One of the questions I am often asked is which arb services are the best to use. This is not a straightforward question, because it depends a lot on what you are doing, which bookies you can use, how big your bank is, how much time you have for arbing etc.

The first confusing thing is the actual definition of an arb. This seems to vary from service to service. I was always taught that an arb was back at the bookie and lay at Betfair for a profit, and that backing opposing outcomes at different bookies was dutching. However there seems to be increasing use of the term “surebets” which seems to encompass both. If you are not careful you can end up paying for a service which boasts supplying large numbers of arbs, but in reality find that most of them are what I would describe as dutches between 2 or more bookies.

Beginners

If you are a beginner I advise waiting until you have had some practise at arbing before parting with any cash. Arbing does not suit everyone and there is plenty of information available for free enabling you to test the water and discover whether or not it is for you. At this stage I would recommend using:

The Betclub Oddsmatcher Pro (horses, football, tennis and cricket arbs).  There is also the BetClub Dutching Tool which finds arbs between bookmakers.

Rebelbetting have a free version of their software, which shows arbs at 0.6% and lower. I’ve not used this while I was arbing, but I have downloaded it and had a play, and it looks promising.

One of the best ways to find arbs and advice is to join in live chat with other arbers, who will help you out if they find something worth having. This sort of information is much better than an arb service because it is often faster. This is one of the reasons why we have live chat on this site.

Once you have decided arbing is for you, you may feel that you want better information than is available free. You then have to decide what you want to pay for.

Intermediate

My own experience would probably rank as intermediate, although I arbed full time for 4 years. I never used an arb service, but I was lucky enough to be allowed to use a friend’s arb finding bot, without which I would have needed to find something else.

Horse racing is undoubtedly the most profitable sport to arb (providing you understand the pitfalls) and at this level, and with access to bookies who do UK horse racing, unless you can find a friendly bot user/builder, your best bet is probably Racing Synergy (see below). There are various other arb services which charge, most of which don’t cover horse racing, and some of which are much better for dutching than arbing against Betfair.

Racing Synergy, from http://www.bettingautomation.com/racingsynergy.php has various subscription costs from £29 for 1 week to £199 for 1 year. This gives you the use of the software on one computer, with access to arbs at the bookies which are shown on Bestbetting, as far as I am aware. I am not sure whether the prices are obtained directly from the bookmakers or from some kind of scrape of bestbetting, and this would clearly make a difference to how up to date the prices are. I have never used this software myself, but people who do use it say it is very useful. You would need to be arbing regularly and making a decent profit from the software to justify the expense.

Advanced

At this stage you are probably well aware of the options out there, and probably have access to software of your own. If you can get in,Beatbookies paid membership is probably the best option, but the waiting list is daunting. There are various paid arb services available, see below.

Arb Services

There is a full list of arb services here:

http://www.sportsarbitrageguide.com/…nts/alerts.php

The following table lists the main features of some of the better known ones (Prices correct end Feb 2011)

 

Keys

Arb type: B/L = back/lay, 2w = 2 way, 3w = 3 way, HC = handicap/Asian handicap, CM = cross market, mid = middles, DC = double chance

Services which have a free service available are marked in green in the price column.

Which if any of these you decide to use will depend on various factors including the amount of time you have, how many screens you have room for on your desk and how many different softwares you want to bother with.

 

Comments on this article

Corner – 03-05-2011, 09:30 PM

I tried the free version of Rebelbetting, which looks as if it could be one of the best. The software is easy to use and shows all the arbs, with the higher ones greyed out and no bookie information for those. You can select which bookies to look at, but there are some notable omissions including Totesport and Betfred and compared to other services their number of bookies is small.

By eliminating certain types of bet, such as middles, asian handicaps etc, you can get the number of arbs down to a sensible number, and if you are only interested in back/lay arbs, you can eliminate all but 2-way and over-under. The back/lay arbs are then listed as 2W LAY or OU LAY, which makes them very easy to see.

Although high arbs are greyed out, the information about the market etc still appears on the right when you click on them, so having identified them you can use bestbetting to try to identify the bookie. This can also highlight arbs on the same markets at bookies not covered by Rebelbetting.

There are a huge range of settings in the options enabling you to tailor what you see to fit what you do. A nice touch is the red warning at the bottom of the right panel highlighting things like rules differences, and a “reliability” rating for the arb.

Overall, for free software, this looks a very useful tool and I would recommend it, although I would hesitate to advise using the paid version because of the small number of bookies.

 

Gentari – 03-05-2011, 10:00 PM

I have used Oddsfinder for non horse surebets and found the service to be very reliable and the quality if information is very good. They have a free option which is not user friendly, but the paid for service enables the user to specify various options to your preference. If you are looking for lots of back/lay Betfair arbs then you will be dissappointed. There are lots, but most seem to be with asian books which you may have less knowledge of.

I have also used and still do use the Racing Synergie software for horses which is great. It takes prices from Best Betting or Oddschecker and is reliable. I find it struggles if your internet connection is poor, but apart from that a good addition if you are arbing horses.

As with all these services you need to look at the cost/benefit ratio. For me I am arbing full time so need to utilise my bank as much as possible. If you are part time or doing it as a hobby then the cost may be prohibitive.

I have looked at Rebelbetting and feel the software is excellent, although the range of bookmakers is too small to justify the costs.

I would recommend popping into chat if you are looking to use a service as someone will no doubt have experience of what you are looking at doing.

 

Arbwizard – 03-07-2011, 07:54 PM

A lot depends on how much liquidity you have available. Professional Arbers do use arb services as well as finding their own. If you have sufficient liquidity (and time) then the arbing profits will more than pay for the service costs. Caveats: a) you may get limited/banned from many/some bookies in due time and your arbing profits will start to fall; b) some arb services are better than others with respect to market types, ease of use, bookies, filtering, automation, sports types, middle opportunities, reliability of arbs, trial periods, cost, number of users, next best odds available, speed of update etc.

 

Pringles – 03-08-2011, 08:58 AM

Gentari – You say you are arbing full time. Can I ask who is allowing you to get on, because from my experience, only a couple of bookies are tolerant of arbers. Corner has obviously done a fair bit of arbing in her time and she can’t get on anymore. Hence her signature at the bottom of each posting.

Please be aware that while I do my best to check any offers I post, I have not done these offers myself and I am relying on 3rd party information. You should always check the T&Cs on the site for yourself as the bookies can and do change them.

 

Corner – 04-06-2011, 10:47 AM

To answer your question, Pringles, most arbers find they have to use other people’s accounts when their own dry up. I have no accounts because I don’t do this myself. We can give advice and help with this in the live chat if you are interested.