving bets on. I believe this is one of the failings of XML feeds (although there are many other advantages to using them).

How JT use this method of collecting odds, is to log in, scan the relevant pages for each individual bet type, collate the odds and pick the best odds for each side in each game and bet type, then list all of the results with the best return up the top. When I saw this output, I was impressed. I liked the fact that you could at a glance see the instant ‘best odds’ of each bet type in each game of NBA. And on the next refresh, the best odds for NCAA, and so on. Juice Trading provides a very good odds collection and comparison service for the purpose of finding arbs, and even more beneficial, good Bonus Hunting odds (as it also displays the negative arbs). I feel confident that when Juice Trading presents me with odds, I can go straight to that bookmaker, that game, and that bet type, and I can be confident that those odds will be accurate. I like that.

Unfortunately there are still a lot of bugs in the program. It is only early days for Juice Trading, and I expect these to be purged very quickly (mostly because they are critical). For instance, the most obvious one is that their calculator (which reports what percentage the arb is) doesn’t convert odds. I am not sure how this was overlooked in the development stage, but most of the results show -2% or so on the return, but some go to -50%, and that is usually because you are getting European odds against American odds. For example Canbet had the best odds at 1.714 for team A and BetCRIS had the best odds at +177 for Team B. The arbitrage there is actually -4.43%, but it was reported as around -30%. This calculating error held true for their calculator too.

So obviously I expect this error will be corrected before this post is even made, but other errors and tweaks really need to be made too. For instance, I don’t yet understand what determines how long the results are displayed for, but for some reason they will disappear randomly. For instance, the JuiceTrading software will collect the odds for NBA from each of the selected bookmakers and display them. It will then start collecting the odds for NCAA. At some (seemingly) random point in between the NBA results will disappear without warning, and you will be left with a blank screen while you wait for the NCAA results to be found. It is frustrating just how often I flick over to JT only to find a blank screen. Which raises another point, there is no audible alert, pop-up or any indication that it has finished collecting its odds and they are being displayed. Perhaps this is only the case because there have been no arbs so far, but even so a simple beep to indicate that there are more odds to look at (certainly an optional one!) would help. I’m quite certain no arber wants to sit at his computer watching software waiting for arbs. I certainly prefer to be doing other things and waiting for my software to TELL me when I need to be busy. So I certainly hope to see JT have some sort of an alert for positive arbs, some sort of option beep to alert people to new lines finished being collected, and having the previously collected odds at least displayed until the next set are displayed, preferably keeping them on the main screen, perhaps displayed below the current odds. Something, anything so that you don’t spend you time with zero information.

That, in short, is my initial impression and comments on JT. I am still to see an actual arb found though, so perhaps some of my concerns on alerts and the disappearance of odds is not a problem when actual arbs are found, but as I mentioned above, I really think that JT could be a very helpful tool for the new wave of Bonus Hunters that are entering the arbitrage marketplace. Getting the perfect arb while bonus hunting is not always possible, but having a complete list of all of the ‘almost’ arbs could help a bonus hunter find exactly the right odds for their bonus rollover without costing too much in losses.

Shane

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Nickel Vacuum - First Impression

Posted by Aegist on February 4th, 2007

Nickel Vacuum has a lot going for it, but it is still quite ‘young’. I really have high expectations for this alert service over the coming months as Adam continues to develop the program. He already has an extensive list of bookmakers, bet types, and sports that he is constantly adding to the service, plus there are a few improvements with the general function of the site which he is implementing which will result in a very nice arbitrage trading experience.

So although I have started off by listing the things which need to be improved with Nickel Vaccum, let me explain why I have high expectations: The admin of Nickel Vacuum, Adam, is very easy to get in contact with, and he is ready to take in constructive criticism and work to correct it and improve on it. That very simple thing means the potential for greatness is there. Plus, the Nickel Vacuum calculator is honestly the best arbitrage calculator I have seen so far. Adam has seriously taken all of the most important elements of arbitrage calculators, and put them all into this one simple “One Click” calculator which does all of the work for you, yet still allows you to control your bet amounts. Better than just describing it, you can play with it yourself in this mock version of the alert service: http://nickelvacuum.com/arb/mock.aspx Just click ‘calculate’.
So, in short, at this stage there is only limited useability for Nickel Vacuum as there are only a narrow field of sports and bet types being scanned for. However this limitation is being reflected in the price of only $50 CAD per month. Easily the cheapest alert service, and given time I am certain it will improve to become one of the best.

I will continue running Nickel Vacumm and see how it performs with regards to quality of arbs, reliability and the like and post more on here over the coming week or so.

Shane

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ArbExpert - First Impressions

Posted by Aegist on February 4th, 2007

I have had ArbExpert running for a few hours now, and played aorund with its settings and browsed through most of the website. I haven’t had an opportunity to explore how it reports arbs because there have not been any arbs at all (on any one of the 4 alert services I am currently running! When there are no arbs, you can’t blame the alert services!)

But the most apparent thing that strikes me about ArbExpert is the similarities between it and ArbitragePro. Aside from the obvious similarity in the names, ArbExpert also has a fulltime or a part-time pay by the hour system. It has a similar interface with the alerts (see the screenshot of arbpro here and the screenshot of arbexpert here) including the calculator, it has lamost identical filtering, specifically the ‘25% palpable error filter’ which I have seen nowhere other than ArbitragePro.

Having said that, these similarities are only superficial. I asked ArbExpert whether they are associated with ArbitragePro and they replied that they were in no way associated with them, only that they recognised ArbitragePro as one of the best in the market “(so far!)”. So clearly the creators of ArbExpert are trying to one-up ArbitragePro, which is reasonable enough. As of their date of release they have less bookmakers than ArbitragePro, but that is set to grow. On the other hand they have more sports, and possibly more bet types. At this early stage of trialing them I can’t comment yet on the quality of their arbs, the reliability or regularity, and especially since I don’t have access to ArbitragePro I can’t directly compare the two services, but thanks to the recent rush in alert services, I will be comparing this service with at least 3 other services, so quality of arbs and accuracy will certainly become apparent as soon as some arbs are actually produced.
One more thing that ArbExpert has done, unlike ArbitragePro but just like ZRA, is they have produced their own arbitrage based web browser. AEBrowser is available for download from their site, and I think it is free.

Give your own Feedback on ArbExpert here

See our basic ArbExpert Summary here

Or just go straight to ArbExpert now

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