Wigan are leading the way in English Football League One and are fast becoming a popular bet to win their matches each weekend.

However, bookmakers have naturally become pretty cautious when pricing up the Latics and sometimes the juice may not be worth the squeeze.

Take this weekend’s trip to struggling AFC Wimbledon for example. It’s a match that Wigan will realistically be expecting to win but at the current odds a bet of £10 would return just over £19 with most bookies. That’s not even double your money and essentially you’d need to risk £10 to potentially make a £9 profit.

Instead of betting in the traditional way, you can switch to matched betting. It greatly reduces the risk involved and can be used to generate long-term profits. The practise exploits close matches in bookie odds and exchange lay prices to take advantage of betting promotions. A lay bet is to bet that something won’t win, so the approach allows you to cover both sides of the equation and qualify for free bets and bonuses, which can in-turn be converted into a cash profit.

Let’s look at how a typical bet £10 get £10 free bet offer could play out. Wigan’s odds are 10/11 (1.91) and the lay price on Betfair is 1.95. By placing a £10 bet at the bookmaker and a £10.05 lay bet at Betfair, the cost of qualifying for the free bet would be just 45p. This is because if the bet wins, you will make a £9.10 profit with the bookmaker but lose £9.55 at Betfair. If the bet loses, you will be down £10 at the bookie but make £9.55 on Betfair, which is the £10.05 lay stake minus 5% commission on winnings. This is the standard commission rate which Betfair applies to all winning bets.

Extracting a cash profit from the free bet follows a very similar process. The difference here is that you are now betting with a free bet voucher instead of your own money. In order to make the most of the free bet, back odds of 4/1 (5.0) or greater are recommended. Here we’ll use the Correct Score odds for a 1-0 Wigan win as an example. The back odds are 11/2 (6.50) and the lay price is 6.60, so a lay stake of £8.40 is recommended. Because your free bet stake is not returned, if the bet wins you will make £55 with the bookie but lose £47.04 at Betfair for a profit of £7.96. If it loses, you will have used your voucher at the bookmaker but win the lay at Betfair for a return of £7.98 after commission. Once the 45p qualifying loss is deducted, your final profit would be at least £7.51 in this example.

It’s really easy to make money using oddsmonkey and other matched betting sites. Each offer is broken down into a user-friendly format which you can follow from start to finish. With a premium subscription, you will have access to software solutions and matched betting tools that take care of finding the ideal bets and all of the mathematical equations required to get the best returns. It’s the perfect way to make betting on the Latics pay.

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