Joachim takes us through week 1 of his Sports Betting Journey, where he was able to turn over 2 out of 3 bonuses even with the coronavirus cancelling most of the games!

Note: Unfortunately, due to the coronavirus and the cancellation of most sporting events, after only one week, Joachim will take a break from the challenge until we know how long different games are going to be put on hold.

Hi guys, welcome back to week 1 of My Sports Betting Journey! It has been quite the week with the Oddshero Matched Betting software, and I will take you guys through all my hits and misses during the first week.

So, I started out with putting €1,000 into my Sportmarket account, as well as putting €300 in my Leovegas account, €100 in my Bet365 account and €200 in my Betsson account, this brings the total amount to €1,600.

But after a lot of trades with all three bookmakers, I ended up losing almost everything on my Sportmarket account, while winning a lot on the soft bookmakers, especially with Leovegas. Because of this I had to deposit an extra €250 into my Sportmarket account, bringing my total investment to €1,850.

I still have my Betsson bonus to turnover, and I solve that by staking really high on games I normally don't bet on. That's because the bookmakers probably not going to limit you anyway, as they need the turnover they can get these days.

POSITIVES FROM THE WEEK

The thing about Matched Betting is that it isn’t much work-time, but a lot of time waiting for the games to finish so you can place new bets again. I tried to time myself this weekend to see how much time I spent on actually placing the different bets.

If you don’t count the waiting time, but only count the time from when I decided to place the bets, and until I was done placing them, I spent a total of 1 hour and 14 minutes on placing 43 bets over the whole weekend.

Another positive from the week was that I was able to turn over both the Leovegas, and the Bet365 bonus. Because of some losses I had, I got a profit of $345, which could have been higher if I had checked the odds more thoroughly.

So, the positives from the week is definitely the total work time. Keep in mind that I’m just getting into this and I’m spending more time placing bets than what an experienced Matched Bettor would have done.

NEGATIVES FROM THE WEEK

Unfortunately, I did make a couple of mistakes. Fortunately, they were all rookie mistakes and are an easy fix.

One of those mistakes was that I didn't check the max order for a bet on Sportmarket before I placed it with Leovegas.

I put €100 on asian handicap +0.75 AS Eupen at 2.28 in odds on the game between KV Mechelen and AS Eupen.

I was supposed to place €125 on -0.75 KV Mechelen at 1.77 in odds at Sportmarket, which would mean I would get a maximum loss of €6.7 no matter what the result.

But after I placed the bet on Leovegas, I found out that the maximum stake for that game on Sportmarket was €100, which meant if the results didn’t go my way, I could end up with a loss of €50, which is way too much.

Luckily for me, the result did go my way and I ended up with a profit of €28 instead, which was my biggest winning bet of the week.

Another rookie mistake was that I didn’t check the odds properly on other games, which meant that I ended up with a bigger loss than I would have if I had just picked another game.

WHAT I WILL IMPROVE ON

My main area for improvement is being more thorough and placing my bets more carefully then I did. As I mentioned earlier, I placed 43 bets in just over an hour and that’s why I made those mistakes that I did.

So, my main focus is definitely going to be to place less, but more quality bets and then increase my stake instead.

Another thing I will improve on is to try to play on higher odds on the soft bookmakers, such as Leovegas.

That’s because I want my bankroll on the Sportmarket account to grow so I can keep doing bonuses without having to deposit more money.

Remember, if you have to deposit more money in Sportmarket you’ll have to wait 1-2 days before you can start betting again. For me it took 2 days, which just means I’ll use a longer period of time before I can finish the bonus.

WHAT’S THE GOAL FOR NEXT WEEK?

For this next week and beyond I will finish my €200 Betsson bonus and then wait until more sporting games are back on. With the coronavirus creating havoc around the world, it does not make sense to deposit money into new bookmakers and try to fulfil their turnover requirement with way less games on. Hopefully I see you guys soon!

Check out week 0 of My Sport Betting Journey here!

Want to check out another Sport Betting Journey? Click here.