The idea of a no-lose betting system for football is a very appealing one. It would be great to run a system that was risk-free and just churned out profits on a regular basis.
In many ways that is the “holy grail” of betting – if we could just cut out the losses then it would all be easy!
Sadly in reality it is not quite so straightforward and it is rare to find true “no lose” betting systems that would never lose anything and simply produce profit.
However, there are some strategies out there that can significantly reduce risk and have low liabilities, whilst also offering considerable upside.
They have to be approached carefully and set up in the right way, but with careful preparation these strategies can be very effective.
We’ll take a look at some of these strategies below.
Top 3 Low Risk Football Betting Strategies
Many of the world’s top investors and bettors will tell you that the key to long-term success is in reducing risk. Whilst it is difficult to entirely eliminate risk – and to be fair, we are not sure any market could truly function properly if it were possible to do so all the time – we can greatly reduce it.
By reducing risk, we also reduce stress and worry about losing situations, since they won’t cost us very much. However we do keep the positive upside in play, which is key.
So below we’ll take a look at how exactly we can do this in our top three low-risk betting strategies.
3. Taking Advantage of the 2 Goals Ahead Payout Bonus
The bookmakers offer a range of bonuses and special offers these days to try and win people’s custom. One of the best of these bonuses is the “Two goals ahead payout bonus.”
What this means is that if your team goes two goals ahead in a game, the bookmaker will pay you out as a winner straight away, even though the game is still going. The main bookies offering this promotion are B365 and Paddy Power (please see each bookmaker for their individual terms and conditions).
The great thing about this offer is you can set it up to be a very low-risk opportunity to make some profit.
Basically what you need to do first is back a team with the relevant bookmaker who have the two goals ahead early payout offer.
So let’s say Bolton are playing Portsmouth and Bet365 were providing the two goals ahead offer on this game.
You would back Bolton before the game at odds of 2.10 with Bet365 for £100.
Then you would go to an exchange (e.g. Betfair or Smarkets) to place the opposing bet.
You would therefore lay Bolton for a very similar amount at the best available lay odds (i.e. lay £98 at 2.14).
When the game goes in-play, you then hope that Bolton go two goals ahead at some stage. If they don’t, then you would only have made a very small loss on the trade (and in many cases you will be able to find situations where the back and lay odds between Betfair and the bookie are the same so the loss would be smaller still).
However, if Bolton do go two goals up at some stage, you are in a great position.
The bookie will automatically pay out your bet on Bolton as a winner. You can then decide what to do with your lay stake with the exchange.
The back odds for Bolton at 2-0 up will have come down quite a lot and could well be around 1.10.
With the money you have already been paid out by the bookie, you could then decide to close your your bet on Betfair at that stage.
So you would place a back bet on Betfair for £183, to give a net profit of around £17 on the bet.
Alternatively you could wait to see if Portsmouth get a goal back, which would cause Bolton’s odds to drift quite considerably and give you a better return on your bet.
If Portsmouth got a goal back and the odds on Bolton drift out to say 1.25, you could then close out the trade on Betfair for a stake of £161, giving a net profit of around £39.
If you wanted to be really ambitious you could wait and see if the game goes level at 2-2 for a really big profit, although that would not generally be recommended as it will not happen very often.
Either way though, whichever way you want to play the bet after the side you have backed has gone two goals ahead, this is a very effective strategy and can give excellent profits with little risk.
It can also be useful to use a calculator to help with working out stakes and optimal strategy, which can be found at a site like Profit Maximiser, together with full video instructions on how to do this (and many similar) offers.
2. Lay the Draw
Another low risk football strategy is lay the draw. This is a strategy you can operate purely on the exchanges.
There are different ways to approach lay the draw. Some traders just like to lay the draw and wait for there to be a goal, thus delivering them a profitable trade.
However, the problem with that approach is if there is no goal, the liabilities become quite considerable.
So the approach we are going to describe here is based around minimising your liabilities as much as possible.
To do this you want to lay the draw before the start of a match, but also back the 0-0 scoreline to cover your liabilities. In this sense, if there is no goal in the game then you do not lose any of your stakes.
So for example, in this match between Brest and Lille the draw is available to lay at 3.85.
If we lay for £100, that gives a liability of £285 should the match finish in a draw, with a potential full profit of £100.
Then what we would do is place a back bet on 0-0 at odds of 13.5 for £22.80:
That then covers our liability on the draw if the game should finish 0-0.
It also means of course that the profit if there is a goal will be much smaller in most instances than if we had just laid the draw without any cover on 0-0.
In this case it may just be a pound or two. There are some cases where the profit could be a lot higher than this though.
One of these is when there’s a late goal, which will push the draw odds well out and give a decent profit. The later the goal comes, the better.
The other scenario is where a team receives a red card and then goes 1-0 down. Again, normally this will push the draw odds out considerably and deliver a nice return.
It is fair to say though that these scenarios are not likely to occur too often, so we may like to find situations that give a more regular return.
In that case we can adapt the lay the draw strategy slightly and instead wait until the game reaches half time.
If it is drawing at half-time, we enter the lay of the draw at that point.
Again we would also back the current score (0-0, 1-1, 2-2 etc), to ensure that if there are no further goals in the game, we do not lose our stakes.
The advantages of this approach are:
- The draw odds we are laying at will be considerably lower at half-time than at the start of the game;
- If there is a goal in the second half, the draw odds will normally move out by a good margin, giving a decent return;
- The later the goal comes, the better. After 80 minutes and we will be looking at a very handsome return.
If a goal is scored early in the half, you will normally be looking at a scratch trade or a small loss.
So it is not entirely risk-free, but this approach does considerably reduce liabilities whilst still offering favourable upside on our trades.
For more detailed trading strategies like this, we would recommend checking out the award-winning Goal Profits, which contains a comprehensive portfolio of trading strategies, together with stats databases, trading workshops and live trading sessions.
1. Matched betting
Another football betting strategy that is almost “no lose” is matched betting. The practice has been around for a few years now and has evolved over time, becoming more sophisticated as the offers available have developed.
In essence though matched betting involves using the bookies’ free bets and bonuses to create low-risk betting opportunities. With the right tools (mainly a matched betting calculator), some of the bookies’ offers can be set up in a certain way to ensure an overall profit is secured.
So for example, a bookie may offer a free £25 bet in-play if you place a £25 bet before the game. If you were just to take up this offer without using any matched betting, you could easily come out £25 down, if both your pre-game and free in-play bets lose.
With matched betting however, in this situation you would be able to ensure that you generated a profit whatever happens.
You would do this by using the exchanges to lay off the pre-game bet so you only incur a very small loss (i.e. the commission plus sometimes a small difference between the back and lay prices).
Then you have a free £25 bet in-play, which you can also use the exchanges to lay off and guarantee yourself an overall profit from the two bets.
The key is to work out exactly how much to lay off, but that is where the matched betting calculators come in, which packages like Profit Maximiser provide, as well as full video tutorials on how to set up the bets and daily calendars with all that day’s offers and bonuses listed.
When you get a generous free bet offer from the bookies like the example above, with matched betting it truly can become a “no lose bet” when set up correctly. With enough of these over the course of a week or a month, they can really add up.
Not all of the bookie offers will be as good as the example above of course and there will be occasions with matched betting when a small loss is incurred – this is normally with certain offers that offer value but aren’t “free bets” as such. And eventually the bookies may close or restrict your account if they feel you are doing too much matched betting.
Overall though, if executed correctly the practice of matched betting is the best and safest way to secure low-risk and “no lose” profits. Some people operate it as almost a second job and earn a tidy additional income from it.
As we say there are great packages around these days like Profit Maximiser which show you how it all works and provide daily lists of all the available offers, as well as a Facebook group with over 50,000 members where new offers are posted. In our own trial of Profit Maximiser, we made a very healthy £2,469 profit which is not to be sniffed at.
Please note that matched betting is not viable in all countries as some jurisdictions do not allow bookies to offer free bets. It works best in the UK and Ireland but if you are not sure it is best to check whether free bets are allowed in your area first.
Conclusion
“No-lose betting” is the holy grail of gambling but it is easier said than done. There are some genuine opportunities to do it through matched betting for example, but otherwise it is about reducing your liabilities as much as possible whilst still preserving upside.
We have provided three strategies above for low-risk betting and we hope that these prove useful and give you some ideas for how you can incorporate some low-risk betting into your own approach.