Betfair is the world’s largest sports betting exchange. They are the frontrunners in the business, and function across the UK and Europe as well.

A sports betting exchange makes matched betting possible, as it allows us to bet against outcomes occurring. This is where the term ‘matched’ comes from.

Click here to sign up to Betfair now! You need to do this before beginning with matched betting!

Signing up to Betfair is pretty simple. Follow the banner above, hit “Join Now” and fill in all of your details.

Betfair also offer bonus winnings up to 20% of your winnings, capped at $500. This is great as we just go about doing our normal matched betting, and can receive these winnings if we end up winning a lot of our lay bets.

Betfair is well laid out, and you should rarely have any issues finding events. The left hand tab has all the available sports in alphabetical order. The popular events can also be found on the top tab, or one can simply search for any event.

Back bets are to bet for something to happen. Eg if we back Manchester United to beat Arsenal, we want them to win.

Lay bets are to bet against something to happen. Eg if we lay Manchester United, we want them to NOT win – so we want a draw or a Arsenal win.

Lay bets are used with matched betting, as we are placing our back bets at the bookies.

Placing a lay bet is simple and easy.

You simply click on the the lay stake which you have selected (pink box), and enter the stake in the box named “Backer’s stake” which you calculated using the matched betting calculator. Hit place bet and wait for your bet to be confirmed.

Liquidity is the amount of money available at the present moment for any specific odds.

You will notice monetary values below the odds. This shows us exactly how much we could stake at those odds. If we try and stake more than the available liquidity, then our bet will be unmatched.

Having a bet unmatched or partially matched can happen.

Ideally we never want to leave any bets unmatched. If you see in your bet slip that this has occurred, then simply cancel your unmatched bet and redo the bet at the next best odds.

Partially matched bets can be a bit more tricky. The best fix for this is to cancel your unmatched part, recalculate your lay stake for any remaining stake which is not matched yet and re do that bet.