Surewin – Guaranteed Sports Betting Profit
If you are new, or even relatively experienced, to online sports betting, you may not have heard of arbitrage betting. But what is this type of sports betting and how can you use it to your advantage when betting online?
What is arbitrage betting and how can you use it to your advantage?
Normally, when you place bets in online sports betting, you will bet on a specific outcome. For tennis, you might decide that a particular player will win. Or, when betting on a particular football game, a simple bet could include betting on whether a specific team will win, draw, or lose a fixture. Of course, when you normally place a bet in this manner you will only make a profit if your predicted result actually happens – if you bet on your team to win a football match, then you will only make a profit if they do actually win the game. However, if you tried to cover all the possible outcomes of a particular event (in other words, if you decided to bet on a tennis game and bet that your chosen player would win the match, but if you also placed a separate bet where you had decided that your chosen player would lose the match) with a single bookmaker, then you would lose money every time you tried this.
However, bookmakers never agree with each other and will always offer slightly different odds for the same event. Sports arbitraging is a special type of bet where you can take advantage of these differing odds which are provided by bookmakers and where you can make a guaranteed profit by doing so. Therefore, arbitrage betting involves placing multiple bets, which cover all possible outcomes of a sports event, simultaneously with different bookmakers. This means that whatever the result of the event actually is, the player who has placed a bet in this manner is guaranteed to make a profit. This type of betting is known by a range of different names, such as a “surebet”, a “surewin”; or as “miraclebets” or “arbs”.
How does the opportunity for arbitrage betting happen in the first place?
There are a variety of ways in which opportunities for arbing can arise. Typically, bookmakers will disagree with each other when setting the odds for a particular event. Additionally, bookmakers can sometimes make a mistake when considering the pricing of a particular event, either through inexperience, a lack of knowledge or simply as a result of having a lack of resources. Sometimes smaller bookmakers are unable to react quickly enough to the odds of an event which are set by the leading bookmakers. Or, a discrepancy can also occur since bookmakers need to ensure that they profit from any particular event. This can change the odds since bets are not typically placed proportionally on every possible outcome and additionally, large bets can also force a bookmaker to change the offered odds in order to protect themselves against losses.
When setting the odds, the bookmakers will always calculate the total odds of all possible event outcomes as being in excess of 100%. But by looking at the different odds which are offered by bookmakers, players can compare odds online and mathematically ensure that the combined odds are less than 100%. By having a negative margin, the odds are then in favour of the player and a profit is a guaranteed through simultaneous betting. Arbitrage betting is a technique which was traditionally used in the financial markets before being applied to online sports betting. Nowadays, there are a wide variety of online betting calculators which players can use to compare the odds and calculate their expected returns when betting in this manner. However, players should be aware that arbitrage betting is not necessarily a quick or easy way to get rich and the level of returns are typically relatively low (these are usually in the 5% range).
Is arbitrage betting legal?
Arbitrage betting is completely legal (it should be remembered that in the UK, players are not required to pay any tax on their winnings). However, for obvious reasons UK bookmakers are not particularly keen on the practice. Whilst it can be quite difficult for bookmakers to catch players who constantly profit through betting in this manner, bookmakers have been known to restrict or close the accounts of players who are consistently winning, so players are urged to take precautions to avoid losing all of their surebet profits.