Sports Arbitrage Guide's Blog

New Arbitrage Spreadsheet Available for Download, and Aegist AFK

Thanks to someone enquiring about the old spreadsheet which I had made available for download several years ago in the downloads section of SAG, I have decided I should update that spreadsheet to my own more current version. So if you go to the downloads page now, you will find the old version, and the newer improved version.

The more recent version has two tabs to it. The first tab is to track your bookmaker balances. A list of bookmakers are already present – these are not meant to be recommendations or anything like that. They are just bookmakers which I have had there for one reason or another over the years. Some of them have their tennis rules indication in the far left column (check to make sure this is still current before assuming it is correct!), and some of them have mirror URL’s indicated (so if the website is down, you have an alternative to try).

The second tab is for the arbs themselves. There are some examples up the top to give you an idea of how it should roughly work. You only need to fill in the Bookmaker, the odds and the bet on each side (and the draw if required), and it will calculate the rest for you. The final outcome is determined when you enter U, F, D, B, N, etc in the second column from the left. What each of these mean are explained in ‘Comments’ in the top section (just hover over the cells with red triangles in them).

This spreadsheet is far from optimal. There are a lot of things with it which I would like to improve myself, and I am sure there are far better designs out there. This just does the job for me, and that is all I offer. So if you don’t like it, don’t use it

The thread which inspired me to upgrade this spreadsheet can be found on ArbForum in the Newbie Questions section – Excel Spreadsheet for Logging Arbs. If you have any questions about how to work this new spreadsheet, pls just post your questions there (or in the comments section of this blog if you prefer).

Download New Arbitrage Trading Log Spreadsheet here.

Aegist AFK

In other news, I will not be around until September. I will be going to Madagascar for 2.5 months to go trekking through the Jungle. Some of my readers may be familiar with one of my other websites, TDMSKP.com. I will be trekking through Madagascar taking photos and notes of my journey, and when I get back, you better believe there will be photos, videos and new track notes for interesting things to do in Madagascar!

So apologies in advance for not being contactable for the next almost 3 months, but they don’t have much internet connectivity in Madagascar at all, let alone in the national Parks!

So, as usual, Good Luck with your arbing adventures – I’ll see you later

Shane

read morePosted on: Friday, June 12, 2009

Gold Nuggest Invest and Pegasus Group Australasia

Just another post about two more companies which have recently come to my attention – GoldNuggetInvest and Pegasus Group Australasia. Gold Nuggest Invest is actually a typical HYIP, and it’s connection to arbitage is probably only in claim. What they offer is clearly absurd, and only possible in the realm of Ponzi – they promise a risk free 6% return per WEEK. Yeah right. This sort of investment scheme is common in the world of ‘HYIP’s and anyone reading this who finds themselves considering ‘investing’ in such a scheme, then please spend some time reading about what HYIP’s are and their history. You will quickly find that there is a long history of getting people in only to disappear with all of their money. Most important thing to know about HYIP’s, is that every single one of them has had a loud cheersquad proclaiming how great their HYIP is and how they have been paid and how much money they have made etc. This in no way means that the HYIP is not a ponzi – in fact it is the one thing common between all Ponzis, because without new investors, there is no way for the ponzi to continue paying out the old investors.

Someone emailed me about GoldNuggetInvest to ask me if I thought what they claimed was possible, and in that email they indicated that their investigation had not found any negative information on them.  I know how easy it is to research someone and only find positive feedback and good news about them – but this information is not helpful. This is why whenever I start researching a company or investment scheme, the first thing I do is google the companies name with the word Scam or Rip Off after it. I find this tends to very quickly and easily highlight any complaints about the company you are investigating. Don’t just trust the good news, and the links provided by the promoters of the company – go looking for the dirt directly. I will have to write an article on this topic alone I think…

I have also been recently contacted about Pegasus Group Australasia. This company operates out of Brisbane QLD, and sells arbitrage software for $16,000. I have not seen the software myself, but the person who I spoke with about it said that they company offered to discount the package to the low low price of $9200, and even better than that, offered to accept only $2300 upfront and have the rest paid off from their trading profits.

I don’t know how good the software is, it could be the best on the market (they all claim to be, this one might as well claim it too), and my basic complaint will remain the same as it always has. An alert software is a SERVICE. It is an ongoing commitment of resources. It requires continual adjustments, upgrades and attention to detail. Bookmakers change, betting markets change, sports change…everything is in flux. In order for there to be an incentive for a company to continue to provide assistance, support, and continual upgrades and improvement to their software to get through all of these changes, there simply MUST be an ongoing service fee associated with the software – single upfront fees are not viable business models.

If the company offering the software is a good company, then you should feel absolutely no pressure and no rush, because they should be around for a long time. If they are not, then you have saved yourself a lot of lost money, and if they are, then you don’t need to rush into purchasing their software. If they claim to be only taking in a few customers before closing their doors, then you should be skeptical of that claim, because they are basically saying that they are going to stop all of their cashflow! What will keep them in business after they stop taking new customers???? What incentive do they then have to maintain the software for their old customers???

Singe upfront payments for arbitrage alert software simply don’t make fiscal sense.

read morePosted on: Sunday, May 17, 2009

RebelBetting Alert Service Beta Release

RebelBetting has opened up their new arbitrage alert software to beta testing. You can download and use their alert service software free for a limited time while they collect user feedback, fix any bugs, and try to generally improve the service according to user demand.

Simon, the creator of RebelBetting, has created a thread on ArbForum for discussion of the Beta release, and feedback from the users. You can also provide feedback to them directly through a form on the RebelBetting website.

Find out more about the beta release and download it yoruself  on their website: http://rebelbetting.com/

read morePosted on: Friday, April 17, 2009

ArbSeek Uncontactable

A really quick post this time. ArbSeek has been uncontactable for over a month now. I have personally been unable to contact them, while there have been a couple of comments on ArbForum complaining about being able to activate their accounts after making payments.

So please do not make any payments to ArbSeek at this time until they are definitely shown to still be active. I will be moving them to the extinct alert service list in the near future if things do not change.

More news will follow on this subject as I get it. In the meantime, the final pages have been added to the Arbitrage Trading section of SAG, and there are plans to make a few other changes to the alert service listing, a few improvements to the accessories and downloads pages in the Components section, and then eventually a complete renew of all of the content on SAG (no significant change, just a bit of a proof reading and improvement to overall layout and readability

read morePosted on: Friday, April 10, 2009

WTS (World Trade Systems) Arrests Made

Finally, some ‘good’ news on the Arbitrage investment scam scene. Police have arrested the director of WTS and investigated 4 of their staff members. It is also suggested that more arrests are going to be made in other scam operations in the gold coast.

This is a great result for the members ripped off who have invested so much time into lodging complaints with ASIC and the police and doing everything they could to bring about justice to the scammers. However, even with this great result for justice, it still seems unlikely that anyone will be getting their money back.

WTS was first heavily discussed on ArbForum back at the end of 2007 – strong warnings against investing were given there at that time: WTS On the gold coast again. This shortly followed the article I wrote offering general advice to steer clear of any such operations : Investing in a Sports Arbitrage4 Investment Fund – Some advice. I simply point this out in case there are any other new scams operating, and people are investigating them now, and wondering whether – ‘maybe this one is different…?’. It isn’t. The general warning I wrote in August 2007 is just as true now as it was then – read it, and heed its advice. Avoid arbitrage investment scams. If they worked, they wouldn’t be asking for your money.

The current discussion on ArbForum is surrounding the arrests: WTS arrests finally – others to come. You can also find a link to the news article published in the Sunday Mail in the second post on that thread.

And lastly, I don’t think I have linked to this site before, so don’t forget to check out Sports Arbitrage Scams if you are investigating your own little scam…

read morePosted on: Monday, March 9, 2009

What to do When a Bookmaker Won’t Pay up…

Inevitably we will all find ourselves worried that a bookmaker doesn’t want to pay us. Hopefully it will be because we made a mistake ourselves (which we can easily fix) and not because the bookmaker doesn’t have our money any more! (or worse, DOES have our money and simply wants to keep it). So lets look at how to resolve this problem…

Check YOU Aren’t the Problem

Before anything else, you really have to make sure you haven’t made the mistake which has led to this problem. Don’t start off with the assumption that the bookie is a crook and they are trying to steal your money – it will only make this process harder.

First, read any information that you can find on the bookmaker website that describes the steps you need to take before you attempt to withdraw. For example, many bookmakers will require scanned documents to be sent to them to prove you are who you claim to be, and that you live where you claim to live. They might want a scanned copy of photo ID, a utility bill (at the address where your betting account is listed at), a scan of the credit card you used to deposit with (if you used one), or sometimes all three of these.

In other instances, you may be expected to have bet all of your deposit at least once through, or reach a rollover requirement for a bonus you had claimed – the bookmaker shouldn’t hold your money in these cases, but most will not provide your withdrawal straight away but instead ask you if you are certain you want to withdraw early and pay some associated fee or forfeit your bonus – so check your email spam box and your in-house bookmaker message system to see if this has happened.

If you are confident that you have everything in order to enable you to withdraw, then you need to check to make sure you have provided them with the right withdrawal information. You can’t always withdraw using the same method you have deposited with, so make sure you are able to withdraw via the method you want, and make sure you have entered your account number, or whatever, correctly.

Check for Miscommunication

Many withdrawal problems may come from the fact that a bookmaker has requested some information, or some action, but either they have not been very clear with the request or you have misunderstood the request. The result of this is to leave you waiting for them to do something, while they are waiting for you do something – they forget about the situation and you assume they are avoiding paying up.

If in doubt, always go back and read through all of the emails you may have exchanged with the bookmaker in question. Also do a search of your spam inbox if you have one to make sure no crucial emails were missed.
If no emails have been exchanged at this point, be sure to remember this point as you begin to exchange emails – always ask for clarification if in doubt. Don’t try to guess.

Open a Friendly Dialogue

Assuming you have given the bookmaker a reasonable amount of time to make the payment (most good books will make the payment within a few days, but about a week is a reasonable amount of time to allow room for errors or genuine problems), you should send an email to customer service and explain your situation (calmly), and ask for someone to help resolve the situation and settle your account as soon as possible or explain the delay. Don’t demand anything or be rude about it, give them an opportunity to deal with a pleasant customer who they won’t mind helping out.

Persist with the friendly dialogue as long as is appropriate. If they offer a good reason, then take their word for it, and give them an appropriate amount of time to resolve the genuine problem before writing again and asking if the problem has been resolved and if you should be expecting your payment. Exactly how to handle this stage will vary completely from situation to situation, but if the bookmaker offers bad reasons, then try to call them out on it. If they repeatedly offer different reasons and seem to be stalling your payment, then you need to decide when the ‘friendly’ has gone on for long enough and move on to the next stage!

Make an Ultimatum

If you get to this stage, then you may have a real problem. If you have done everything right, been really nice about it and given the bookmaker plenty of time to fulfill his end of the bargain, then it is time to let the bookmaker know that if you don’t receive your money within the next 3 days, then you will go to the various major online sportsbook review services, and any appropriate governing bodies with your complaint.

Give them a specific period of time to make your payment and/or reply. Let them know that if no money or adequate reply is received, you will be contacting the appropriate governing body (this will very from bookmaker to bookmaker) and all of the major online bookmaker review sites to seek their assistance and lodge a general complaint about the service provided by this bookmaker.

If no money has arrived in the designated period of time, move on to the next step.

Contact the bookmaker review sites and any governing bodies

Exactly which site to contact will depend on where the book is registered, and which bookmaker review sites acknowledge its existence. Sports Book Review and The Online Wire are both very large well established websites that have a lot of influence over US facing books. Bookmakers Review and World Online Sports Bookmakers have a more global outlook and tend to get more of the smaller European, British and Asian books in their ratings guides. So if your bookmaker isn’t rated at SBR, it is not likely that SBR will be much help to you, nor would BMR be much help if your bookmaker isn’t rated with them. If your bookmaker isn’t rated at any of these rating websites – you really shouldn’t be betting with them in the first place – what were you thinking?!?

See FAQ Should I bet with this bookmaker?

Exactly how you contact the bookmaker review sites can be done one of two ways, and you will have to decide this based on your circumstances. If you think you still have a chance of getting your money (because the book is well known, has a reputation to maintain and/or has a C or better rating on average), then usually the best thing to do will be to go to the most appropriate bookmaker review site and submit a complaint/assistance request form or email the site owner with your problem. Then see if they are able to negotiating on your behalf with their stronger position of power.

If this first option still yields no results, or if you don’t think you have a chance in the first place based on your ‘friendly dialogue’, the only thing left to do is to contact all of the ratings sites and submit your complaint to all of them. Hopefully, this will create enough negative publicity for the book that they will really regret screwing you around and find themselves heavily pressured into apologising and paying you your withdrawal in an effort to reduce the negative publicity.

Resources:

1. SBR Sportsbook Complaint Form
2. BMR Complaints Page – information and directions for contact
3. WOSB Sportsbook Assistance Contact Form
4. TOW Dispute Assistance Page – email contact provided

Hope!

There is no way to guarantee payment, but this is the best way I know of to give yourself the best chance of receiving payment. If the bookmaker is genuinely suffering from financial hardship, then unfortunately there is nothing that can be done to help – they can’t pay money they don’t have. If you are really lucky, they may find the money after some time and still complete the payment – but this is rare.

How to Avoid the Problem to Begin With

The reality of the situation is that some online sportsbooks and casinos are run by criminals who will have no problem stealing money from people. Your job as an arber is to minimise your risk by avoiding books that might fall under that category. As well as that, some honest books will go bankrupt from time to time. Again, you need to minimise that risk to the best of your ability by never allowing too much of your bankroll to end up in any one bookmaker, to watch out for warning signs of bookmaker collapse (watch chatter on forums, postings on bookmaker review sites, and any delays in payment processing etc.), and to stick with highly reputable books (well regulated ones too – for example Australia has strict regulations ensuring no bookmaker will ever close down and not be able to pay all of its players).

Everything outside of those two scenarios though, you just have to deal with to the best of your ability, along the lines described above. By doing so, you should usually get your money back by just being patient and diligent.

read morePosted on: Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Palps – How to Spot Obvious Errors

The obvious/palpable error clause is present in every bookmaker you will find online, and it is the bane of all arbitrage traders. It basically states that if the bookmaker makes an obvious error in setting or accepting a bet, then it has the right to void that bet at any time. Any bet which is voided (or likely to be voided) under this rule is commonly called a ‘Palp’. Most bookmakers are honourable enough to only void palps before the event starts, but some bookmakers will cancel bets mid-match, while some of the dodgier ones will actually cancel bets after the match is completed (another good reason to avoid dodgy sportsbooks).

 

If only all palps were this obvious…

The consequences of placing a bet on a palp are twofold…

Firstly, if the bet is voided you will be left with an open bet; you will need to search for a new set of odds to cover the voided bet in order to maintain the arb. You will either be able to cover the voided bet with significantly lower value odds (locking in a small guaranteed loss),  or you will be unable to find odds to cover the voided bet and be left with an open bet (leaving to chance a large loss or large win).

The second major consequence of placing a palp, is that it identifies you to the bookmaker as a potential ‘sharp’ or arbitrage trader. You are in effect openly admitting to them that you are going to use them for their weak lines (odds higher than they probably should be), and take full advantage of any weakness they show – without mercy. Most bookmakers will respond to this by limiting your account to relatively small bet volumes to help protect themselves against the losses they will face at your hands. Losing key bookmakers to tiny bet limits can be particularly frustrating.

How to avoid Palps

So with good reason to try to avoid placing palps, the trick is in spotting them. Exactly what constitutes ‘obvious’ is always left undefined by bookmakers, and when the clause is enacted usual varies a lot from bookmaker to bookmaker. The best we can do as arbers is follow a few guideline rules until experience kicks in and makes it much easier to just recognise when a bet is a palp rather than great value.

Some of the guidelines below will only apply to two way arbs (two team no draw bets, asian handicaps, over/under, etc). This should be quite obvious in each example as only the ‘two’ odds will be referred to. Obviously the two way specific guidelines are no good for when dealing with 3-way arbs.

Compare Odds with the General Marketplace

The first step is to simply look at the marketplace – compare the odds of your arb with all of the other odds available at other bookmakers. Most decent alert services will allow you to view all odds for the bet you are looking at with a simple click, but if they don’t you can use other free odds comparison services for this function. You are probably looking at a palp if one of your sets of odds is clearly out of line with all of the other bookmakers, while everyone else has a general agreement about the odds. If there is a wide range of odds and your odds are just the best of that range, then that is probably a good arb.

Exactly what makes your odds ‘clearly out of line’ is not easy to define and is something which you will come to know with experience (it will probably help to look at the marketplace for every arb you place, so you can regularly see what a good arb looks like in comparison to all of the other bookmakers). It is impossible to give a definite value difference because of how odds work – the difference from 1.10 to 1.20 is actually very large, while the difference from 10.00 to 12.00 is really quite small. So the value differences of 0.1 vs 2.0 are misleading. Percentage difference is more useful, but still not completely reliable for the same reason; comparing odds of 2.00 to odds of 4.00 is a 100% difference, but so are odds of 250.00 vs 500.00. In the first case, if the market agrees the odds are around 2.00, then the lone book with odds of 4.00 is without doubt a palp. In the second case, if the market agrees the odds are around 250.00 then the single book with odds of 500.00 is probably fine.

Underdog and Favourite vs. Close Game

Another strong indicator of error is finding an arb where the odds seem to disagree as to whether the game in question is going to be a close game (odds near 2.0), or a game with a clear favourite and underdog (one team well below 2.0, and one team well above 2.0). For the purpose of providing a rough guideline, anything between 1.85 and 2.25 indicates a close game, while anything outside that range indicates a clear favourite and underdog. Arbs should always be between odds that indicate a clear underdog vs a clear favourite, or they should be between odds of two close teams.

If you find an arb where one bookmaker offers odds of 2.5 for one team, it means they think that this team is a clear underdog. If the other side of the arb is 1.9, that means this bookmaker thinks their team has about a 50-50 chance to win (not a clear favourite or underdog). In order for these odds to be real, it would mean the bookmakers don’t just disagree on the correct odds for the game, it means they completely disagree on everything about the game. In this age, such a thing really doesn’t happen.

The only possible explanation for this example which doesn’t involve an obvious error in odds setting is that there has been a major swing (MVP of favourite team injured, for example) and one of the books moved their odds faster than the other one (this is what arber dreams are made of btw).

The point of this guideline, is to simply give you another indication that something might be wrong, and to go looking for the cause of this discrepancy. The section below describes a number of the common errors to look for.

Spotting the Actual Error in a Palp – Typos and Transposed Digits

 

An easy mistake to make…

In a way, all palps should come down to this – that is what the ‘obvious error’ is ideally referring to; someone accidentally typed a 2.5 instead of a 1.5 and the typo should be obvious to anyone looking. Unfortunately, not all typos are quite that obvious. If the bookmaker meant to set their odds at a relatively low 2.70 compared to the market average of 3.0 with a high of 3.35, but accidently typed in 3.70 instead, you could easily think that this book was simply the best option available and miss the obvious error.

So a constant thought when checking out an arb is to quickly run through a range of likely typos and transposed digits. Look at the general marketplace, and work through some of these examples of common errors, and ask whether the odds would look more reasonable in each instance:

1. Simple number substitution

Like the example above, simply typing one number when a different was meant. So if the odd is 3.6, compare it to the marketplace and see whether 2.6 is more in line with the norm. It probably isn’t worth doing that same exercise with any numbers after the decimal point though, because you will be left second guessing every arb if you do that.

2. Swapped Teams/Outcomes

This one is usually pretty obvious because both odds in your arb will be above 2.00, which should never happen in 2-way bets except for when the game is really close, and both sets of odds are right around 2.

3. Swapped Handicap
   

Nearly always the underdog will be given a positive handicap (+1.5 goals for example) in an effort to even the odds (bring them close to 2.00). So if you see a + handicap on the favourite (and the odds are still around 1.9-2.0), the bookmaker has probably accidentallyswapped the – for a +.

4. Swapped + / – Sign in US Odds

US Bookmakers will usually set their odds in the US format (+110, -110), so it is possible for a favourite with its negative indication on the odds to be accidentally entered with a plus, so what should be entered as -230 (1.43) might be accidently entered as +230 (3.30). So even if you are not working with US odds, remember that the bookmaker might have made an error in setting the odds in US mode, which will then be automatically converted to whatever odds you like to work in.

There are more errors than these four, but these are the major ones and give you a solid basis to figure out other ones. You will probably spot more as you look around at odds provided by your alert service.

As an educational exercise, go out of your way to inspect the obvious palps your alert service sends you. During a quiet period look for any 20%-80% arbs which have been reported by your service recently and take the time to look at the marketplace and the bookmakers themselves and see if you can spot exactly what is wrong – figure out what error has been made. You never know, you might find a real 20% arb which you otherwise would have let slide on the assumption it was going to be a palp .

Conclusion

Eventually spotting palps becomes second nature. Until then, these guidelines will help you spot them. Follow the advice above to regularly look at the general marketplace of any arbs you place as well as any particularly large percentage arbs which you would normally assume to be a palp without actually looking. If you keep exposing yourself to good arbs in comparison to the marketplace, and palps in comparison to the marketplace, you will start to get a feel for it pretty quickly.

Good luck, and may every voided bet you get stuck with leave you with a winning bet, rather then a losing one!

read morePosted on: Friday, February 13, 2009

Bonus Hunting and Matched Betting Guide Added

The latest content added to the Arbitrage Guide section of SAG is a detailed walk through of how to handle your bonus money and freebets claimed while registering with all of your bookmakers when arbing. Three pages were added in total for this explanation, first a brief introduction to the process, then an explanation of ‘Stake Returned’ bonuses followed by the final page on ‘Stake Not Returned’ freebets, and how to do ‘Matched Betting’.

• Claiming Bonus Money While Arbing
• Claiming Stake Returned (SR) Bonuses
• Matched Betting – Claiming Your SNR Bonus Money

Enjoy!

read morePosted on: Wednesday, February 11, 2009

More Content Added to the Guide

Hello again everyone. I hope you all had a great holiday break and had some time to relax and enjoy yourselves.

To start of the new year I have added some more content to the Arbitrage Trading section of SAG, going into details of how a beginner can get started with arbitrage, systematically working through E-wallet set up, Alert service selection, and bookmaker selection and funding.

More content is still to be added. Shortly I will be adding a detailed walk through of placing a trade, followed by an advanced F.A.Q., an Arbitrage Glossary, and a range of topic specific articles (these can be seen referred to in the new pages, although they haven’t been written yet…)

Naturally the methods I am revealing in this section are not the only methods available. I have no doubt that other traders will go about setting up and trading differently; some may be better, some will be worse. Regardless of that though, I have never seen this level of detail available anywhere else. Not even in E-books which I have got my hands on in the past. It shocks me what crap people will put into an e-book, and then charge money for people to read it – it is offensive. So I hope you all appreciate the new content and if it does help you in someway, then please always think of SAG and SureBetBookies whenever you are about to register with a new alert service and/or bookmaker, and use our links. Those links are the only things keeping this website going, and operating completely free.

Thank you all for your support, and I look forward to continuing to improve SAG and SBB, and doing my best to help anyone out who asks for it

Shane

read morePosted on: Wednesday, January 7, 2009

SAG Website Updates

I have been as active on SAG as I can be lately. I have updated the alert service listing, moving a number of the alert services into the Inactive section, and adding one new alert service to the list: ArbMachine. More work does need to be done though to tidy a few details up.

More interestingly for most readers, I am actively working on the final section of SAG – the Arbitrage Trading section, where I will go through the process of setting everything up for trading, and how to do most of the things required for arbitrage. This section won’t reveal everything you could possibly know about arbitrage – I don’t have that sort of knowledge, and I doubt anyone does. What this section will attempt to do, is help people through the setting up stage, and the accident prone early days. It will attempt to help explain the theory behind placing each trade in more detail, help out control money management, and also help prepare for some mistakes which might be made.

A lot of people are contacting me lately asking about help getting started with arbitrage, and about what bookies to use, what alert service etc, and a few people have asked for private tuition. I am not running private tuition courses at this point in time, and I probably never will. Ideally, this guide should provide all that you could need to get started, and any course I would run, would only restate what I have already put into this guide. If you can’t get started with the copious amounts of information freely given to you on this website, then maybe arbitrage isn’t the right option for you.

That being said, I am still happy to respond to questions and help out people having trouble where I can, as always.

read morePosted on: Tuesday, November 4, 2008