Advice

4 STEPS To Win At The Bookmaker And NEVER Get Shut Down!

Uncover The Secrets The Bookmakers Don't Want You To Know

I’m writing this blog post during the Coronavirus outbreak of March 2020. At the moment, as you will know, horse racing has been suspended for two months, and increasing numbers of people are going into self-quarantine in their homes.

This gives us some time to consider our strategies and approaches to winning. We can analyse what we’ve been doing and make adjustments, then we can practice those adjustments on virtual racing, so that we’re ready to use them as soon as racing goes live again.

When you start making a profit from your betting, you’ll very quickly find that bookmakers begin to shut down your accounts, or limit your bets.

You don’t even need to be long-term profitable, if a bookie thinks you’ve placed a smart bet, you’re liable to have your account shut.

In this step-by-step article, I’m going to show you exactly what you need to do to prevent this happening, and how to continue to place your bets with the bookmakers, whilst making them think that you’re a losing bettor.


What To Expect Using This Technique

When implemented correctly, this method can save your bookmaker account from being shut down for a long period of time.

The larger your stakes, the harder it will be to maintain, but it can still be done.

It’s not 100% fail-safe, there are times when an account may be closed or shutdown, but it will help keep your accounts open for longer.


STEP #1: You Need One Of These (preferably more!)

In order to make this work, you are going to need an account with a betting exchange.

Preferably more than one!

A betting exchange is where, rather than having fixed odds from a bookmaker, you are placing your bets against other bettors.

The exchange then takes a commission from the winning bettor, as their fee for matching you together.

Betting exchanges match bettors together, one who thinks the bet will win and one who thinks it will lose. They get their commission on every bet struck. It doesn’t matter to the exchange whether you are a winner or loser.

Which means, we can use them to move our money out of the bookmakers, without the bookies realising we’re profitable.

The first thing is to open accounts at several betting exchanges, if you haven’t got them already.

Here are the betting exchanges I’d recommend opening accounts with:

  • Betfair – the UK’s biggest and most well known betting exchange
  • Betaq – the second longest-standing exchange, one year behind Betfair
  • Smarkets – a late-comer, starting 9 years after Betfair, but the originator of a 2% commission rate

At the moment, we’re just preparing ourselves to be able to implement this technique.

As well as your bookmaker account, you will need a betting exchange account. The benefit of having more than one, is that this will give you the most opportunity to move money out of the bookmakers.


STEP #2: How To Take Money Out Of Your Bookmaker Account Without Them Knowing

This is where we go into the steps that you need to take, to make the bookmakers think you’re a losing bettor, even when you’re profitable.

But once you’ve read this section, don’t run off and implement it immediately, there’s important information to follow.

Before I show you the steps, it’s important that you understand what lay betting is.


What Is Lay Betting?

Lay betting is where you bet on a selection to lose. In effect, it is turning you into the bookmaker.

Here’s how it works…

If you lay a horse for £10 at odds of 3.00 or 2/1, then you are taking the position of the bookmaker. You have just accepted a bet with a £10 stake from another person.

When the horse loses you keep the £10 stake.

When the horse wins, you have to pay out £10 @ 2/1 = £20 to the other bettor.


In order to move your money out of the bookie and into the betting exchange, you need to perform the following 3 steps:

  1. Find a bet where the lay odds on the betting exchange are very close (or the same) as the bookmaker, and the bet is likely to lose
  2. Place your win bet with the bookmaker
  3. Place your lay bet, for the same stake as the win bet, with the betting exchange

Our aim is to have a losing bet with the bookmaker, which means that our lay bet on the betting exchange will win.

If you bet £50 with the bookmaker, and place a lay bet of £50 on the betting exchange, you’d lose the £50 stake at the bookmaker and win £50 with the betting exchange (assuming the odds were the same).

You’ve now moved your money from the bookmaker to the betting exchange, whilst making the bookmakers think you’ve placed a losing bet with them ?


STEP #3: The Hills Have Eyes

So do all the other bookmakers as well! It’s almost like they’re spying on you…

Before you rush off and start doing this, there are a few important things that you need to know:

  • You MUST vary your stake sizes
  • You MUST vary the sports you bet on
  • You MUST start with smaller stakes and build up
  • You MUST do this regularly

I’m going to go through each of these items now, and explain the importance of them.

You MUST vary your stake sizes

The bookmakers know how much you bet, how often you bet, whether you win or lose, what you win or lose on, and a whole bunch of other stats on your betting.

If you make a profitable bet, then instantly re-bet all the profits on something else and lose it, and do this repeatedly… they’ll know something’s not quite right!

In order to stay below their radar, you must vary your stake size, whilst keeping it reasonable to your normal sized stakes.

This means, that if you usually bet between £30 and £50, with the occasional £5 or £100, you need to vary your stakes within these parameters.

Most of the time use stakes between £30 and £50, change it every time, and don’t always make it £30, £35, £40, £45 or £50. Use figures like £37 and £42 etc.

Occasionally put a small bet in for £5, and occasionally put a bigger bet in between £75 and £100. This means that you are using a pattern the bookmaker recognises.

You MUST vary the sports you bet on

If you already bet on a variety of sport, then that’s great, keep doing it, and keep in mind the previous point.

If you predominantly bet on a single sport, then bring in other sports slowly. Don’t suddenly start betting on other sports. Instead, place a few small bets on different sports over a week or two, try and do as many sports as possible.

Then, over the next few weeks, increase the size of the stakes, and mix in a few more sports.

This shows the gradual pattern of a bettor who’s exploring other sports to bet on. Not the pattern of a bettor who’s making a profit, and trying to get his money out without having his account shut down.

You MUST start with smaller stakes and build up

Whatever you do, don’t start betting large stakes on sports you’ve never bet on before.

Bettors don’t do this, and it will put a red flag on your account.

Initially start with bets of less than £20. It’s better to do more of them (although don’t go crazy when you start) for lower stakes across a range of events, than a few big stakes.

Bookmakers are always watching for big bets, because they can have a major impact on their bottom line.

The simplest solution = stay away from big bets.

You MUST do this regularly

If you don’t use this technique regularly, your account won’t look like a normal account and is likely to be flagged.

This means you must do this daily, or every few days, for it to look natural.

But what happens if you’re in a downswing?

You still need to move money out, once it’s in your betting exchange account you can withdraw it and deposit it back into your bookmakers. This works in your favour, as it looks like you’re a regularly depositing player.


STEP #4: What Most People Forget

So far so good. It all sounds kinda simple.

However, like most things in betting, there are things that can complicate it.

There are two primary issues that you need to be aware of:

  1. What happens when the betting exchange odds aren’t the same as the bookmakers
  2. The betting exchange commission

These two points actually roll into a single issue. The issue of the cost associated with removing your money from the bookmakers.

The first is, that you will (almost) never get the lay odds to be the same (or lower) on your betting exchange, as the odds you take with the bookmaker.

But… the bigger the difference the more you will be paying to move your money out of the bookmaker. You should aim to keep the odds as close as possible to each other.

There’s no rush to make these bets, they can be done at any time, on any sport, simply keep an eye out for the right event, and then make your bet.

When the bet loses with the bookmaker, it will win on the betting exchange.

This means that the betting exchange will charge you a commission on your winnings, which is an unavoidable cost of using this technique.

In order to minimise it, you should make sure that you are only paying 2% commission on your betting exchanges. This is what most betting exchanges now charge.

However, Betdaq offer 0% commission on some sports, and if you can place your bets on these sports, you remove the commission cost of using this technique.


In Conclusion…

You can often get the best odds on your bets from bookmakers, but if you’re a profitable bettor it can be very hard to keep your accounts open.

The method outlined above will enable you, at the worst, to keep your accounts open longer, and at the best, keep them running as normal.

Maybe you are already using this method, or maybe you’re doing something else to keep them open?

Perhaps you’ve been struggling to find a way to stop being shutdown by the bookmakers, and this is the answer you’ve been looking for.

Whatever the case, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below. If you’ve used this method before, please let me know how you got on. If you used a different technique I’d love to hear what it is, and if you’ve been struggling to keep accounts open please tell me your story.

Michael Wilding

Michael started the Race Advisor in 2009 to help bettors become long-term profitable. After writing hundreds of articles I started to build software that contained my personal ratings. The Race Advisor has more factors for UK horse racing than any other site, and we pride ourselves on creating tools and strategies that are unique, and allow you to make a long-term profit without the need for tipsters. You can also check out my personal blog or my personal Instagram account.

5 Comments

  1. Hello michael, 99% of the time the exchange odds are higher than the bookmakers, then, when you take into account the exchange commission, you would be losing money.

    When you get free bets from the bookmakers, you can make a few quid laying off with the exchanges.

    I have tried them all, took their free bets, my accounts with them all have been restricted as low as 50p bets, lol

    Regards

    Noel

    1. You’re right, most of the time the exchange odds are going to be higher than the bookmakers, you just want to get them as close as possible. The charge for using this method is the difference in the odds and your commission level with the exchanges. If you can still get free bets, it definitely makes sense to use them 😀

  2. Hi Michael, I’ve been shut down by several firms ;inluding CORAL AND LADBROKES. I got my sonto open accounts with these two and tried to follow an undertheradar strategy but wthin some months I was limited to betting with pence.
    Isit possible that continuing to use the same laptop, albeit for a different account, is a giveaway and if so how can I OPEN an account via my wife and not result in closure?

    1. Yes, it is possible that they’re linking your accounts via the computer that accesses them. In order to prevent this use an Incognito browser to log into the bookmakers 🙂 Also keep the stakes as low as possible, generally to under £20. More volume and lower stakes is likely to keep your accounts open longer.

  3. Hi Michael
    Interesting article, agree with most. Not sure about advice to bet odd amounts though. This would maybe suggest that you are matched betting, a sure fire way to get closed down!

    In response to Terry above, try connecting your laptop to your phone via mobile data and hotpot rather than wi-fi. Better still use your wifes data, connect to your phone, then connect your phone to laptop. Install Ghostery (blocks trackers). check for iesnare and delete if found.

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