Stephanie Sorrell

To err is human. But still, we’d prefer not to.

And when you first <a href="https://outplayed.com/what-is-matched-betting">start Matched Betting</a>, you’ll probably be particularly worried about screwing up. One of the biggest advantages of Matched Betting is that it’s risk free, so long as you follow the instructions correctly. So what if you make a mistake?

In most cases, there are ways to correct an error, so there’s probably no need to panic! But the best option is simply not to make an error in the first place, and the best way to achieve that is to be aware of the potential pitfalls in advance.

We’ve compiled some of the most common Matched Betting mistakes and explained what they are, why they’re a problem, and how to make sure you avoid them.

The 14 Most Common Matched Betting Mistakes

1. Placing your lay bet before your back bet

New matched bettors often wonder why exactly this matters. You’re placing two bets designed to cancel each other out - aren’t they roughly equivalent?

Not really. As a general rule, you’re placing a fixed amount (say, £5 for a qualifying bet, or a £5 free bet) as your back bet, and your lay bet is calculated based on the odds to match it.

Odds can sometimes change quite quickly, however, and inevitably at some point you’ll find that the odds have changed between the placing of your first bet and your second.

If you’ve placed your back bet first, you can simply adjust the lay odds in the calculator and place your lay bet with the updated odds without any difficulties. If you’d placed your lay bet first, however, it would be far more difficult to adjust the back bet to avoid excess losses.

Solution: Don’t forget always to place your back bet first.

2. Forgetting to check the terms of an offer

Bookies will often place restrictions on the terms of an offer, and you need to know what they are before you go ahead and start placing bets.

The most common things to miss are the minimum odds and the number of selections for a bet builder or accumulator bet. You may also need to have made a deposit with a particular payment method (usually a debit card).

It sounds straightforward enough to check the terms and stick to them, but we’re all human, and capable of doing incredibly silly things from time to time. I once opted in to a snooker-based offer and, with great confidence, went on to place a qualifying bet on darts, then wondered why my free bet hadn’t been credited.

There can also be quite narrow restrictions for the promotion dates, or a requirement to place your qualifying (or free) bet on a particular event - but so long as you’ve paid attention, you’ll know exactly what you need to do.

Solution: Always double check the terms of an offer before you place your qualifying bet.

3. Mixing up the names of events/competitors (especially horses)

This may sound like too basic a mistake to make, but you should always double check both the event and the competitor you’re betting on, particularly with horse racing.

There are a number of races at each racecourse on race days, and it isn’t difficult to mix up a 15:45 and 17:45 race, or even to mix up similar courses like Newbury and Newmarket (that’s one I’m definitely guilty of on occasion).

And with the sheer number of race horses competing in races, sometimes their names will be similar enough to cause confusion.

Always check that both the name of the horse and the odds match up with what you’re expecting, and you shouldn’t ever end up placing a bet on the wrong one.

Solution: Double check the details of your bets before you place them.

4. Forgetting to change the calculator settings between Normal and Free Bet mode, or using the wrong calculator

Hopefully, you’d notice before actually placing your bets if the calculator was in the wrong mode - the qualifying loss/profit figures would look quite odd - but nonetheless, it’s best to double check.

When moving on to using the advanced calculators, you should always make sure you understand exactly what they’re designed to do before using them. Newer matched bettors should work through the easier offers to build their confidence before moving on to more challenging ones that require advanced calculators.

For example, the <a href="https://outplayed.com/calculators/racing-refund-calculator">Racing Refund</a>, <a href="https://outplayed.com/calculators/bonus-lockin-calculator">Bonus Lock-in</a> and <a href="https://outplayed.com/calculators/refund-if-calculator">Refund If</a> calculators all cover fairly similar situations, so it’s important you understand the differences between them. Each calculator has its own guide, which we strongly recommend reading in full before you begin.

Solution: Make a habit of selecting the calculator mode every time you use the calculator - even if the default ‘Normal’ mode is the right one - so you can’t forget to change it when you need to.

5. Forgetting to check the available liquidity in the exchange

When you find a really close match at great odds, it can be all too easy to get carried away and place your back bet before you’ve checked the availability in the exchange.

It’s such a disappointing moment when you attempt to place your lay bet only to discover that there’s a total of £2 available at those perfect odds, meaning you have to settle for worse odds and less profit, especially when it was so easily avoidable.

To avoid similar small tragedies, use the ‘Availability’ filter in the Oddsmatching tool, and set it to something comfortably higher than the rough amount you want to lay. There’s always a chance that the availability will decrease just as you’re trying to bet, especially on very popular events, but this is much less likely to happen with a healthy amount of liquidity in the market.

Solution: Use the ‘Availability’ filter whenever you use the Oddsmatcher, so that only matches with enough liquidity are shown.

6. Trying to bet with insufficient funds in your account

This one almost seems too obvious to mention, but nonetheless it does happen. Experienced matched bettors tend to keep significant sums in their exchange accounts, so it can be easy to forget that you might run out if you place several bets with large liabilities.

Given the speed at which odds can change on some events, you really don’t want to have to top up your exchange account having already placed your back bet, causing a potentially unprofitable delay. So, always do a quick check that you’ve got plenty of cash available in your exchange account - handily confirmed for you on the Outplayed Oddsmatcher if your accounts are linked - before you start placing your bets.

Solution: Keep track of your cash, and top up your exchange accounts if they get too low.

7. Placing an unmatched or partially matched bet

Placing an <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-are-unmatched-bets">unmatched or partially matched bet</a> can be a consequence of number 5 - there being insufficient liquidity in the exchange. An unmatched or partially matched bet occurs when you go ahead and place your lay bet at those odds regardless.

Your bet is unmatched because there isn’t currently anyone who’s placed a back bet at those odds to match your lay bet to. It’s possible that your bet will be matched as the event draws nearer, but it’s safer to cancel the unmatched portion of your bet and try again, placing the remainder at whatever odds have enough availability. Otherwise, you risk your bet remaining unmatched, which could result in an overall loss from the bet.

Solution: Ideally, use the ‘Availability’ filter to avoid placing an unmatched bet - but if you do end up with your bet not fully matched, our <a href="https://outplayed.com/calculators/fixabet-calculator">Fixabet</a> tool can help rectify the error.

Matched bettors aren’t too popular with bookies, funnily enough, and they use every tool at their disposal to detect behaviour indicative of Matched Betting.

So don’t make it easy for them! Focus on popular events that you’d expect genuine punters to be betting on. You may have found an incredibly close match on Swedish second division football, but the small amount of extra profit you might make on that particular game isn’t worth potentially losing your account.

For more tips on how to blend in, take a look at our guide to <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/top-tips-to-avoid-being-gubbed">avoiding being gubbed</a>.

Solution: Stick to major events as far as possible. If you don’t already support a particular football team, it’s not a bad idea to start supporting one - and placing bets on them every so often.

It may not sound very exciting, but it’s important to keep a record of all the bets you make, whether you use Outplayed’s handy <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/matched-betting-spreadsheet">Profit Tracker</a> or a spreadsheet of your own.

It’s easy to become confused if you’re betting frequently, and having detailed records ensures you never miss any free bets you’ve earned, or forget to check on the outcome of an event. Especially with horse racing, it’s important to have a record of your bet, so you can go back to the bookie and check the results.

If your horse ended up not running, for example, your bet would have been voided both at the bookie and the exchange - for a free bet, you’d usually need to place it again. Meanwhile, in the event of a <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/rule-4-deductions-explained">Rule 4 deduction</a>, your profits may have been a little lower than expected - or in the case of <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/best-odds-guaranteed-in-matched-betting">Best Odds Guaranteed</a> being invoked, they could also be significantly higher.

Solution: Use either a Profit Tracker tool or your own spreadsheet to keep track of your betting activity.

Similarly, you need to know where your money is. Although it can be a pleasant surprise to find an unexpected tenner lurking in one of your little-used bookie accounts, it’s far more sensible to ensure you have a record of all your deposits.

As you become more experienced, you’ll probably end up maintaining a reasonable sum in all your most-used bookie accounts, to save yourself having to make constant deposits and withdrawals, but you’d be wise to keep a note of how much you have with each of them nonetheless. To make this easier, Outplayed include a balance sheet in your account to keep track of exactly where all your money is.

Solution: Use a spreadsheet or our handy <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/matched-betting-spreadsheet">balance sheet</a> to keep your records up to date

Winning too much can be a trigger for gubbing, so some matched bettors reason that the easiest way to avoid this is never to win your back bets. After all, if your matched bets always win on the exchange side, the bookie will only see that they’re making money from you, and consider you a good customer.

The problem with this is that it means you end up placing all your bets at very high odds, in order to reduce the likelihood of the back bet winning. But that doesn’t mean that the back bet never wins, and when it does win at high odds, a large chunk of your money has gone straight back to the bookie, leaving you at square one.

Although you should be careful about behaviours that might identify you as a matched bettor, you should bear in mind that real gamblers will win at least some of their bets, so you don’t always need to lose to blend in. You’re better off placing a few <a href="https://outplayed.com/what-is-mug-betting">mug bets</a>&nbsp;to divert bookie suspicion.

Solution: Place a mug bet, that isn’t tied to an offer, from time to time, to look more like a regular punter.

When you start seeing profits from your Matched Betting, it’s very tempting to spend them right away. However, it’s a much better strategy to build up your bankroll first. With a larger bankroll, you’re able to make the most of whatever offers come your way, which will add up to significantly higher profits in the long term.

It’s up to you to decide the point at which you feel you’ve got enough money built up to be worth withdrawing it and spending it on whatever you’ve been working towards - a holiday or a car perhaps, or just extra funds to tuck away for a rainy day - but whatever you decide, make sure you leave enough in your bankroll to make more profits in the meantime.

Solution: Set yourself a minimum threshold for your balances (for example, £300 in an exchange) and only withdraw when you’re over that balance. This will allow you to enjoy your profits without harming your ability to make more of them.

If you’re new to Matched Betting, the idea of becoming complacent is probably quite hard to imagine. When they first get started, most people double, triple, quadruple and quintuple check everything before they bet, just in case they missed something on the first four passes.

But as with anything, the more Matched Betting you do, the easier it gets. The vast majority of mistakes, including most of those listed in this article, stem from rushing, paying insufficient attention, or becoming complacent. No matter how experienced you become, it’s important to remain careful, and not to place bets when you’re distracted or in a hurry.

Solution: No matter how experienced you come, remind yourself regularly to be careful! And don’t carry out your Matched Betting when you don’t really have time for it.

This is perhaps the biggest potential danger, and the most important thing to avoid. Matched Betting is not gambling, but it does put you in touch with the gambling world, and for some people that can be a strong temptation.

If you’ve placed a back bet at high odds and it ends up winning, it’s easy to look at the comparatively small profit you’ve made from the matched bet and reflect that if you hadn’t matched it you’d have ended up much, much better off. But you’d be forgetting about all the high odds back bets that didn’t win, which is exactly the trap the bookies are hoping you’ll fall into.

Bookies make money because real gamblers pretty much always lose. If that weren’t the case, they wouldn’t be in business. As a matched bettor, you have to be disciplined to avoid becoming just another punter yourself.

If you’ve struggled with a gambling addiction in the past, we strongly advise against taking up Matched Betting. It may not be a form of gambling itself, but it’s close enough to be unsafe for anybody at risk of falling prey to a gambling addiction.

Solution: If you find that your Matched Betting is tipping into gambling for real, get help. <a href="https://www.gamstop.co.uk">GamStop</a> are a great place to start if you feel as though you’re losing control and need to get back on track.

2. If you’re a member of a Matched Betting site such as <a href="https://outplayed.com/">Outplayed</a>, follow the step-by-step instructions for an offer closely. They check all the terms such as minimum odds on your behalf, so if you follow along you won’t go wrong.

3. Don’t bet when you’re pushed for time

4. Double check the odds before placing a bet

5. Make use of the filters on the Oddsmatcher (especially Availability and Minimum Odds)

6. Keep track of your available funds

It does occasionally turn out that an error will work in your favour. For example, you might find that you’ve made an unlayable back bet that ends up winning, resulting in pure profit.

However, the likelihood is that a mistake will be to your detriment, not to your benefit. Even if you discover a mistake that’s resulted in a greater profit than expected, you should never rely on getting lucky. Just be glad that you escaped without losing any money, and take extra care not to let it happen again!

If you realise that you’ve made a mistake, don’t panic. A lot of mistakes are fixable, especially if you’ve followed our general guidelines.

Our <a href="https://outplayed.com/calculators/fixabet-calculator">Fixabet</a>&nbsp;calculator allows you to fix any mistakes with overlaid or partially matched lay bets, so in the majority of cases you’ll be able to salvage the situation. And if you find it tricky to work out what you need to do to fix your mistake, our expert <a href="https://outplayed.com/contact">customer support</a> agents are available every day to lend you a hand.

Now that you’re aware of the most common pitfalls when Matched Betting, you’ve got all the information you need to avoid them.

Of course, everybody makes a mistake from time to time, and even the most experienced Matched Bettors aren’t immune. The most important thing is always to pay attention to what you’re doing - and don’t forget that in most cases a small error isn’t the end of the world.

14 Biggest Beginner Matched Betting Mistakes To Avoid

In simple terms, a qualifying bet is the initial bet you place with a bookmaker when taking part in an offer, which allows you to access a free bet or another reward.

Qualifying bets are one of the first and most important concepts you’ll encounter when you first <a href="https://outplayed.com/what-is-matched-betting">learn about&nbsp;Matched Betting</a>, and it’s important to have a good understanding of how they work.

So we’ve put together a comprehensive guide to take you through every type of qualifying bet, to make sure you’re never at risk of making a mistake.

A qualifying bet is your initial bet with a bookmaker that unlocks the free bet part of an offer. For example, if you see an offer that says, ‘Bet £5 and get a £5 free bet’, your initial £5 bet is the qualifying bet.

As a rule, you don’t expect to make a profit on your qualifying bet. Usually, you’ll make a small loss of a few pence, which we call a qualifying loss.

To keep this qualifying loss as small as possible, you take advantage of Outplayed’s software, which identifies the closest odds to match your bet, allowing you to maximise your profit.

As an example, take a look at the qualifying bet shown below, for a Premier League match between Sheffield United and Brighton:

Here, we’re placing a £5 back bet with Coral, shown on the left in blue, at odds of 1.67. On the right, you can see the lay odds of 1.7 - a really close match. The calculator works out that we need to place a lay bet of £4.91 with Matchbook Exchange, which will result in a small qualifying loss of 9p.

Having placed our qualifying back bet, we unlock a free bet, which is where we make our profit.

As a rule, you can expect to make approximately 80% of the value of your free bet in profit. So, if you received a £5 free bet having placed your initial qualifying bet, you’d make around £4 in profit from that bet - not bad, with a qualifying loss of only 9p to start with!

The bookies, of course, are hoping that you’ll get carried away and start gambling for real - but as a matched bettor, you’re smarter than that. Using your Outplayed <a href="https://outplayed.com/user/register#1">free trial</a> to get started, you’ll ensure you only ever make mathematically guaranteed profits from your betting.

You’ll begin with sign up offers, worth over £850 in profit, before moving on to regular reload offers, from which you can expect to make £200 - £500 a month.

What’s The Difference Between A ‘Sign Up’ Offer And A ‘Reload’ Offer?

They’re both offers made by bookies, usually requiring you to place a qualifying bet to receive a free bet as a reward.

Sign up offers are the best place to start for new matched bettors. These are the offers bookies promote to encourage new customers to sign up to their websites, and they’re often very generous.

You can quickly make a lot of profit from initial sign up offers, which usually feature a simple qualifying bet followed by one or more free bets.

Once you’ve worked through a few of the sign up offers, you’ll probably start seeing reload offers from the bookies you have accounts with.

These are ongoing offers made to existing customers, to keep them coming back. They’re not quite as generous as sign up offers, but you can still make hundreds a month in ongoing profit from these offers.

What Kinds Of Qualifying Bets Will I See?

There are a few different kinds of qualifying bets you’ll make in order to receive your free bets, and we’ll talk you through the most common ones here.

This is the easiest kind of qualifying bet to place, and the most common for sign up offers. A singles bet is just a normal, straightforward bet on a single event - for example, for a football team to win a match, or for a horse to win a race. If an offer doesn’t specify that you have to place any specific type of qualifying bet, it’ll be a singles bet.

These are a bit more complicated than singles bets, but still fairly straightforward once you get the hang of them.

When you place a bet builder, you’re betting that two or more things will happen within a single match or game. For example, you might be betting both that a certain team will win a match, and that a particular player will score a goal.

The bookmaker will often require you to have a minimum number of selections as part of your qualifying bet, and will also specify minimum odds, which can sometimes be higher than we’d ideally like for a qualifying bet. It can be more difficult to find a really close match for a qualifying bet builder, meaning that your qualifying loss is usually a little higher than for a singles bet - but still well worth doing with the profit you can make from your free bet!

Bet builders are also trickier to lay off than singles bets, as you have to find a good match manually, and you might not be able to find a lay market for all the events in a bet builder combined.

However, you can use our <a href="https://outplayed.com/calculators/bet-builder-helper">bet builder helper</a> to point you in the right direction for the bookie in question, and our <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/matched-betting-same-game-multi-bets-pick-a-punts-and-build-a-bets">guide</a> to bet builders takes you step by step through the process.

Like bet builder bets, accumulator bets involve betting on several things at once, but an accumulator is a combined bet on the outcome of multiple events.

So you might, for example, bet on four different horses to win each of four separate races.

Because the chances of all four of those horses winning are fairly low, the odds offered by the bookies will be fairly high. As with bet builders, your qualifying losses will probably be a bit higher than they would with a singles bet, but you’ll still stand to make a good profit from your free bet reward.

Acca bets (because ‘accumulator’ is just too long to say every time) are awkward to lay, but it can be done, in a couple of different ways! Through Smarkets, it’s possible to manually create an acca lay bet to match your acca back bet, enabling you to take advantage of accumulator offers without any risk.

The <a href="https://outplayed.com/products/acca-catcher">Outplayed Acca Catcher</a>, accessible through our <a href="https://outplayed.com/user/register#1">free trial</a>, tracks down the best combinations of bets for an accumulator, allowing you to maximise your profits from these offers. We’ve also got a <a href="https://outplayed.com/sports-accumulator-betting-guide">detailed guide to accumulator bets</a> so you can read up and ensure you know what you’re doing when you start on these offers.

The name pretty much explains these - an in-play or in-race bet is a bet placed while a match or race is ongoing. These aren’t complicated in the way that bet builders or accumulators can be, but you do need to be careful with your timing.

Some offers might require you to bet while a specific match is being played, meaning that you have to remember to place your bet while the match is on, and preferably not too close to the end of the match.

You’ll also find that the odds change much more rapidly once an event has started, which means you need to be quick off the mark to place both your back and lay bets before the odds change.

We recommend getting very comfortable using our <a href="https://outplayed.com/products/oddsmatcher">Oddsmatching software</a> before embarking on in-play bet offers, so that you’re confident acting quickly having chosen your bets.

You can read up on all the ins and outs of in-play bets in our comprehensive <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/in-play-betting-explained-in-depth">guide</a>.

These are more advanced offers that might give you a reward following your qualifying bet only in a certain situation. For example, you might receive a free bet following your qualifying bet on horse racing only if your horse comes 2nd or 3rd, or only if your team wins.

Our <a href="https://outplayed.com/calculators/bonus-lockin-calculator">bonus lock-in</a> and <a href="https://outplayed.com/calculators/racing-refund-calculator">racing refund</a> calculators allow you to guarantee a profit from these offers, but if you’re new to Matched Betting we’d recommend starting with the simpler sign up offers before moving on to advanced offers like these.

By signing up to <a href="https://outplayed.com/user/register#1">Outplayed</a> and using our software! Our Oddsmatching tool filters bets from all the major bookmakers and exchanges to bring you the best available options.

As you move through the sign up offers in our guide, you’ll use the dropdown filter on the left hand side of the page to select the relevant bookmaker’s qualifying bet, which brings up the very best options for that particular offer.

As a rule, you should look for lower odds for qualifying bets, which helps to keep your qualifying loss nice and small.

What About Restrictions On Qualifying Bets?

Most offers do come with restrictions on your qualifying bets, and you’ll need to make sure you’re aware of them.

There will always be minimum odds set by the bookmaker for a qualifying bet. For basic singles sign up offers, these are usually fairly low, at around 1.5, but bet builders and accumulators may require you to place a bet with odds as high as 3 or 4.

Our sign up guides will always let you know of the minimum odds for a qualifying bet on a sign up offer, but when you start doing reloads you’ll need to remember to check how high the odds have to be for your bet to qualify.

Bookies will sometimes only list the minimum odds in the fractional format, rather than the decimal format we prefer, but you can use our <a href="https://outplayed.com/calculators/odds-converter">odds converter tool</a> to work out the decimal equivalent.

It’s quite common for bookies to require you to place a qualifying bet on a particular sport, such as football or horse racing, but sometimes they’ll go as far as to limit you to a particular competition or event, for example the Euros or the Premier League final.

In these cases, you may find that your available options aren’t hugely favourable, but the chances are that you’ll still be able to make a profit from your free bet reward, even if you have to accept a slightly higher qualifying loss than you’d like. Just make sure you bet on the specified event!

Some bookies will give you your reward the moment you’ve placed your qualifying bet, but most will make you wait at least until your qualifying bet has been settled before you can access your free bet. In some cases, you’ll have to wait 2 or 3 days after your qualifying bet settles to receive your free bet.

You’ll also have a certain amount of time to use your free bet before it expires - usually around 7 days, but sometimes only 24 hours.

Make sure to check the terms and conditions of an offer for when to expect your free bet to pop up, so that you don’t panic if it doesn’t appear immediately or, worse, run out of time to use it!

Most bookies have some restriction on how long you have after signing up to place your qualifying bet for a sign up offer, mostly 7 to 30 days, but a few take it to extremes. Some require you to place your qualifying bet the same day you sign up, while a couple will even oblige you to place your free bets the same day as well.

Double check the details for a sign up offer before you begin, and if you’re short on time and a bookie wants you to place your bets the same day, maybe leave that particular offer for a more convenient moment.

What Is A Qualifying Bet? A Beginner’s Guide

Ben Adams

We recommend starting Matched Betting with at least £50.

Starting with our recommended minimum of £50 is enough to comfortably complete your first&nbsp;<a href="https://outplayed.com/what-is-matched-betting">Matched Betting</a> signup offer to lock in your first profits today.

In this article, you’ll find out the optimal amount of money to get started, how to grow your bankroll quickly and which offers are the best to get you off to a flying start.

What Is The Smallest Amount You Need To Start Matched Betting?

You can start Matched Betting with as little as £20. However, it’s a challenging amount to start with as you’ll need a lot of patience as you wait for bets to settle and bookmaker withdrawals to process.

You’ll also have to constantly use low odds when doing free bets which will mean that you’ll miss out on making as much profit as you could have if you started with a larger bankroll.

If you don’t have around our recommended minimum of £50 spare cash to begin Matched Betting, it’s worth saving up at least that amount before you get started.

While you’re saving up, you can get well prepared by reading our top <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/matched-betting-tips">Matched Betting tips</a> so you’re ready to maximise your profits from the start.

After that, you’ll need a bit of patience to complete your first 10 or so offers from our 40+ sports signup offers available on our free trial. This is mainly because you’ll need to move money between each bookmaker, betting exchange and bank account between completing each offer.

It can be done though so remain patient like many of our members who started just like this and have slowly built their profits and are now making hundreds, and even thousands a month.

What Is The Best Amount To Start Matched Betting?

A healthy amount to start Matched Betting with would be anything from £500 to £750.

However, it’s fine to start with less and build your profits up over time. When starting with around £500+ you’ll have plenty of money to take on multiple offers at once to build your profits faster.

If you’re brand new to Matched Betting and still learning the process, you can start with a smaller amount and always add in extra as and when you’re more confident with the process. This will ensure you’re being cautious and avoid running before you can walk when first starting out.

If you’re fortunate enough to have a larger bankroll at your disposal, how much you start with will depend on how much time you’ve got spare to do Matched Betting every week. You can have a starting bankroll of £2000+ for example but if you only have 2-3 hours spare a week you might be hard pushed, at least until you are very experienced and doing more advanced offers, to place enough bets that would require your full bankroll.

Regardless of how much money you start with, you can build up your bankroll quickly and easily by working through our full list of bookmaker signup offers.

In the members area of Outplayed, there are more than 40 bookmaker signup offers to complete, and if you do them all, you should expect to make more than £850 in pure profit. You can access all of these using our free trial.

Beyond the signup offers you can continue to grow your profits using reload offers which are available every day to existing bookmaker customers.

There are many reload offers available each day so you can use our “Top Sports Reloads” and “Top Casino Reloads” pages to find a compilation of some of the best reload offers available on any given day.

These are offers with a balance of simplicity and value and are the perfect place to start to make more money in the fastest way possible.

Whilst you should generally be able to make £300 - £1000 from reload offers using a healthy set of accounts, the amount of profit you can make from these offers will vary enormously from month to month, or even from person to person.

As the age-old adage goes, “The more you put in, the more you get out” and as you progress you'll get a good idea of <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/how-much-can-you-make-from-matched-betting">how much you can make from Matched Betting</a>.

The key takeaway is that you can get started with Matched Betting with a very small amount of money but patience is key at the beginning.

If you have more money to get started - great! - but do take your time to learn the basics and then you can always add more money in to complete more offers when you are comfortable and confident.

Still not sure how much you should start with? - Remember you have access to experienced Matched Betting experts who are ready to support you.

Our <a href="https://outplayed.com/news/matched-betting/how-to-get-matched-betting-support">support</a> team is open and ready to help you 7 days a week. You can use email or live chat and we’re also proud to be the only Matched Betting service to offer phone support, so <a href="https://outplayed.com/contact">give us a call</a> whenever you need any extra guidance.

How much do you need to start matched betting? Advice and tips on how to build your profits starting with a small amount of money

How Much Do You Need To Start Matched Betting?

Being gubbed will prevent you from profiting from a bookmaker’s offers and promotions and is unfortunately part and parcel of your&nbsp;<a href="https://outplayed.com/what-is-matched-betting">Matched Betting journey</a>.

The longer you can stay off the bookmaker’s gubbed list will help you prolong the amount of profit you'll&nbsp;<a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/how-much-can-you-make-from-matched-betting">make from Matched Betting</a>.

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.

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!

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:

Bookmakers will restrict or close your account if you place arbitrage (arb) bets. <a href="https://outplayed.com/what-is-arbing-or-arbitrage" title="">Arbitrage betting</a> 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&nbsp;<a href="https://outplayed.com/news/matched-betting/price-boosts-enhanced-odds-offers-what-they-are-and-why-you-should-be-doing-them">price boost</a>&nbsp;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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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:

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.

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&nbsp;<a href="https://www.oddschecker.com/">Oddschecker</a>&nbsp;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.

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.

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.

When you place your bets try and avoid betting on the obscure events, aim for popular events like the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.premierleague.com/" target="_blank">Premier League</a>.

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