Horse Racing, greyhounds and snooker specialist with thirty years experience of writing about sport across multiple platforms. A QPR and Snooker fan
Almost every day of the week if you look around you can see bets where you can guarantee a profit by placing simultaneous bets at different prices with different bookmakers.
This is called Arbitrage Betting and remember this is different from dutching .
Arbitrage is becoming more and more popular every day, which means the bets are getting harder to find.
In the day before online betting, you could easily find 1 arb bet every day of the week in sports like Tennis, Snooker, Darts, which don't have a draw option.
As long as you had telephone accounts with the bookmakers concerned you could place them
Simply stand in a shop and ask if that price is still available and then phone another bookmaker simultaneously.
Many of these arbitrage opportunities occur when you can only have 2 outcomes although from time to time they do appear on things like football matches, but they are very rare.
A few years ago it was much easier to find these bets every single day of the week, but with online betting and Betfair it's getting harder to find these events but they are still available.
The first edition of the Racing Post or old Sporting Life were the best places to find these bets but now they also appear on odds comparison sites.
You should always check all bookmakers as prices can vary considerably.
Tennis Arbitrage Example
| Player | William Hill | Betfair | Bet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Roger Federer | 4/7 | 5/4 | £40 @Betfair |
| Andy Murray | 5/4 | 4/7 | £40 @William Hill |
Let's say we look at a Tennis match between Andy Murray and Roger Federer, most of the bookies might go 4/7 Federer and 5/4 Murray but you might occasionally get a bookie offering 4/7 Murray and 5/4 Federer.
This is when you would strike, you could happily back Federer @ 5/4 for £40 with 1 bookie and back Murray @ 5/4 for £40 with another bookie.
Your total outlay would be £80 but you are guaranteed to collect £90 no matter who wins.
That's a guaranteed 10%+ profit on 1 single outcome.
You can see similar bets on daily snooker matches and many other sports.
Also, when looking at say a Tennis match, check the set scores at all the bookies as on the odd occasion you can see a 5-10% profit when picking all correct scores for split stakes at certain bookies.
However, speed is of the essence as the big arb betters normally spot these mistakes quickly and pounce early.
Whatever betting system you use good luck in your hunt for value opportunities.
