Suzy Beth is well-known in the matched betting world thanks to her accumulator spreadsheet and essay-length explanations for struggling newbies. Oh, and for her love of unicorns…
I caught up with Suzy Beth to find out a bit more about her, her matched betting background and what she thinks of OddsMonkey.
Jenna: Hey Suzy Beth – Welcome to the OddsMonkey Team!
Suzy Beth: It’s great to be here 🙂 I’ve turned my hobby – matched betting – into a job, getting to stay and play in the industry I love most. It’s brilliant!
J: How long have you been matched betting?
SB: Just over 7 years…Wow! I had no idea it was that long.
J: How did you get into it?
SB: It started as a way to make a bit of extra pocket money and use my “mummy mush” brain. But over the last 7 years, matched betting has allowed me to provide things for my child I would not have been able to and still be at home for him in his formative years.
It never was a “full-time” job for me. I didn’t have the big floats; things were spent as required. It was always about the extras. I had a couple of part-time jobs (4 at one point!) along the way. However, matched betting was my freedom from the humdrum: using my brain on the numbers, and (unbeknownst to me) it was restoring my love of numbers, and teaching me a wee bit of probability theory, Excel, how bookies work, where value in betting comes from etc. Really, it was just making the numbers talk to me again like they used to before I got bored balancing ledgers!
J: You’re pretty famous in the matched betting community – why might people know your name?
SB: I think it’s because of my Acca Spreadsheet. I’ve been around, helping with everything matched betting related, for ages though. I just like to give back in return for the help I got in my early days. I love helping people earn those extra pennies.
Find out how Suzy Beth came up with the Accumulator Spreadsheet and how she built it.
The Acca sheet is also indirectly responsible for my love of unicorns. Whenever I got too stressed, I would try to think “happy thoughts”. It was unicorns and rainbows that got me through 😉
J: How many accumulators do you do?
SB: I do in the region of 10-20 small accas a week now. Not as much as I used to able to do, but I just look to keep them ticking over, day-to-day along with other regular staple offers.
J: Do you have a favourite acca method?
SB: I am a ‘no-lay’ person, as I can fit more into the week without the worry of incurring extra liability by forgetting to lay. It also saves me a lot of time, not having to track so many different games in a week. I’d rather stick on 20 x £10 accas, than 4 x £50 accas though as I don’t think I’d like the variance on losing streaks with £50 stakes!
Acca calculators will tell you what the ‘expected value’ (EV) is on an acca offer. That EV is the same or thereabouts, no matter what method you use. It’s just how the variance of your chosen method plays out. I wouldn’t recommend this method to newcomers though. The dreaded ‘gambling’ word tends to crop up when you do. It takes time to even understand where the value comes from, let alone learning to trust that the odds/probability will play out eventually, and little profits often are what most people prefer.
However a couple years back I lost my phone landline, and mobile signal is not that great where we live, internet connection was very patchy for about 13 weeks (felt like arm had been cut off!). I simply couldn’t trust even getting the exchanges to load to lay legs if required, so rather than do nothing, I took the plunge to trust the numbers and go no-lay. Haven’t changed since, long term means long term 😀
J: So what method of accumulator would you recommend then?
SB: I do think that everyone should start with (and even stick with) the ‘lock in’ method. That way, you’re guaranteed to walk away with regular profits. Start small, learn how much liability you’re happy covering, learn what pitfalls might arise, pitfalls being forgetting to lay legs, odds changes and having to recalculate, void legs and how they affect lock-ins.
It’s not that any method is better than another but the lock-in lets you walk before running. In my opinion, it should be done first as a process to learn the pitfalls and your own risk/reward, variance tolerance level.
J: What do you think of the tools available on the OddsMonkey site?
SB: The tools are all fantastic. It’s the home of the original (and best) odds matching software: the OddsMatcher! I used the delayed matcher in the old days, when Paul was being far too generous and giving away all his time. The 15 min delayed matcher was plenty good enough back then, as there weren’t as many people matched betting and close odds matches would remain around for a bit longer. It certainly helped me (and a lot of others I suspect) learn the markets to even look at for matches. Just having it there to use was a large part of our matched betting learning curves.
It’s hard to pick my favourite tool…actually no it’s not. It has to be the EachWayMatcher – easy, fresh, quick-to-use and lots of each way bet opportunities in a day.
I have been each way betting for years, but I was spending way too much time looking for the opportunities. When I found OddsMonkey’s EachWayMatcher, the time spent researching the different race types decreased and the profits from that income stream increased. So yeah, the EachWayMatcher wins hands down.
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