Terminology
Key terms used in the Tracker
Dashboard
An introduction to the Tracker dashboard
Entries, Bets & Balances
How to view your entries, bets and balances
Viewing an Entry
Interpreting the fields comprising a Tracker entry
Qualifying Bets
How to record qualifying bets
Value Bets
How to record value bets
Arbitrage Betting
How to record arbitrage bets
Sidebar
Using the Scratchpad sidebar
Placing mug bets
When you are consistently winning, placing promo bets or hitting arbs, bookmakers will start to notice you. To avoid being gubbed you need to blend in with the recreational bettors. One way to do this is by placing "mug bets" - bets that are not profitable in the long term, but help to disguise your winning activity.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to mug bets. For some bookmakers, placing a few losing bets here and there is enough to keep your account under the radar. For others, you may need to place more frequent mug bets to avoid detection.
Sometimes it makes no difference at all - they don't like people using their promotions and will gub you regardless.
There's no way to know ahead of time how many mug bets you'll need to place, or how often. It largely depends on the bookmaker's detection algorithms, which are not publicly known.
What we do know is that by giving some value back to the bookmaker, we can make our accounts look more like those of recreational bettors.
Simply put, keep your mug bets looking similar to your promo bets. If you're placing $50 qualifying bets, place $50 mug bets. If you're betting on football, place mug bets on football.
Don't exclusively promo bet on racing and mug bet on Soccer. Remember - the goal is to look like a degenerate.
We can use the back & lay strategy we're already familiar with to place mug bets. The key is to look for bets with a low stake return (SR) loss. These are bets where the difference between the back odds and lay odds is small, resulting in a minimal loss when placing the mug bet.
Of course, we can use Radar to identify cheap mug bets for us. Just like with qualifying bets, we can filter for low SR loss bets and place them as mug bets. Be sure to track these bets in the Tracker.
Dutching is another great strategy for placing mug bets. It presents one obvious advantage - you don't need to use an exchange, so there's no lay commission to worry about.
No exchange also means you're not limited to markets available on the exchange, giving you more options for mug bets. You're also placing two mug bets at a time.
Again, be sure to track these bets in the Tracker.