All of the top matched betting sites including Profit Accumulator, Matched Bets and Oddsmonkey are listing the The Paddy Power 2 Up offer. In this article we will detail how the promotion works and describe two different approaches playing the offer.
What Is Paddy Power 2 Up?
The general concept of the offer is quite simple. Place a bet on a team to win in one of the qualifying football matches and if they take a two goal lead, you’ll be paid as a winner. It doesn’t matter if your team goes on to draw or lose the match, the bet will be settled as a winner regardless of the actual result.
Paddy Power 2 Up applies to all matches from the English Premier League, Spanish La Liga and UEFA Champions League Group Stage. At the time of writing it is valid until December 31st 2017 but is likely to be extended beyond that date.
There are a few benefits to playing this offer as part of your matched betting schedule. The applicable matches are from high profile competitions. This means that your qualifying bets will look very natural and help you to blend in with casual punters, which may go some way to helping protect your Paddy Power account. The popularity of the events concerned also means that bookmaker prices will be competitive when compared to low key football matches. This will make it easier to find a close match on the exchange and there will be a lot of liquidity on the Match Odds market too. Theoretically this means that you should be able to reduce qualifying losses down to a nominal amount, allowing for multiple attempts at triggering the offer.
The maximum payout on the offer is £25,000. This means that you can place sizeable wagers in the hope of making big profits. Just remember, that you’ll need a suitable bank in the exchange to lay all of your bets off.
Standard Matched Betting Technique
Because of Paddy Power’s ties to Betfair, it’s recommended to use a different betting exchange for your lay bets, such as Smarkets or Matchbook. You can use the Oddsmonkey oddsmatcher to apply the necessary filters for this. Once you have found a close match, simply place your back and lay bet as normal.
If you’re new to matched betting, what we are doing here is covering both sides of the equation to qualify for the betting offer. For example, by backing Arsenal to win with a £50 stake at odds of 1.50 with Paddy Power and laying £50.34 at odds of 1.51 with Smarkets, it will cost just 67p to play the offer. If that’s gone over your head, then I suggest that you click here to learn more about how matched betting works.
In our above example, if Arsenal go on to take a two goal lead, then Paddy Power will pay us as if we have backed a winning bet. This creates a situation where we can win both our back bet and lay bet. If Arsenal’s opponents battle back for a draw or even win, we will make £74.33 as follows;
- £75 bookmaker returns – £50 stake = £25
- £50.34 exchange returns – 2% commission = £49.33
- £25 + £49.33 = £74.33
This is the ideal scenario when playing this offer. With this technique you will be able to set up your bets and check back later to see how things have worked out. This makes it the least labour intensive approach which is ideal if you only have a short amount of time to dedicate to matched betting.
How To Lock-In A Guaranteed Profit
The problem with the above method is that it relies on a team taking a two goal lead and then letting it slip. This does happen a few times a season but is not all that likely. If the team you have backed do go on to win the match, then you will merely have been given your winnings early. The lay bet will lose and you’ll be looking at the qualifying loss only.
However, by taking action the moment your team goes 2 up, you can guarantee a profit from the offer. At this point you know that you will be paid as a winner but still have an active lay in place. This allows you to back the winning side at the exchange to offset your lay position. Take a look at the below example to see how this might work out.
Let’s say you have backed Tottenham to win with a £100 stake at odds of 1.80 and laid £98.36 at odds of 1.85 with Smarkets. Spurs go 2 up and shorten to 1.05, allowing you to place a back bet of £173.30 to lock-in a £5.06 profit. You may not think this is worth it, so could decide to wait for better odds and hope the other team pulls a goal back. Now the price for a Tottenham win is 1.25, meaning a back bet of £145.57 would secure £32.79. You could even wait it out again and hope the opponent equalises. Now the back odds are 1.60 which means a bet of £113.73 will guarantee an overall profit of £64.63.
There are some considerations to make with this matched betting approach. In-play odds can fluctuate wildly as the market moves with every ebb and flow of the game. You will therefore need to be well practised in live betting. Because this method relies on reacting to the on-field action, you will need to be around to see things through.