2UPS: The Key To More Profits From Matched Betting

Quick answer: 2UPS are an advanced Matched Betting technique that takes advantage of 2UP Early Payout offers from bookies, which pay out your bet as a win if your team goes two goals up at any point in the match. By placing a matched bet on the 2UP market, there's a possibility of your winning both your back and lay bets if your team goes two goals up but then fails to win the match.

What is the 2up or early payout offer?

The 2up offer, which is also known as the early payout offer, is an offer that's most commonly available on football, but can often be found on other sports as well nowadays. This used to be available with only a couple of bookies, but more and more are now offering early payouts in some form.

For a regular punter, the offer in itself is quite simple: If the team they bet on goes 2 goals ahead of the other team at anytime, the bookie pays them out as a winner regardless of what the final result of the match is.

This means if a punter bet on Liverpool to win vs. Manchester City and Liverpool were winning 2-0 at half-time, but then went on to lose the game 2-3 at full-time, the bookie would still pay the punter out as a winner as Liverpool had gone ahead by 2 goals during the game.

How do we profit from the 2up offer in matched betting?

There are two main strategies that we can use in matched betting to profit from 2UP offers.

The first strategy is often referred to as the ‘Let it Ride’ (or ‘Wait & Hope’) strategy, the second is the ‘Lock-in Profit’ strategy.

Both strategies start with finding suitable qualifying bets to do. So let’s look at that first, using some examples to illustrate the process.

Finding and Placing the Best Qualifying Matched Bet(s) for the 2up Offer

Before starting any reload offer such as this we always recommend to double check the offer terms and conditions at the relevant bookmaker and/or in our reload offer guides.

Step 1: For an eligible bet find as close a match as possible between the bookmaker and exchange odds. We recommend when you're starting 2ups for the first time that the match should be a 98% match or higher. Sometimes people do choose to settle for a little less than the ideal match (e.g. 96% or higher). If they do this they tend to lower their stake amount in order to reduce their qualifying loss.

For the qualifying bet we’d recommend the bookmaker odds be 1.70 or greater, though analysis suggests the ideal odds tend to be between 2.0 and 5.0. If the odds you choose are less than 1.70 then you are unlikely to make much profit unless you’re using huge stakes (£100 and more). If the odds are above 5.0 the chance that the team will go 2 goals up over the other team becomes more and more unlikely. In football of course anything is possible – but it’s always better to go for options that have the best probability of coming in for you. The best place to find these close matches is using our Oddsmatcher.

Step 2: Once you’ve found a suitable odds match, place your back bet at the bookmaker first, and then lay it off at the betting exchange using our matched betting calculator in normal mode - just as you would for any normal qualifying bet. The back stake amount you use is up to you – there is no maximum limit (at the time of writing). If you are a beginner to matched betting, have never done 2up offers before and have a relatively small bankroll – we recommend that you start small with £10 to £20 bets. Over time you can build up to bets of £100, £200 or more if you choose.

This process is even easier with Pro Membership, which allows you to find the best bets to do in seconds with our 2UP Master tool. The tool constantly scans bookies looking for the best 2UP opportunities, meaning all you have to do is click the integrated links and place your bets. 

Let's look at an example of an upcoming qualifying bet on the Premier League shown between Everton and Ipswich.

As this holds positive expected value, indicated by the percentage over 100% at 109.5%, this is a great 2UP opportunity.

For a £10 back stake on Ipswich with Bet365 the calculator tells us we would need to lay £9.90 at Smarkets. This would incur a small qualifying loss of just 10p (as Outplayed members enjoy 0% commission with Smarkets).

Once you’ve completed your qualifying bet, all you have to do then is wait for your team to go 2 goals ahead then choose your profit strategy below.

The Full Turnaround (FTA) 2UP Strategy

This strategy is super easy. You basically do nothing and hope that after the team you bet on go 2 goals up that they then proceed to draw or lose the game! This strategy is perhaps best to do on days when you might not have the time spare to check the games in-play.

Using our example from above – if Ipswich go two goals up, then don’t win the game (i.e. either losing to Everton or drawing) we will make £47.40 in profit.

Bet365 will pay us out as a winner for Ipswich going 2UP – so we get £37.50 in winnings there.

Smarkets will also pay us out as a winner as our lay bet against Ipswich will also win at full-time because they didn’t win the game. We get £9.90 in winnings there, making a total of £47.40.

If Ipswich fail to go two goals up, then we have to settle for a small qualifying loss of 10p.

The key to this strategy is volume. There's a pretty small chance in any match that your team will go two goals up and then fail to win - but the potential profits when this happens for one of your 2UP bets can be more than enough to produce a highly profitable strategy overall.

The ‘Lock-In Profit’ 2UP Strategy

This strategy is a little bit more complicated – but once you get the hang of it by following our full guides, it can be very profitable.

If you want to use this strategy our Early Pay Out Matched Betting Calculator is an essential tool.

If we use our Ipswich example from above, as soon as they go 2 goals ahead in the game, we would need to cash-out at the exchange (Smarkets in this case) by placing a new back bet there on Ipswich to win.

The back stake we would need to use is calculated from the back odds on Ipswich at the exchange by our Early Pay Out Calculator. The back odds on Ipswich at this point will be very low, as being 2 goals up they are now expected to win the game. We’ve used back odds of 1.20 for them here as an example.

Enter the details of your pre-game bet into the left hand side of the calculator, then select yes for both sliders: 'Early pay out selection triggered?' and 'Early pay out lock in active?' 

Then enter the current back odds in the right hand side of the calculator, under cash out back odds, to view the recommend cash out stake at the bottom of the calculator.

As you can see, if we place a £39.60 back bet at the exchange, we can lock in a profit of £7.80 no matter what happens in the match. Obviously, this is a much smaller profit than in the case of a full turnaround - but a full turnaround is also a much less likely outcome.

Doing a cash-out (or trade-out) like this using the full £10 that we originally staked is referred to as a 100% cash-out. This tends to be a good option to use when your team goes 2up in the 2nd half of a game because there is limited time left for the other team to come back. It’s better to lock-in as much profit as you can at this point and as quickly as you can after your team go 2up.

What could you look at doing if your team went 2 goals up quite early in the game though?

The ‘Lock-In Profit’ 2up Strategy with Partial Cash-outs

Instead of doing a full 100% cash-out you could instead do a 25% or 50% cash-out, so that you either at least cover your qualifying loss or lock in a bit of profit no matter what then happens in the game.

How would this work exactly? Well, let’s pretend Ipswich went 2 goals ahead just 25 minutes into the game and we want to cash-out 25% of our lay bet to cover our original qualifying loss, and leave the remaining 75% to see if Everton can come back.

In the Early Pay Out Calculator we need to switch it to Advanced Mode, input everything as before and then change the 'Early Pay Out Lock-in' section to 25%

Following the results of the calculator we then place a back bet of £9.90 on Ipswich to win at the exchange, which will cash out 25% of our lay bet and give us a definite profit of £1.86 if Ipswich go on to win the game. If Werder Bremem go on to lose the game we will be up £37.50.

By doing this 25% cash-out we’ve more than covered our 10p qualifying loss, and put ourselves in profit by a minimum of £1.76.

If Everton go on to score 1 goal back just before half-time, we could then cash-out more of our lay bet and lock-in more profit. Let’s try cashing out another 50% of our bet using the Advanced Calculator mode. Note that Ipswich's back odds at the exchange would have now risen to 1.40 or thereabouts due to Everton getting one goal back.

Following the results of the calculator we now do another back bet of £6.67 on Ipswich to win at the exchange, which will cash out another 50% of our lay bet and give us another £6.67 in profit.

By doing this we’re now definitely a minimum of £1.86 plus £6.67 up – so £8.53 in total if Ipswich win the game. Plus we still have 25% (or £2.50’s worth) of our lay bet left to cash-out if we want to during the second half of the game.

If Everton get a 2nd goal during the second-half, we have a decision to make – do we cash-out the rest of our lay bet, in case Ipswich manage to get more goals, or leave it and hope the game will remain at 2-2? The choice of what to do is yours! 

Let's imagine we do decide to cash out the remaining 25% of our bet. The match is 2-2 at 64 minutes and Ipswich’s back odds at the exchange have risen to 2.10 now. We use the remaining 25% cash-out we have left.

Following the results of the calculator we now place another back bet of £5.66 on Ipswich to win at the exchange, which will cash out our final 25% of our lay bet and give us another £6.11 in profit no matter what happens in the game from this point on.

By doing this we’re now £1.86 plus £6.67 plus £6.11 up – so £14.64 in total.

As we've now fully traded out (25% + 50% + 25% = 100%) this is now our total profit no matter how the game ends.

With this partial cash-out strategy to lock-in profit there are no hard and fast rules that we can tell you to follow. For example, you might adjust your strategy depending on what’s happening in the game, what the original odds of the team were that you backed, and how much time you have to follow the game and to keep cashing-out. You will develop your own approaches the more experience you gain doing 2up offers.

Support

Both our community forum and Facebook Group are fantastic resources for asking our more experienced members about their personal strategies on 2up as well.

You will see that some members resolutely stick to 98% odds matches for example, others don’t. When teams go 2up some might do a 25% cash-out then always switch to the FTA strategy. Others might always immediately do a full 100% cash out at 2up.

The important thing to know is when you really get the hang of doing 2up offers they can make you a lot of money. There will be losses on the way – and if you’re quite new to matched betting with a small bankroll this is important to bear in mind before tackling 2up offers. Start with just doing 1 or 2 teams with small £10 or £20 bets and work your way up to doing lots of teams with £50 to £100 stakes. 

Interested in Getting Started With Matched Betting?

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