Can't Lose Sports Betting - Try Arbitrage Betting

[Midwest Player]

I think I'm ahead sports betting for this year. I know I'm behind on the small bets I made on football. However, I also received some nice profit boosts of 100% and some at 50% which I used to to make a guaranteed profit. The profit boosts came from playing blackjack online along with some free credits for playing $100,000 on blackjack. The game was breakeven before the profit boosts, but the profit boosts made it a +EV promotion. Don't have to worry about winning. Just play both sides at another sports book and just collect your money.

Odds Jam will tell you how much profit you will make.
https://oddsjam.com/betting-calculat...rage-hedge-bet

Any thoughts if arbitrage betting is the way to go with profit boosts?

[jdaewoo]

So you have a +EV bet using a profit boost, and you want to make a -EV bet on the other side of the game because you feel bad?

Fucking what?

[redietz]

So you have a +EV bet using a profit boost, and you want to make a -EV bet on the other side of the game because you feel bad?

Fucking what?

This is the new thing around town -- spreading the myth that arbitrage is an easy way to make money sports betting. YouTube is filled with videos of people explaining how and offering to share the wealth.

There are several problems with it, not that the concept itself is awful. The gentleman I reference in the other thread, Southern Comfort, was a master of arbitrage back in the 80's and 90's, before most people had internet.

The problems, from a practical standpoint, are simple:

1) You would need 50K or more in a dozen accounts to make this work, and you would have to be able to trust that all books were reliable and solvent.
2) As far as offshores go, you don't know which books are under the same management, and management almost always reserves the right to restrict "professional" accounts. The quickest way to get labeled "professional" is to 90% wager on arbitraging, and you don't know who is managing what companies, thus your arbitrage attempts are transparent.
3) Numbers move in unison much more than in the past. Few outliers. There are concrete reasons for this. In other words, historically, things worked differently 30 years ago. Many of the outlier-number places are what I would call boutique sports books. Nice places, but low limits.
4) People are going to point to prop betting as the easiest way to arbitrage. It's true, but you're laying -115 as often as -110, and the limits are so low as to make it a pain in the ass. And the problems listed above aren't solved by betting props.

That's the Cliff Notes version. For the most part, the "let's go arbitraging" is a hook. Really, if people could do this consistently for actual money, they wouldn't be cheerleading it.

Now, if you like to stare at numbers all day and try to arbitrage props for lunch or dinner money, which I must admit to having done (and occasionally still do) for standalone NFL games where numbers can swing, more power to you. Never pass up lunch money, I say, and you won't go hungry.

But let's face it, to do this on scale for real money, you do need a helluva lot of cash plopped into a dozen places, so you shouldn't be worrying about lunch.

[Mission146]

So you have a +EV bet using a profit boost, and you want to make a -EV bet on the other side of the game because you feel bad?

Fucking what?

The first thing that I would point out is that I don't think he's technically talking about arbitrage betting. I think he is talking about hedging in order to guarantee profits, so there are some lines that are better than others for this, but he's not talking about finding something where a team is +102 at one book and the opposite team is +100 at another book, or some other combination (you guys get the stuff I mean) that effectively does the same thing.

Anyway, if you have a limited bankroll or want to guarantee profits, then this is one way to do it. I really don't recommend it for people who are well-bankrolled because of the loss to EV. That said, since people are going to tend to see (unless multi-accounting) a very finite number of large profit boost bets in their lives, I could understand why some people even with a moderate bankroll would sacrifice a little EV in exchange for guaranteed profits.

Another thing that can be done is that you can combine the profit boost and sometimes use a different promotion on a different site to take the opposite side of the profit boost side. Whether or not that's advisable and how good it is, of course, depends on what the lines are and what the opposing promotion is on the offset bet.

[AxelWolf]

[QUOTE=redietz;150208
That's the Cliff Notes version. For the most part, the "let's go arbitraging" is a hook. Really, if people could do this consistently for actual money, they wouldn't be cheerleading it.

[/QUOTE]One can consistently make good money playing blackjack and yet people are consistently cheerleading it.

Of course, there always going to be charlatans who use just about anything and everything as a hook and make it seem like it's an easy get-rich situation. Gambling, Stocks, crypto, work-from-home, surveys, affiliate stuff, and the list goes on. No doubt people have gotten rich and made some easy money on all of those things.

With just pure arbitraging under just one name, I haven't enough knowledge about how much one could make but it's hard for me to imagine anyone on this forum with the tenacity and knowledge to arbitrage would be dense enough to only arbitrage and ignore everything else available that's +EV in sports betting along the way. You don't need 50K if you take advantage of all the online + EV sports deals. You start off small and build up your bankroll. Certainly, someone can find a way to take advantage of stuff like a 125% match bonus up to 2k with a 12 x roll. And that's crap compared to the other stuff floating around. If one gets a little inventive and dedicates themselves I'm certain they could do much better than 99% of the handicappers.

[tableplay]

WTF? Odds of getting two or more quads off a pair 5-handed is about 1 in 13056.33. No biggie, we all see odds this long a lot with the number of hands of VP we VCTers play each day - except how about getting that event for the subset of those hands which are vulched ? Now there are ten ways to arrange the two 2x multipliers and one of these ways will have them land on the two quad hands. So about a 130,000 to 1 shot to get both those two hands doubled. LOL.

[redietz]

[QUOTE=AxelWolf;150230]

One can consistently make good money playing blackjack and yet people are consistently cheerleading it.

Of course, there always going to be charlatans who use just about anything and everything as a hook and make it seem like it's an easy get-rich situation. Gambling, Stocks, crypto, work-from-home, surveys, affiliate stuff, and the list goes on. No doubt people have gotten rich and made some easy money on all of those things.

With just pure arbitraging under just one name, I haven't enough knowledge about how much one could make but it's hard for me to imagine anyone on this forum with the tenacity and knowledge to arbitrage would be dense enough to only arbitrage and ignore everything else available that's +EV in sports betting along the way. You don't need 50K if you take advantage of all the online + EV sports deals. You start off small and build up your bankroll. Certainly, someone can find a way to take advantage of stuff like a 125% match bonus up to 2k with a 12 x roll. And that's crap compared to the other stuff floating around. If one gets a little inventive and dedicates themselves I'm certain they could do much better than 99% of the handicappers.

Agreed, with this huge caveat. What you're suggesting is that "sports" in all one thing, under one umbrella, with roughly comparable means, opportunities, and abilities required. That's not the case.

[AxelWolf]

[QUOTE=redietz;150247]

One can consistently make good money playing blackjack and yet people are consistently cheerleading it.

Of course, there always going to be charlatans who use just about anything and everything as a hook and make it seem like it's an easy get-rich situation. Gambling, Stocks, crypto, work-from-home, surveys, affiliate stuff, and the list goes on. No doubt people have gotten rich and made some easy money on all of those things.

With just pure arbitraging under just one name, I haven't enough knowledge about how much one could make but it's hard for me to imagine anyone on this forum with the tenacity and knowledge to arbitrage would be dense enough to only arbitrage and ignore everything else available that's +EV in sports betting along the way. You don't need 50K if you take advantage of all the online + EV sports deals. You start off small and build up your bankroll. Certainly, someone can find a way to take advantage of stuff like a 125% match bonus up to 2k with a 12 x roll. And that's crap compared to the other stuff floating around. If one gets a little inventive and dedicates themselves I'm certain they could do much better than 99% of the handicappers.

Agreed, with this huge caveat. What you're suggesting is that "sports" in all one thing, under one umbrella, with roughly comparable means, opportunities, and abilities required. That's not the case.

You'll have to elaborate I don't understand what you are getting at.

Also, you made a good point pointing out that some online sports books used the same management/owners, etc. Also, the same reps/affiliates/hosts... or they move from one place to the next. Sometimes they have 2 different names they use.

I have noticed on numerous occasions after making a deposit at one online sports book I'll suddenly get a call from a totally different place with a bonus offer. Sometimes I'll just make a few random deposits hoping they will call with an offer, and then I will negotiate a better deal with an, "Hey, you called me". attitude. I won't take less than 100% cash offer and I shoot for a 125%-150% cash or free bet offer obviously, that comes with wagering requirements. I don't do a significant amount of online sports betting, but I'm up on all 4 of the offshore joints I started this year. They were being a bit stingy and wanted deposits equal to my winnings, and I'm definitely not doing that. They just started calling again with some fair offers but I'm holding out for better offers since I'm not willing to line shop and value hunt.