The subtle art of not getting gubbed and staying free!

Getting gubbed is an inevitable part of being a matched bettor, but you can delay it but following some clever tricks to prolong your accounts life.

As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end, and no truer words were ever spoken when it comes to matched betting. When you start you will be living on cloud9, bringing in easy money on a daily basis and thinking that this little side hustle is a breeze.

However, the bookies, being the lovely people they are, don’t take too kindly to being exploited, and actively look for accounts such as yours and mine to ban, allowing them to keep making an easy profit from the average sucker. This is called being ‘gubbed’. This isn’t the actual name given by the bookies, but just what punters like to call it.

I will be upfront, you will have your account gubbed. It isn’t a matter of if, but a matter of when. There are however some ways to try and prevent this from happening for as long as possible, allowing you to keep on making that easy money.

While it is in no way guaranteed that these methods will actually work for you, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence of their efficacy from other matched bettors. It is up to you to see if you think that the time spent on avoiding getting gubbed is worth the extra money you may make in the long run.

Placing Mug Bets

Perhaps the most well known strategy, placing mug bets basically means that you are trying to fit in as the average punter who doesn’t have a clue what they are doing. The idea is you place these on varying sports and odds ranges, trying to disguise your true intentions.

Think about it from the bookies end. If they understood how a matched bettor actually makes money, then all they have to do is create an algorithm that scans for that certain behaviour. For example, they would see that with your own money, you only ever bet on the favourite during promotions, but suddenly when you have a bonus bet you go for a horse with odds over 15.

It doesn’t exactly take a genius to work out what this means, and the bookie will simply shut you down. Now imagine that there are bets on long odd horses with your own money, and also the regular bet on your favourite sporting teams on the weekend. This makes it harder to label your account, meaning that the chances of it remaining open are far higher.

Now you may be thinking that you are just going to be throwing money into the wind at these negative value bets, but in reality you are also going to be laying them at a betting exchange. This still creates a loss, but only of 10-20% per bet, and you also get the added bonus of not losing your account.

It is important to know what sort of bookie you are dealing with too when going down the avenue of mug bets.

If you are with a corporate, it likely isn’t worth your time placing them as they are generally more relaxed. However, if you are hitting promos with a rail bookie, then it is quite wise to also place mug bets, as they have less customers so are therefore more likely to be stringent in vetting out mug bettors.

I would recommend a ratio of about 1:1 between mug and promo bets, which should give a decent enough cover of being a mug.

Again, you have to keep the exact same pattern of behaviour when you are mug betting as when you are promo betting. So, keep the exact same stake, and bet the favourite like you normally would with a promo bet. It isn’t a hard exercise to do, and it will significantly increase the life of your account.

Wasting Bonus Bets

This is a similar idea to the mug bets, and it involves just flinging the bonus bets on things that only a mug would do.

This involves activity like placing the bonus on a favourite, or putting it on a 10 leg multi for football. No matched bettor would ever do this, so it provides your account with the ability to blend in a bit more, as you are plain and simple, looking like a good customer.

Yes, you will be losing money from these bets, but I just chalk those losses down to the cost of doing business and suck it up. Importantly, you can not let yourself get carried away with the thrill of these bets, and only utilise them as part of your overall strategy.

To do this, I would split up the bonus bets into the smallest possible splits, so you are only wasting around $10 per mug bet, rather than just placing $50 stakes on a 10 leg multi on the AFL. That, quite frankly, would just be long term financial suicide, and something I do not recommend.

Placing Multi Bets

Multi bets are essentially the exact same as mug bets, but just taken up a level. Multi bets have an awful expected value making them an absolute cash cow for the bookies, so they are less inclined to ban these customers.

Yes, they will see that you are placing a lot of bets on bonus offers, but they will also see that you are placing multi bets, so you can’t be that smart, can you? This can help prolong the life of your account and helps control your overconfidence bias that we all have deep down.

Importantly, you must not place these bets on multis that have bonus bet refunds, as you will still look like a matched bettor, even while trying to look like a mug.

For the sake of your bankroll, you must keep your bets fairly low in value, so you don’t demolish your profits from the bonus bets. You also have to remain disciplined while placing these bets as it would be all too easy to get suckered into taking bets that don’t fit your strategy, as you will soon lose far more money than you ever planned on.

Avoiding being too specific in your stakes

When you start getting into arbitrage, there is no faster way to get gubbed than betting the exact quantities spat out to you by a calculator. The numbers are never clean, with their nearly always being cents involved. No normal punter bets $93.67 on an obscure tennis match, giving any algorithm the bookies employ to find arb traders a clear headshot on you.

The solution to this problem is simple, bet with nice round numbers, or at the very least, round to the nearest dollar. Yes, some of your profit margins will undoubtedly be sacrificed, but that is the price to pay for not getting banned.

Not betting in unheard of markets

If the bookie sees you betting on a tennis match in Romania, then a soccer match in South Korea and finally a cricket match in France, they will take a wild guess and say that you are somehow not good for their bottom line.

This is a classic mistake of arb traders, who take every single bet that they can see without thinking about the paper trail they are leaving that shows the nature of their activities. Obviously if you are just going for a nice short profit grab, then you may not care if you get banned and take absolutely every arb. However, if you want to do it for more than a few weeks, then you must be more selective.

One way you can do this is by only betting on higher profile events, allowing your bets to blend in far more than if you were only one of 20 individuals placing money on an obscure market. Obviously this is incredibly restrictive, but it is a surefire way to throw off the bookies, as they are less likely to care about a single punter when they are surrounded by masses of others.

The second is to stick to a specific league or sport, so then you look more like a specialised punter who is too scared to try their hand at anything else. This is discussed about in greater detail below.

Not abusing every bonus that is offered

Most bookies offer a large amount of bonuses other than just bonus bets back. These include allowing you to receive your stake back if you win, boosted odds on certain runners and allowing you to boost odds on any race.

These promotions often have a very small value, meaning the only thing they are going to do is attract unwanted attraction to your account. Yes, you make a bit more money, but it really isn’t going to get you anything other than getting gubbed faster.

So show some restraint, and only bet when you think that the bonus is actually going to get you more than a couple of dollars.

Placing bets at expected times

Surprisingly enough, when you are placing bets at 12 o’clock at night for matches in two days time, you look a bit suspicious in the eyes of the bookies. A normal punter does not do this, instead they much prefer placing bets right before the game starts, like, in the 5 minutes before the game starts.

This problem isn’t too important for matched bettors for horse racing as the best lay odds are generally in the few minutes before the jump, but if you are implementing strategies such as the 2 up payout or arbing sporting events, then you may have to worry about your timing. This will mean that there will be some missed opportunities, but in the long run, it will allow you to try and stay under the radar for the longest time possible, even if there is short term profit sacrificed.

Other Ideas I have heard about

Watching the live streams

While there is no guarantee that the bookies algorithm that searches for matched bettors places any value on this variable, it could prolong your account for a few more weeks.

The logic is pretty obvious here, as the average mug bettor would obviously want to see how their bet goes in real time, so you can simply blend in by doing the same. Again, the effect of this strategy is debatable, but you do also get the added bonus of watching the race.

While I rarely do this myself, when I have a particularly large bet placed, I enjoy watching even though I know it has absolutely zero impact on the outcome.

Creating a betting personality

Now this may seem bizarre, but the idea behind it is that by creating a ‘personality’, you can disguise your matched betting activities behind this. Creating a personality is simple, as it means you are just passing off as an avid fan of a certain team or sport for example.

If you were going down this avenue, you would pick a few teams in a few separate sports or leagues, and then just pretty much purely bet on them. This only works for arbitrage, as you can’t get bonus bets from this.

You need multiple accounts running for this to be worthwhile, as there is no point in having your single bookie account having a ‘personality’, meaning you can only place a couple of bets a week.

You would be better off in this case just risking the gub and going all in, so either pick a personality that is quite broad, or just have enough accounts going so that you can have enough to cover all promos you want to hit while being able to stay in character.

Have you had your account gubbed? If so, read this article to learn how to still make money from this account.

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