There are different types of bets. You can find on numerous site explanations on them. However, here is a short explanation..

Back or Lay

Usually you bet that an event will occur ("back"). You can also bet that the event will NOT occur (most of the time only on exchange sites, you "lay" or "back against").
When you back, you will win if the bet occur (for example you bet that the match will end-up on a draw). The amount that you win depends on the odds of the bet and the amount that you wagered. The amount that you might lose is always the amount that you wagered.

When you lay or back against, you will win if the event does not occur. For "Lay", when you win your bet, you will win the amount that you have wagered. If you loose, you will loose an amount that is dependent on the odds of the bet and the amount wagered (amount wagered * (decimal odds- 1)). For "Bet Against", it is the same as for "Lay" except that you enter the amount that you might loose.

1X2 or 12

Those bets are the simplest one. During an event, you bet on a team (or a player) to win.

Over/Under

In those bets, you bet that the number of goals (for both teams) will be above or below a given number.

A common bet is over/under 2.5. It means that if 0, 1 or 2 goals are scored, the bet under 2.5 will be the winning one. If 3 goals or more are scored, the bet over 2.5 will be the winning one. When the value of the bet (here 2.5) ends with .5, your always win or loose your bet (except if the match is cancelled). When the value is an integer (e.g. over/under 2), if the total number of goals is equal to the value, the bets are voided and you get your money back..

Asian-Handicap

Probably the most complex type of bet. The goal is to bet on the winner of a match by adding/removing a certain number of goals to each team. In case of draw, the bets are voided and you get the money back. As for over/under bets, bets with a value ending with .5 are either winners or losers. Bets with an integer value can be cancelled. Bets with a value ending with .25 or .75 are divided into two equal bets. One with an integer value, and one with a value ending with .5. So if you bet 100 € on a bet of type +1.25, you actually bet 50 € on a bet of type +1 and 50 € on a bet of type +1.5.

Draw No Bet are actually asian handicap with a value of 0.

There are three main ways to display odds:

Decimal
Odds are displayed using a decimal number for example 4.50. It means that if you waged 100 and if you win your bet, you will get 450 back (4.5 * 100). WARNING: You will have win only 350 ! 100 are actually your wager..
This kind of representation allows to easily know the percentage of chances of an event to araise. You just have to divide 1 by the odds to get the %. For example odds of 2 means that you have 50% chances to win (1/2) .
Fractions
Odds are displayed as fractions, for example 15/10. This means that if you win, you will get 15/10 of your wager. Here it is what you win, it does not include your wager.

American
Odds are displayed with an integer that is precede by a + or - sign. If the number is positive, it means how much you will win when wagering 100. If the number if negative, it means how much you must wager to win 100.

The Theory
When you do an arbitrage (or surebet, surebets, sure-bet, sure bets, sport arbitrage, arbitrage betting or whatever the name), you don't bet on one outcome. You bet on all of the outcomes and you will win money whatever the outcome is. Is that possible? YES. Is that a good sports betting system? YES, probably BEST, by FAR. It is the only one that is based on mathematics. By the way, it's basically what a bookmaker does..
To do so, you must wager on different bets, at different bookmakers. You can either buy (back) a bet on one site at a given odds and sell it (lay or back against) on an exchange site with a smaller odds. You can also buy (back) all the outcomes. In that case, the sum of (1 / each odds) must be below 1.

Example: You back a bet at 4.5 and lay it at 4 (don't forget to adjust the amounts!). If the bet is a winner, you will win the difference, otherwise you don't lose anything. You can (and you should) adjust amounts to win money whether the bet is a winner or a looser.
Another sample: You buy a bet of under 2.5 with odds of 2.1 and a bet of over 2.5 with odds of 2.1. You are sure to win 5 % of your total wager (if you wager 10 on each site, you will win 11 on one site and lose 10 on the other. Finally you will have win 1 for a total wager of 20)!

Surebets can also be used to get bonuses from bookmakers..

Practice
Surebets are difficult to find, they change constantly, but they exist and they worth it. WARNING: You must start will small amounts and increase them little by little to get some experience as you will probably make errors at the beginning!

How much could I get?
Well, it depends... With most of the surebets you can get between 0.5% and 3% of the total amount of your wagers. Sometimes, much more. 0.5% might not seem much, but as you can do many of them very often, this can be a lot. With the same money, you can easily do two surebets a week. If in a given year, you do that for 40 weeks it's a return of about 40 % / year (without mentioning composite interests). Well, that's quite a good ROI...
Most of the time, you can earn a few € each time (return of about 1 % on wagers of hundreds €). Personally, the biggest surebet that we have done has a return of 130.82 € but some people claim having won several thousands € with one surebet... If you have enough time to spend on this activity, you can quite easily earn around 200-250 € / week. In addition you can take advantage of the various bonuses the bookmakers offer.. Of course, the more money and time you invest, the more you will earn..

Risks
Are there any risk? In theory not really, but in fact YES.
The main risk is: YOU! You have to pay attention when placing your bets not to bet on a wrong bet (wrong match, wrong league, wrong team etc).
A second risk is that the odds change when your are placing the bets or that you can't bet all the required amount etc..
Lastly, a bet can be cancelled, leaving you with a bet, and not a surebet any more. You have to check the rules on each site for each sport.. When an odd is very high (and hence the return of the surebets high, like 30%), there is a high risk that the bet will be cancelled.

What should I do in case of error/bet cancellation?
In those cases, the best is to do a loosing surebet ( i.e. bet on the opposite of the current position and thus be sure to loose some money). Well it is annoying, but it's better to loose some money rather than all the bet.. And if you just can't, well, no matter, sometimes you will win, sometimes you will loose.

Because of all those reasons, you MUST start using small amounts, and increase them little by little when you have sufficient experience.

For surebets, you must open accounts at different bookmakers. More or less often depending on the money you have and you level of activity, you will have to withdraw money from one account to put in on other accounts. Be careful to the cost of those transfers.

We recommend using moneybooker because we found it very convenient and very cheap. But choice is yours.

 

Freebets are awarded by the bookmakers under certain circumstances. This is not the same as a bonus! A bonus is the same has having real money, except that you can't withdraw unless you bet it several times (surebets are useful to be able to get this money). For a freecbet, you can't get the money. You just can bet it. If you loose, well you don't have lost anything. If you win, you will get the money (BUT, and this is important, not the amount of the bet).
Thus the strategy with free bets is quite different. Let's see the possibility you have. First you can bet on an event that will probably occur (For example with odds of 1.05 you have a probability of 95% to win). So probably you will win some money. But this will be very little (5% of the free bet amount, so 1$ for a free bet of 20$). Another solution is to choose an event with a high odds (let's say 10). In that case you can win a lot (in our example 180$ = (10-1) * 20$), but you will probably not win at all... So??

The solution that we have is to bet with high odds. And yes, you will probably not win.. But thanks to our calculator, you will also bet on the alternate market bet elsewhere. Thus you will get a high percentage of chances to get a high percentage of the free bet amount (and in the worse case, you won't lose anything).
For example, you use your free bet with odds of 5.5 and bet on the other bet with odds of 1.15 (much better odds can be found). Calculation shows that you have 87% of chances to get 67% of the amount of your free bet (and in the worse case, you won't loose anything)! You can also see that you have the possibility to get 59% of the free bet amount in 100% of the cases. It is quite common to be able to get 80% of the free bet amount in more than 90% of the cases.

With this tool, you can get the maximum value from your free bet.

Currently Back/Lay, Back/Back Against and 1X2 bets are not taken into account by the calculator (only Back-All with two entries).

Beware of cons!

Some web sites are talking about methods that "work" (especially on half-time/full-time) and are promising thousands of euros for a few minutes each day. Well, only if it was so easy...