11 Top Tips To Avoid Being Gubbed

Being gubbed will prevent you from profiting from a bookmaker’s offers and promotions and is unfortunately part and parcel of your Matched Betting journey.

The longer you can stay off the bookmaker’s gubbed list will help you prolong the amount of profit you'll make from Matched Betting.

Whilst you can’t 100% prevent a gubbing, there are steps you can take to help you preserve your bookmaker account health.

In this article, you’ll find out the different reasons bookmakers might gub your account and how you can avoid being gubbed for as long as possible by following our top tips.

You’ll also learn how you can continue profiting from your gubbed accounts using a few different strategies.

What Does Gubbed Mean?

In a nutshell, being gubbed, or a gubbing means that your account has been limited by a bookmaker and you will no longer be able to take advantage of the special offers or promotions available at that specific bookmaker.

You'll typically be notified by email from the bookmaker stating that you have been gubbed. Their email won't mention this term, but in amongst all of their jargon, the same message will be passed across.

Some bookmakers will go a step further and implement a stake restriction on your bets. This means they’ll limit your maximum bet size, sometimes this can be as small as a few pence per bet!

Why Do Bookmakers Gub Accounts?

Bookmakers gub or restrict accounts for various reasons, this is mainly down to their need to manage risk and ensure they make a profit.

While we have no sympathy for them, being aware and understanding why bookmakers act as they do can help you take action to reduce the likelihood of being gubbed.

Let’s take a look at some common reasons why bookmakers might choose to gub your accounts:

Arbitrage Betting

Bookmakers will restrict or close your account if you place arbitrage (arb) bets. Arbitrage betting involves taking advantage of price differences between the bookmaker and a betting exchange to guarantee a profit.

This means you should avoid placing any bets where the bookmaker's back odds are higher than the exchange lay odds. The exception to this rule is when the bookmaker's back odds are boosted as part of a price boost promotion.

You would only normally spot these arb bets if you are using Oddsmatching software and it’s safe to assume bookmakers will have their own software to detect customers who can spot these good value arb bets consistently.

Consistent Winning

Ultimately a bookmaker's aim is to make a profit, and if you consistently win over a long period of time due to placing good value bets, the bookmaker might limit your stake size as well as restrict you from access to promotions.

Exploiting Promotions

Bookmakers offer incentives in an attempt to entice you to place more bets with them. If you only focus on exploiting these bonuses and promotions when Matched Betting you may be at risk of the bookmaker restricting their account.

Bookmakers will claim they want their promotions to be used by genuine customers for recreational purposes, in other words; they want you to bet like a normal punter and lose money!

Irregular Betting Patterns

Unusual or irregular betting patterns may flag your account up for review. An example of this could be if you choose to bet on obscure football teams you’ve not heard of before in smaller foreign leagues just because they are a good odds match.

Using Automated Betting Software

If bookmakers suspect you are using any sort of automated betting software or bots to place bets of value for you they’ll quickly restrict or even close your account.

Betting From Abroad

If you try to log into your account from outside the UK bookmakers may restrict or close your account especially if the country you are in has different online gambling laws.

This would often be more of a security issue and you would likely be able to regain access to your account by contacting them but can be a lot of unnecessary hassle.

Repeated Withdrawals

There have been reports that if you're making frequent and/or substantial withdrawals without any regular deposits you may be flagged for a potential gubbing.

Mystery Gubbing

This one is a bit of a strange one, but there may be times you are gubbed for no clear reason. This is very rare but there are a handful of bookies that on occasion have restricted accounts for no clear reason after just one bet!

11 Top Tips To Avoid Being Gubbed

Now you understand why a bookmaker might gub you, following these top tips will help you stay under the bookmaker’s gubbed radar as long as possible and keep your accounts healthy:

1. Don’t take the best value bets

When you are using the Oddsmatching software, rather than making the smallest qualifying loss every time using, for example, a 98% to 99% rating match, try taking a lower match instead.

Yes, this does mean you’ll make slightly less profit overall from the offer, but this will only be a few pence less and if it means your account will last longer then it will be well worth it.

Always avoid any ratings of 100% or more on healthy accounts as these are the arb bets mentioned above that the bookies don’t like.

2. Look like a mug

If you spot one particular bookie with a much worse price than others, you could do a Mug Bet on it (a pointless Matched Bet that doesn't unlock an offer and incurs a small loss like a Qualifying Bet does).

This will hopefully mark you down as both a loyal and also a mug punter to that bookie.

Punters are always taking prices that you wouldn’t as a Matched Bettor, for example, Liverpool at 1.90 with a certain bookmaker when you can get 2.0 elsewhere. You can use a site such as Oddschecker to compare different bookmaker odds.

It’s probably not worth spending too much time and effort on mug bets as they’ll ultimately lose you a small amount of money and take up time that would be better spent completing profitable offers. Maybe consider placing the occasional one if you’re hitting a lot of offers at a particular bookie.

3. Place in-play bets

Bookies are increasingly offering in-play reload promotions. This is because they are often such poor value bets.

As a result of this, it might be a good idea to do not only a few in-play mug bets every now and again but also regular Matched Betting offers using in-play bets.

A good tip when placing in-play bets is to use half time in football where you’ll have 15 minutes to place your bets without the risk of the odds suddenly changing if a goal is scored.

4. Place accumulator bets

An accumulator bet, or "acca", involves betting on multiple selections, 2 or more, at once in a single bet.

Similar to in-play bets, accumulators are very poor value bets that the bookies love to push. You can use acca bets to place some qualifying or free bets to help look more like a regular punter.

You can also use accumulator offers to lock in profits making them a great offer to use to take value and increase the amount of acca bets you place to keep the bookies happy.

5. Avoid obscure events

When you place your bets try and avoid betting on the obscure events, aim for popular events like the Premier League.

Normal punters are unlikely to be placing bets on the Peruvian u19 League so you should not bet on this either, even if there is a great odds match!

If you were to instead choose to bet on a popular football match such as Man United vs Liverpool, your betting activity would blend in with the thousands of other regular punters betting on the same game.

6. Don’t bet to the max

Don’t do every £25 promotion with a £25 bet or you’ll look like you are just hitting it for the bonus. If the offer is “up to £25” then you can do less. Even doing £20 with Matched Betting will leave you with a healthy profit and not look like you're just there for the bonus.

Similarly, you can consider placing a larger bet than required. So, for offers such as “bet £5 get a £5 free bet”, you could place a £10 or £20 qualifying bet instead.

This does mean you’ll not maximise your profit from the offer but by occasionally doing this you’ll help your account stay off the “bonus abuser” list for longer.

7. Keep stakes consistent

Whether you’re Matched Betting or mug betting try to keep your stakes a similar size. If you usually place bets around £10 - £30 and then suddenly start placing £100+ bets this could flag your account as unusual activity.

You can gradually increase your stakes over time if you want to place larger bets.

8. Keep your profile consistent

Try not to jump on every offer regardless of the sport. Build up a profile of betting on certain sports and do the offers on those. There are tons of football and horse racing offers so they are usually the best sports to bet on.

But if you see a great offer on say Basketball, then, by all means, do the offer but make sure you place some Basketball mug bets too around that time too.

9. Browse the bookie

Mug punters rarely just log in, place their bets and leave as is sometimes the case with us as Matched Bettors. Typical gamblers will peruse the site for a while and check different bets, other events and sections of the site such as the casino section.

Don't spend too much time navigating around but even clicking around on a few different sections may help your activity look more like that of a mug bettor.

10. Use your phone

More bets are placed by mug punters on their phones these days, than on any other device. Try to do this too if you can.

Bookies try to get you to download their apps so you are more likely to gamble more having your phone accessible at all times. You can either use their apps or log in on your phone's mobile browser.

11. Limit withdrawals

Your account may be scrutinised if you are making regular withdrawals from the profits you’re accumulating from Matched Betting. So, if your bankroll allows, try to only withdraw when you need to.

Don't let this limit you too much though, if you need the money from one particular bookmaker to help complete other bookie offers then it will be put to much better use by continuing your Matched Betting progress.

What Can You Do If You Are Gubbed?

Well, in all honesty, nothing really! This may sound like tough love but you do just need to take it on the chin and move on to the next opportunity at the next bookie.

The important thing is to not take it personally and not let it stop you from progressing on your Matched Betting journey. The good news is that there are so many bookmakers out there that it will not slow you down if you lose a few accounts.

You can also continue to profit from your accounts even after you’ve been gubbed!

How To Profit From Your Gubbed Accounts

There are several ways you can make money (and good money too!) from your gubbed.

Extra Places

Extra Place offers are a horse racing promotion on offer at most bookmakers. Most bookmakers will pay out on this promotion even if you’ve previously been gubbed.

Boylesports and Bet Victor are the only two sites that do not typically pay out extra places on gubbed accounts but some members have reported they are fine to use so is a case of placing a few small qualifying bets to test those two bookies.

An “Extra Place” is when the bookmaker says they’ll add one (or more) additional places to their standard place classification on a particular race.

So, for example, they may offer to “pay 4 places on a race” instead of the standard 3 places. The 4th position in this instance is then the “Extra Place”.

You can place a matched bet so if your horse finishes in that 4th position in a race (the “extra place”), you make a profit.

Experienced Matched Bettors are using the powerful Extra Place Master tool available with our Outplayed Pro membership to make an easy £500+ a month from these Extra Place offers.

Casino Offers

You may have noticed that most bookmakers have a casino section on their website. In most cases, you’ll find you can still do casino promotions listed there even if you’ve been gubbed for sports offers.

You’ll also find that your casino accounts will last much longer than sports offers so are a great type of offer to learn to add another income stream to your Matched Betting profits.

All worthwhile casino offers are available with our Diamond membership, when you’re ready to move to these types of promotions be sure to take time to learn how casino offers work first.

Price Boosts

Price boosts are a quick and easy type of offer you should already be including in your Matched Betting routine and fortunately, these offers can still be done on your gubbed accounts.

Any time you see a price boost offer where the new boosted back odds offered by the bookmaker are higher than the available lay odds for that same outcome on the exchange – you’ll make a profit using our Matched Betting calculator.

Arbitrage Betting (Arbing)

As mentioned earlier, arbitrage betting, or arbing, is not something you should ever do on a healthy account, but if you’re already gubbed from a bookmaker, you can choose to place some arbs.

You make a guaranteed profit on arbs by backing at a higher price than you lay.

Though this is very easy profit, consider this low priority as you will often have your bet amounts restricted to very small figures when taking too many arb bets.

Can You Be Ungubbed?

Honestly, this is very unlikely and not really worth pursuing as your time will be better spent working on other offers.

There have been very rare cases where members have reported they’ve been ungubbed for no obvious reason other than waiting a long period of time and checking back on their accounts.

It’s possible placing more mug bets frequently could increase the chances of being ungubbed but with no guarantee of this ever happening we would not recommend this.

Instead focus on completing offers using your healthy accounts or use the strategies mentioned earlier to continue profiting from your gubbed accounts.

Summary

The main takeaway from this article is that you should certainly do all you can to avoid being gubbed using our top tips but don’t be afraid of being gubbed.

If it happens it happens, there are plenty of bookies out there for you to continue to take advantage of. Better still, you can continue making money from your gubbed accounts so it certainly isn’t the end of profits from an account once you have been restricted.

Now you know our top tips to avoid being gubbed, you’re ready to learn our top Matched Betting tips to help you maximise your profits this year.