Arbitrage Betting Guide Page 2
Example Of An Arbitrage Bet
The odds on Tottenham to win the league are 9 at the Bookmakers. The odds to lay Tottenham to win the league are 8.5 at the Exchange.
You make a £10 bet on Tottenham to win the league at the Bookmakers. From your matcher spreadsheet calculations, you then put down a Lay Stake of £10.65 at the Exchange.
If Tottenham win the league, you will have £90 returned to you at the Bookmakers (odds of 9 x £10 stake = £90). Therefore you have £80 profit here.
You also have to pay out at the Exchange, because Tottenham won the league. You pay out £79.88 (odds of 8.5 x £10.65 stake - %5 commission = £79.88). Therefore you have a loss of £79.88 here.
From the Bookmakers you had £80 profit, minus the £79.88 payout at the Exchange which leaves you with 12p profit.
To round things off, if Tottenham hadn't won the league, you would have lost your £10 stake at the Bookmakers. You would have won your stake at the Exchange though, of £10.12 (£10.65 minus %5 commission). Therefore you would have made a profit of 12pence at the Bookmakers. As you can see, both values are exactly the same (as both the bets were matched exactly).
A screenshot of the matcher.exe programme, showing the arb mentioned above. Note the Closeness % value has turned green, signalling that this is an arb.
The real money is made when you place a stake of more than £10, for example £1000. You would need to lay £1,065.09, but by the end of it you would earn £11.83, just for making two bets. However for this you would need a high Liability - you would need to have a lot of spare cash, incase you needed to pay out at the Exchange (£7,988.17 to be exact).
Important: When you place a large bet on an arbitrage opportunity at a bookmakers website, you will also need to lay this exact same bet, at the betting exchange. If the bet wins, you win a very large amount of money at the bookmakers, but you will also have to pay out a very large amount of money at the betting exchange - which isn't ideal. Therefore you will need a lot of spare money in your betting exchange account, just incase you have to pay out a large amount of money for a bet that wins.
Another Example Of An Arbitrage Bet
The odds on Man City to beat Arsenal are 4 at the Bookmakers. The odds to lay Man City to beat Arsenal are 3.5 at the Exchange.
You make a £100 bet on Man City to beat Arsenal at the odds of 4 at the Bookmakers. From your matcher spreadsheet calculations, you then put down a Lay Stake of £115.94 at the Exchange.
If Man City beat Arsenal, you will have £400 returned to you at the Bookmakers (odds of 4 x £100 stake = £400). Therefore you have £300 profit here.
You also have to pay out at the Exchange, because Man City won the match. You pay out £289.86 (odds of 3.5 x £115.94 stake - %5 commission = £289.86). Therefore you have a loss of £289.86 here.
From the Bookmakers you had £300 profit, minus the £289.86 payout at the Exchange which leaves you with £10.14 profit.
Again, if Man City had lost the match you would have lost your £100 stake at the Bookmakers. You would have won your stake at the Exchange though, which was £110.14 (£115.94 minus %5 commission). Lay stake of £110.14 minus the bookies loss of £100 = £10.14 profit. You can see this is exactly the same figure as the outcome above, where Man City won the match.
The value of £100 is quite large to use in a bet, some people may think, but when you are trying to earn money by arbing then the more you put into an arb, the more you will get out of it. The profits are multiplied by the size of the original stake in the matched bet, and although some people may shudder at the thought of placing so much on a bet, its perfectly safe aslong as you go about it the correct way. Read the Danger section below for more warnings...
You can see from the table below that for the above arb (4 and 3.5) the more money you are willing to use in an arb, the more you are going to earn.
| Bet Amount | Liability | Profit |
| £10 | £28.99 | £1.04 |
| £100 | £289.86 | £15.94 |
| £1000 | £2,898.55 | £159.42 |
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