Advantage gambling is an umbrella term referring to a variety of methods meant to help a player gain an advantage over a casino or a bookmaker. One important thing to remember about these methods is that they are all legal. Advantage gambling is not cheating!
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Top 3 Key Takeaways:
- Advantage gambling refers to legal methods for making sure profits at casinos/sportsbooks.
- Matched Betting is a good example of advantage gambling.
- An oddsmatcher / calculator helps with matched betting and simple arbs.
Definition of Advantage Gambling
All the methods that are used to perform advantage betting are based on mathematics instead of luck. This fact makes any form of advantage gambling a bulletproof method for making profits at casino/sportsbooks.
In order to be called advantage gambling, a method needs to be completely legal. If it’s not legal, it’s cheating. The fact that advantage gambling is legal means that you don’t have to worry about getting in trouble with the law. Still, it also doesn’t mean you’re going to be congratulated by the casino/sportsbook for doing it. On the contrary, they’re going to try to stop you from gaining an advantage over them.
This is why you have to play smart and do all you can to outwit your opponent, which in this case is the casino or sportsbook. The tricks you use to ensure you stay under the radar is something that depends on the kind of advantage gambling method you utilize.
Different methods require different measures to ensure profits. For instance, if you’re going to do advantage gambling in blackjack, you would need certain skills such as counting cards; if your gambling game of choice if poker, you would need to master poker-playing skills such as angle shooting.
If you’re going to do advantage gambling in sports betting, an oddsmatcher and a matched betting calculator help you find and size opportunities — matched betting is the prime example. Start with our ultimate guide to matched betting.
Matched Betting – Best Example of Advantage Gambling
Matched betting is one of the most popular types of advantage gambling and its popularity is increasing all the time. The reason why matched betting is getting all the attention in the advantage gambling community is that it really works.
To understand why matched betting is still a profitable advantage gambling method in 2020, you need to understand how this method works. What matched betting does is it takes advantage of bookmakers’ bonus offers.
Considering that a big majority of online bookmakers are giving away some kind of bonus, a player can use matched betting principles to turn the bonus funds into real money. Basically, what you have to do is place the free bet on a certain outcome, while simultaneously betting that the same outcome is not going to happen. It is possible to bet that something will not happen thanks to the existence of betting exchanges such as Betfair or Matchbook.
By doing matched betting, you are practically wagering only one bet with your money. It’s the so-called lay bet that you’re placing at the betting exchange. The other bet is made through using the bonus funds, which are free. Of course, in order to receive the bonus funds, you would probably have to make a deposit with your own cash, which complicates things a little bit.
You’re not left entirely on your own: an oddsmatcher helps surface bookmaker bonuses and candidate cover lays (or opposite backs), and a calculator sizes the stakes so you keep most of the bonus value either way. See the ultimate guide to matched betting.
You have two common cover styles:
- Back + lay — bonus back at the soft book, lay the same selection at an exchange.
- Two backs — bonus back at the soft book, opposite back at a sharper cover bookmaker (no exchange needed).
With two-book cover, the second bookmaker stands in for the exchange. For example, if you’re backing Liverpool at the Bonus Bookmaker, you might cover with Leicester/Draw double chance at Bookmaker 2.
Exchanges let you set a lay price and wait for a match; soft books only offer their listed odds, so two-book cover is often slightly looser. Sometimes the prices at two books are still good enough for a clean clear — and occasionally the prices alone form an arb with no bonus involved. That method is called arbing in advantage gambling circles.
Is Arbing a Sort of Advantage Gambling?
Arbitrage betting or arbing is a math-based method that takes advantage of odds disparity at two or more different bookmakers. Arbing is only possible when odds that represent mutually exclusive outcomes are set in such a way that if you cover all of them, you will win a profit regardless of how the event ends.
Let’s take an NBA game between the Golden State Warriors and New Orleans Pelicans as an example. If the odds on the Warriors are 2.10 at Bookmaker 1 and the same odds are given by Bookmaker 2 on the Pelicans, it is considered an arb. The reason is that if you put €100 on each possible outcome, you would earn a profit of €10 regardless of which team won the game.
As you can see, arbing is a pretty simple method, which is 100% legal. Unfortunately, the chances that you would get rich through arbing in 2020 are pretty slim. The reason is that finding such arbs as in the example above is almost a mission impossible. In fact, a big majority of arbs bring a profit of only 1%. This means that in order to make decent money, you would need to invest a lot.
Unfortunately, even if you had an unlimited arbing budget, you still wouldn’t be able to make use of it. The thing is that most sportsbooks do not allow placing too high of stakes, especially on bets flagged as potential arbs. Even if you managed to do so once, your account would likely end up gubbed the next time you tried to do the same.
Advantage Gambling in Card Games
Apart from being used to gain an advantage over bookmakers, advantage gambling methods are also used in casinos, both brick-and-mortar ones and online casinos. These methods are also commonly used by card players to get an advantage over their opponents. Angle shooting is one such method.
This method is used in poker in order to win hands against less-experienced players. Although it’s considered unethical, angle shooting is completely legal. How it works is that it makes the players think the angler is going to act differently than what their intention actually is.
Another advantage gambling method used in card games is card counting. Unlike angle shooting, this method is not aimed at other card players but at the dealer. Through card counting, the player takes the money from the house, rather than winning against fellow players. This is the reason why many casinos are using all sorts of strategies to figure out who is using this method. The bad news for card-counters is that casinos have become very skillful in busting them.
Can You Make a Living Off Advantage Gambling?
By definition, professional bettors are those who bet to make their living rather than to have fun. Professional bettors never rely on luck. Instead, they rely on their skills to earn their fortune. Using skills is possible in certain games, such as poker, but in some, luck is the only factor.
Sports betting, however, combines luck and skills. In order to make money, bettors need to possess a lot of knowledge about sports. Unfortunately, without luck on their side, they often end up empty-handed. That is the reason why many players with money on their mind decide to remove luck out of the equation. Instead of leaving anything to chance, they decide to rely on maths.
The result is that a big majority of successful professional bettors use some kind of mathematics-based strategy. Whether it’s some staking tactic or some sort of advantage gambling method, pro bettors tend to stick to them. This approach might not be as exciting as regular old-fashioned gambling, but on the other hand, they bring sure profits.
If you are wondering if it’s possible to make a living off advantage gambling, the honest answer is: some people do, but it takes time, bankroll discipline, and careful account management — not a set-and-forget tool. Matched betting is one of the cleaner entry points because the maths is transparent; an oddsmatcher and calculator remove a lot of the manual searching and stake maths.
How much you convert depends on offers available to you, commission, and how carefully you size each clear. Learn the mechanics properly first — start with our ultimate guide to matched betting.
3 Takeaways
- Advantage gambling is based on mathematics and skills.
- There’s no room for luck in advantage gambling.
- Matched Betting is a type of advantage gambling — use an oddsmatcher/calculator and learn the flow properly.