Unless you’re fairly new to matched betting, chances are you’ll already know what it feels like to be gubbed.
It’s not great.
If you are new to matched betting then you’re in the right place. I wish I had the following advice before I jumped in and started helping myself to profits!
“Mug Betting” is the no1 thing you can do to keep your accounts from being gubbed.
So let’s get started 🙂
What is Mug Betting Really?
In my research, for this article, I looked at most of the other articles and found varying descriptions.
Some suggest that it’s a strategy to intentionally lose money with a bookmaker.
Let’s hit that one out of the park for starters.
Trying to ensure that all your bets with a bookmaker lose and all your lay bets on an exchange win is not a sound idea.
You simply do not have any control over the outcome of sports events and if you do happen to be an excellent judge, that can beat the odds through prediction alone, you probably don’t need matched betting to help you win.
Most agree that “mug betting” is simply a strategy of betting with a bookie with the intention of making you look like a “mug”, and as such a desirable/profitable customer for them.
We do this by placing bets with them that aren’t linked to any particular promotion or offer and laying them off on the exchange for a minimal loss. (Typically £0.10 – £0.50)
Now the reality is that if you’re doing matched betting, and therefore regularly taking advantage of a high proportion, if not all, of the offers available with a particular bookie – you’re not likely to ever be considered one of their most valued customers.
But that’s ok. That’s not the idea. Try to think of Gubbings like a league table – where the bookies relegate (Gub!) the bottom three every season.
So all you are trying to achieve is to stay out of that bottom three who will usually be the most obvious matched bettors who have no mug betting strategy or have poorly implemented one.
Of course, gubbings vary greatly between bookmakers and my experience, along with many others that I have conversed with, has shown that although luck plays a huge part, having a good mug betting strategy can go a long way.
Basic Mug Betting:
Placing fairly close match back/lays on high profile markets, several times a week, costing between £0.10 and £0.50.
I often refer to Mug Bets as “padding bets”. Essentially I am just filling the gaps in between my qualifying bets, risk-free bets and other bets around promotions that I am doing.
All I am going to do here is using odds matching software to find relatively close odds matches between the bookmaker and the exchange and then betting on them with the bookie and laying them on the exchange.
I want to look like my bets and betting patterns are “organic”, spur of the moment and that I’m not just on their website to take advantage of their promotions.
So usually I will look to place mug bets each time I visit a bookmaker site (depending on the availability/cost), and certainly at least once to twice a week for the accounts that most valuable to me.
Which accounts are most valuable is a subject for another post, but suffice to say here that it pays to think about which are the most valuable to you.
Using the Oddsmatcher
I personally use the software at ProfitAccumulator. I paid £140 for a year’s access to the site and the 0% commission at Smarkets probably gives me some of that back.
But the main draw is that it saves me lots of time.
If you do not have or want a paid-for membership like that you can use the free software available at ProfitRush or just to the comparisons yourself by comparing prices at Oddschecker and Smarkets and using a matched betting calculator.
Choosing which bets to make is probably where a lot of people fail with mug betting.
Experience certainly helps here but I’ll try and give you some pointers:
- Avoid arbs and very close matches (matches with a 95-98% rating on PA are about the sweet spot)
- Stick to high profile sporting events/markets, such and Premier League match odds, Race Winner on televised races.
- Avoid obscure events, and avoid the DRAW generally.
- Stick with the main sport you bet on normally with that account
- Keep the amounts similar to the other bets on that account
- Try to keep to events happening the same day and closer to the start the better.
- Use Smarkets NOT Betfair for your lays. Smarkets will give you a low commission of 2% and Betfair is under the same ownership as Paddypower, Pokerstars and Skybet.
- DON’T blindy back horses based on odds match alone. If you end up the winner of a low grade race at high ish price, or that’s drifted and the company offers best odds guarantee, they could end up marking you down as “shewdie” even though you hadn’t a clue.
Stick with high-grade races or favourites.
Record Keeping
If you are a newbie you might feel more comfortable keeping detailed records of the exact bets you are placing. For me as I am placing lots of mug bets and using automation via the “one click lay” with ProfitAccumulator I only keep a record of the amounts mug bets cost me and the day I placed them.
So my records literally look something like:
Bfred Mug -0.14, -0.37. SkyB Mug -0.25, -0.30. …..etc etc.
I write these down in a week to view dairy and add them up and the end of the week.
This is a bit old school and adding them up would obviously be faster with a spreadsheet, but noting them down takes me probably less than 3 seconds, as I keep the pad and pen to hand.
More advanced mug betting
Betting multiples and laying them off on Smarkets
Bookies love Doubles, Trebles and Accas. All things being equal they effectively compound the bookmaker’s edge and are generally associated with recreational punters. Thanks to Smarkets we can lay off our multiples for minimal loss and look like one of these “recreational punters”.
Taking poor value “odds boosts” laying them off on Smarkets
Taking value from bookmakers by backing their odds boosts when they offer great value can lead to good profits. But very often they offer “boosted odds” which whilst being better than their standard odds are not the best market price overall and are kinda “red herrings” to entice in unsuspecting punters. Call their bluff by occasionally backing these and laying off for a small loss.
Betting Inplay
Grabbing your phone and placing a bet during the middle of a football game will make you look like a spur of the moment punter and fits the bill of “mug bettor” perfectly, as bookies like inplay bets. Their margins are generally higher and they know they attract more impulsive betting. Of course if you get during stoppages/HT you can negate the risk of a goal freezing the market before you lay off the bet on the Exchange.
Using the slots
*This one has a wealth warning and isn’t for everyone as these can be very addictive*.
If you are disciplined enough though, acting like you are just trying out the slots could potentially trick their bots into thinking you might turn into a really profitable customer for them.
You absolutely must take a note of your account balance before you load these.
You should then decide an amount of money (say £2 to £5) that you are prepared to lose and/or an amount of time that you are prepared to spend on them. I tend to pick a figure around £3-4 less than my current balance and use 10p or 20p stakes and gamble through until I lose the £3 or £4, hit a bonus round, hit a nice win, or have reached my set time limit. Generally, you will lose.
Dutching
Dutching is great because it enables to Mug Bet with two or more bookies at the same time without laying on an Exchange. It’s a little out of the scope of this article but just think you could be placing a bet club qualifier with one side of the market, and a mug bet on the other, think of it as “economical mug betting”. Just remember that you should keep stakes to round numbers which will require some fancy calculations. So it isn’t for beginners.
Does it work?
In my personal experience yes it does work. And this isn’t just anecdotal as others have carried out surveys featuring hundreds of punters – so the evidence is fairly solid.
Should I Mug Bet on all my accounts?
No. Frankly a great number of bookie accounts aren’t worth much more than their signup offers so its a case of picking your battles carefully.
Whilst placing a couple of mug bets literally takes under a minute or so in most instances if you were to try and do this on 20 accounts or more it wouldn’t be practical.
So pick your battles!
For me, I lost my Bet365 account recently which had served me well for over a decade.
I am pretty certain I could have avoided this with a better strategy as I had gotten pretty blasé having had the account for so long.
Takeaways
- Don’t expect to just take advantage of the offers alone indefinitely.
- Always try to place other bets along with your qualifiers for offers.
- Be sure to have at least some mug betting on your main accounts each week.
- Remember that your goal is to be better at this than the majority of matched bettors, bookies want your custom and their systems will get rid of the worst “offenders” first.
- Remember that whilst you can prolong the length of time an account stays unrestricted, sometimes by years, oftentimes you will end up gubbed eventually.
When this happens, accept it and move on.
Research links:
How bookmakers track your every move & how to get around it (from an industry insider).
