This is sometimes called arbitrage betting and is basically betting in situations where you can’t lose. This goes against logical thinking as usually ‘the house always wins’. Not with this strategy.
When you go online to various betting websites and see the odds of certain events you will see that they vary slightly. What you are trying to do is to use the odds on a few different betting websites to find the best possible deal for one team to win then the best possible deal on another website for the other side to win.
The calculation is as follows.
Mr X to Win Mr Y to Win
Betting site 1 $1.30 $3.93
Betting site 2 $1.42 $2.90
So on betting site 1 they think that Mr X will win easier. Whereas on betting site 2 they feel it will be a little closer. Next you need to calculate the betting odds margin. To this you need to use the following formula:
= [1/(odds of event 1) + 1/(odds of event 2)] x 100
So let’s use this formula for the above. With betting site 1
= (1/1.30 + 1/3.93) x 100
= 102.37%
This means the betting site is making a 2.37% profit margin.
Let’s look at the formula for betting site 2
= (1/1.42 + 1/2.90) x 100
= 104.91%
This mean this betting site is making 4.91% profit margin
So whenever you use this formula on just one betting site you will always get a number over 100% as the house always wins.
So what you want is a number below 100%. To do this we need to take the best odds from each site.
So with the above 2 betting sites we can use Mr Y to win from betting site 1 and Mr X to win from betting site 2.
This formula looks like this:
= (1/1.42 + 1/3.93) x 100
= 95.87%
This means we will make 4.13% profit.
Then we just need to use an arbitrage calculator to determine how much we need to bet each way to make sure when we win we make the same amount when either Mr X or Mr Y wins.
One website to use to do matched betting is lordsofblackjack.co