Arbitrage betting, will I get banned?

Yeah it’s not worth the hassle at that point

More power to you, that sounds boring as hell

I don’t see what’s the problem. The sportsbook opens itself to this. If you get banned then find a new one. It’s not like breaking up with your gf.

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The bets usually have limits, so I’m only making a few dollars per bet.

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I doubt they lose sleep over this. They understand human nature of greed. I guess they intend to give a few crumbs with the expectation that you go wild eventually.

They certainly can ban you for it. They can ban you for any reason. But I don’t know how they would find out about it unless both books are owned by the same people.

To calculate if an arbitrage bet is possible, you add the implied probability of the possible outcomes and if it's less than 100% you've got a bet.

In OP's example:

+150 is 2.5 in decimal odds
-125 is 1.8 in decimal odds

(1/2.5)+(1/1.8) = 0.956, or 95.6%.

And to determine how much you should bet on each team you do:

(Total Desired Bet * Outcome Arbitrage)/Total Arbitrage

So ($100 * 0.4)/0.956 = $41.80 on the +150 team
($100 * 0.556)/0.956 = $58.11 on the -125 team.

For a whopping profit of around $4.60

So sportsbooks, in general, factor in the vig to their odds. It comes into play when you're betting on a single bookie. -110/-110 is the typical "toss-up" odds, so 1/1.91+1/1.91= 1.047, so the bookie has a 4.7% cut assuming even money on both sides.

When you're finding an arbitrage bet, it's almost never on the same bookie. They wouldn't give you odds that make it so they can possibly lose on an outcome. You're usually betting across separate bookies giving different odds, or the same bookie with some kind of promotional odds. The first one probably won't get you banned, the second one will.

If books see that you're constantly picking off rogue or stale #s, they will know what you're doing and ban you if you're betting anything more than a few bucks.

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Yeah he not understanding the house getting their cut twice from him...

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I am not sure you understand.

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correct me if i am wrong, but is this:
team A: risking $100 to win $150
team B: risking $125 to win $100

team A win:
+$150*0.9 - $125 = +$10 (to you)

team B win:
+$100*0.9 - $100 = -$10 (to you)

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Reminds me of this...

A man buys a horse for $60. He sells the horse for $70. He then buys the horse back for $80. And he sells the horse again for $90. In the end, how much money did the man make or lose? Or did he break even?