An Introduction to Arbitrage Betting

Within the betting world, it is also known as “arbing” and it is not so difficult to understand once you have a grasp of what it is. The strategy means you make a wager on all the potential outcomes of an event. In addition, it gives you an opportunity to take the potential outcomes and place them at evens or higher odds. By doing so you can create a return on your bet no matter what happens. Therefore, you do not really need to be overly concerned about the end result of a match.

To give you an example we are going to use football and a match taking place between Porto and Sporting CP. There are three possible results of the match, a home win, an away win and a draw.

Traditionally, a bettor will decide how to place their money based on one of the three options of home win, away win or draw. This will be after considering the teams, players, league positions and form. If the bettor backs a draw and the match ends in a home win or an away win the bet is lost.

When using arbitrage betting for the match against Porto and Sporting CP, you will be betting against all three potential outcomes of the game, a home win, draw and away win. In doing so, you will not need to spend time thinking about the end result. What the bettor needs to do is search for the discrepancies between the odds so that no matter what the result they can end up making a return.

Making a profit every time you make a bet sounds too good to be true. If it were true then bookmakers would not be in business. If arbitrage betting was so easy then you would win all the time. In reality, you cannot apply arbitrage betting to every match.

Taking a more simplistic look into arbitrage betting, let us pay attention to an assumed tennis match between João Sousa and Alexander Zverev. Within the tennis match there will not be a draw but only a win for either Zverev or Sousa. Due to only two outcomes, arbitrage betting becomes simpler than when applied to a football match.

To be able to engage in arbitrage betting you will need to set-up a number of accounts with several bookmakers. This is because you will have to compare their odds. Once completed you can calculate the Individual Arbitrage Percentage (IAP) for the outcomes. Search for the best odds that are available for each possible end result and then use the formula (1/Odds) x 100.

The formula provides the IAP for each end result. If we take our tennis match as an example, we could assume the best available odds for Zverev to win are 2.08. Then using the IAP, we can calculate (1/2.08) x 100 = 48.08.

You can then assume the best odds for Sousa are 2.09 and applying that to the IAP will provide the following calculation (1/2.09) x 100 = 475.

Now you know the IAP for each possible end result and you can then add them together to give you a Total Arbitrage Percentage (TAP) of 95.93.

An arb opportunity will prevail if the TAP is lower than 100 and in our example we have a TAP of 95.93. They are effective every time the TAP is below 100, however they are more effective when it is lower than 98. A TAP between 98 and 100 will create a very small profit.

There is one further calculation you can make to decide how much to wager on each end result. By deciding on the stake to be placed on each end result you can use the following formula, (Total Stake x IAP) / TAP. The reason behind this is to calculate that you get the same return.

The mathematics for calculating arbs is relatively simple. It may take a bit of time but searching and finding arbs can bring a guaranteed profit to your bet. If you can search and find several opportunities each week then your profits will soon start to add up.