After an unsuccessful attempt to place bets, I decided to analyze the topic of surebets. What is surebet / arbitrage?

Surebet is a situation when a bettor can make a profit regardless of the outcome by placing one bet per each outcome with different betting companies.
The simplest surebet is called 2-way arbitrage. Only two (opposite) outcomes are participating here. It means, if one bet is lost, the other one certainly wins. The bettor is getting a profit regardless of the game’s result because it earns on the differences in the odds.

Just look at the example below:

On 2.5 Over/Under Goals market, 1xBet bookmaker set out odd 1.57 for expecting more than 2 goals in this match. On the other side, Asianodds & Pinnacle bookmakers set out odd 2.86 for expecting 2 or fewer goals. As the screenshot (taken from https://www.oddsportal.com/ ) shows payout is 101,4%, which means that you can earn 1,4% whatever the outcomes are. The simplest way to make calculations is to use a free online tool, which will do the job for you, like https://en.surebet.com/calculator:

Is it difficult to find surebets? Yes and no. The inconvenience by looking for yourself is that it is time-consuming.

I tested various online tools for this purpose, but I soon realized that there is one tool that has an advantage over the rest -> https://en.surebet.com/ (Note! The link I gave is an affiliate link, which means that if you register through it and buy some paid service, I will get paid as well. The price for you will be the same, but it will help me cover the costs of hosting a blog. I want this blog to be transparent so things, that I recommend here like tools, or sites that have value for me, which I benefited from and thanks to which my current trading is at the higher level. I hope that my advice will also be useful to you 🙂 ). It is the best free tool for searching surebets with an up to 1% profit.

The most important thing is that it presents ongoing/current events, while other tools included a lot of expired thus not valuable at all. Another pro of this tool is the transparent interface, thanks to which you can easily filter the bookmakers with the best odds. If you think 1% is a small ROI then you can buy any of the following plans: https://en.surebet.com/plan/overview. I personally used the Professional option because I was only interested in surebets.

Returning to my adventure, I will tell you how I earned 1500 pounds and I was able to cover the losses resulting from gambling (if you did not read the previous article, here is the link to how I lost money).

The way to earn was simple. I registered with several popular bookmakers which had welcome bonuses. I did it one by one, i.e. when I chose William Hill, I didn’t register anywhere else, because I didn’t want to risk non-fulfillment of bonus conditions criteria adopted by the bookmaker, e.g. 1 month of turnover. Welcome bonuses for recreational players were from 25 to 100 pounds most often. What does recreational mean? Every bookmaker considers their players’ idiots to put it simply! Their policy is that everything is fine when you lose money, but when you win you become a problem for them. Most bookmakers limit their players who, according to them, are professionals. If there is a suspicion that bettor constantly wins or even loses based on the wrongly listed course they mark him or her as a sure bets player. Each bookmaker has its own technical team (including machine learning algorithms) that monitor players. The limit usually lies in the fact that a player cannot bet more than 1 pound on a particular event, which becomes unprofitable when playing sure bets.

In short, I consider bookmakers as a scam that came to me after some time using their services. Despite the fact that I think it is not worth setting up accounts with them, this post gives you a clue, how to be smarter than them and how to beat bookmakers with their money, as well as how to build a larger bank by collecting welcome bonuses if you need them.

On my site, you will not find any affiliate links to sportsbook websites (except for bookmakers being the sports exchange, such as Betfair, Betdaq, Smarkets, Matchbook).

To sort it out which Bookmakers have a good reputation I did research. The most recognizable ranking is created by SBR: https://www.sportsbookreview.com/sportsbook-ratings

The ranking is based on the bookmaker’s solvency, which it offers to its clients. However, there is a lack of information on which bookmakers limit their players! I did another investigation and it resulted that bookmakers who do not limit their players and have a wide range of events are mainly Asian companies like Pinnacle, Sbobet!

My strategy was to minimize the risk I played 2-way surebets. On one side the bookmaker I wanted to beat, on the other Pinnacle, or Sbobet or Betfair. For filtering events, as I mentioned before, I used surebet.com, and this is an example screen:

Usually, I was looking for high odds for the bookmaker I wanted to beat, so that the money from the win was on the bookmaker’s account with high limits, like Pinnacle. As I was lucky for the first time, the loss of the welcome bonus was favorably seen at the bookmaker which the bonus it admitted, because it often happened that over time this bookmaker spammed me with emails encouraging me to return to the game for another bonus, but this time smaller. This happened to me with Bet365. Thanks to this my bankroll were building. Playing surebets is always a risk, that for a specific event, such as less popular, the bookmaker will set a bet limit, e.g. 100 pounds, so I always tried to accept bets from those less trusted, because I on Pinnacle or Betfair I knew this limit before I bet (it was visible in the interface). Thanks to this strategy, I avoided the situation that half of the bet was accepted and unnecessary stress, that I have to play the opposite event somewhere else in order to be breakeven, or with a small loss. I had several such situations, but it is better to go out at -1% than to lose your bank! Remember, the most important thing is to protect the bank and have a backup plan if something goes wrong. As you can see in the print screen, earnings of 0.59% are not something that would satisfy any investor, where you can get more on your bank deposit. Of course, it is fine when the goal is to trade bonuses, but there is almost a finite number of bookmakers with whom you can turn over the bonuses. This prompted me to buy this version of the professional at surebet.com. Thanks to that I used better ROI usually at 2-4%. Of course, there were events where the ROI could be 10% and more. However, due to the fact that I was afraid that the bookmaker would limit my account, I did not play them. As I mentioned earlier, they monitor players and their incorrectly listed odds. What’s more, I think sometimes they especially set overvalued odds to catch such players and ban their accounts. Playing this way I beat such well-known bookmakers as William Hill, Bet365 (reload bonuses), Bet-at-home, Bwin, Unibet, Betsson, Marathon, SportingBet, Tipico, TonyBet and so on. The initial bank that I allocated for surebets was 100 pounds and in half a year increased 10 times! In this way, I collected a bank for about 1500 pounds. I often played surebets for around 1000 pounds, which with a monthly subscription at surebet.com (25 euros) paid me back on the first day I earned between 20-40 pounds, depending on the event.

Another risk to watch out for when playing surebets is an issue settling events, such as in a tennis match. There is often retirement in tennis, i.e. one player interrupts the game, e.g. due to injury. Now different bookmakers settle such a match. Some make returns of the stake per match, others include 1 set as the result of the match. It is very important to be sure how bets are settled because you would not want to lose half or more of your stake because of your ignorance.

After almost a year I had stopped using surebets. Why did I give up if it was going so well?

Well, as you probably guessed, most of the bookmakers at which I turned all the bonuses and kept playing with them, trying to earn this 3 % on average began to limit me, and when I already had a Betfair account I started to get interested in trading and I was thinking about how to get additional money playing like a bookmaker, i.e. set the odds, which the stock market allowed.

To sum up, thanks to surebets I built a solid bank. However, in the long term, I was not able to enlarge it.

If you are not bored yet and still interested in my adventure, which really has started since investing money on the sports exchange, I encourage you to subscribe to the newsletter. Let me remind you that as a bonus I put there a free eBook and spreadsheets, which will help you manage your bank and avoid the mistakes that I made along the way.