An Interview with Steve Trow of Clear Bonus Profits
Hi Steve, first up would you tell us a little about yourself and your background?
I grew up in Manchester and always had a natural affinity with numbers despite not being particularly academic. Unlike most of my friends I decided against going to university and after doing one year at college I got a job working at the university (ironically enough). My natural aptitude for numbers became apparent and within a few years the Uni had paid for me to go through all the accountancy qualifications and I had unwittingly fell into being an accountant. It wasn't my dream job and although I earned decent money and was perfectly competent at my job, I always wanted to put my skills to better use.
I was a keen regular punter and by regular I mean a losing punter. It was after getting stung in a William Hill shop, when they only paid me out at 3/1 on what should have been a 25/1 return (due to some “local odds” nonsense) that I decided I wanted to find a way of getting some money from them on a regular basis because in my mind they now owed me!
When did you did you first discover the opportunities of profiting from the bookmakers offers and bonuses and what led you to investigate these opportunities further?
It's hard to pinpoint an exact date but somewhere around 2000. By this stage I'd been annoyed by William Hill on the high street and was starting to search around the internet to find out ways of taking advantage of the bookies. I found an excellent and very detailed explanation of how the math’s worked when it came to calculating the expected value of completing casino offers. After putting together several spreadsheets and making a couple of deposits, I started to tentatively take advantage of welcome bonuses and reload offers using blackjack as my main earner. It quickly became apparent that there was lots of cash just waiting to be picked up online and that the principles for blackjack could be applied to other disciplines quite easily.
If someone is interested in learning more about bookmaker bonuses and offers where should the complete beginner start in the search for information? What should they look for?
Well, I'm obviously going to say that they should take a look at my matched betting site (Clear Bonus Profits). You can register for free without any card details required and there are a couple of bookmaker welcome offers that can be completed with full instructions that will help people make their first £35+ profits.
Money Saving Expert also has a very busy forum thread on matched betting but the information can be quite disjointed and hard to follow if you're not used to forums. There's a lot of dangers in the betting world online, make sure any site you're considering parting money with to join has a real person behind it and not just a random pen name.
If interested, how would a reader find further details about your one to one courses?
My course information is listed on a specific page on my Betfair trading blog which can be accessed by clicking here. Hopefully I've covered all the questions which people may have on there; if not then I'm only an email away.
Do you think gambling has a place within modern lifestyles or do you advocate a risk free approach such as scalping bookmakers bonus offers and incentives? Do you regularly bet yourself and if so do you have a particular approach?
It most definitely does have a place within modern life and it's certainly hard to escape the fact that betting is very popular in the UK. I highly recommend that people do matched betting to generate a risk-free/low-risk income each month, perhaps at Clear Bonus Profits 🙂
My advice is to get all the different disciplines of matched betting mastered and then to consider using the profits gained to leverage extra profits from sports trading.
Matched betting is the perfect training ground for aspiring traders as it can instil a lot of the good working practices required to be successful at trading.
Within the gambling industry is there anything you would like to see changed? The bookmakers are regularly criticised for their treatment of customers. Have either you or your clients found this to be a major issue? What are your opinions on this? Do you think the treatment on the whole is fair or that bookmakers could try harder, If so, how?
You've hit the nail on the head; I wish bookmakers would be a little bit kinder to winning punters. They all claim that they welcome winning bettors but nothing could be further from the truth. I attend a betting conference in London each February and the culture within these companies which I've seen at these shows seems to all about maximising their profits with the customer's welfare being secondary. It leaves a sour taste in my mouth each year but it's an intriguing event to attend. Everybody at some point will suffer a restriction on a betting account, but thankfully there's more than one way to skin this particular cat and myself and my subscribers still make money from the bookies each month thanks to some solid basic math’s.
Do you have any advice for the readers as to how they can minimise their risk of getting their bookmaker accounts closed / restricted?
Absolutely, the key methods to keeping your betting accounts active on the sports side for longer is to look like you don't know what you're doing and to not try to take advantage too much. Some bookmakers such as Bet365 have a daily offer on the horse racing. If you absolutely hammer into a particular offer and complete it every single day and they're the only bets you ever place then you're making it blatantly obvious what you're up to. Bookies can be daft, but they're not stupid.
I always recommend that people spend 30 to 60 mins per week placing regular bets on their main bookie accounts, on horse races and big football matches, which have no active offers on them.
Within Clear Bonus Profits we have software which scans the bookmakers and the betting exchanges for opportunities and will spoon feed you the information about exactly what to back, what to lay, the stakes required and how much profit you will make. These are commonly referred to as mug bets and the software allows us to appear like a mug whilst making a profit in the process.
I also recommend that you place accumulator bets as nothing says “Mug” quite like an acca. Once again though, this is just another opportunity to make some money, as thanks to acca offers and some basic maths, there are profits to be made from these too.
Are there particular sports which can offer better opportunities in terms of profiting from the bookmakers?
Horse racing generates me more income than football each year, which is great as I'm certainly not an expert at horse racing. That's the beauty of matched betting though, as you don't need to be an expert or have knowledge of any sport, you just place the right bets in the right order and the profits follow. Over the past few weeks, my subscribers and I have made money from Handball, Basketball & Rugby League. I don't know much about any of those sports but I do know the angles to make money from the bookmakers!
The biggest mistake people make with matched betting is only attempting to complete the sports offers. Bookies routinely dish out offers for their slot machines and I calculate the expected value and complete offers where the offer has now altered the house edge into a player's edge. I make around £7,000 per year through completing casino offers which are skewed in our favour.
Do you have any future plans with regards to adding additional services to the one to one courses you already run?
I've had several requests to provide trading notifications based on the football trading strategies I teach on the day. This is something I'm giving careful consideration to, so watch this space.
What interests do you have outside of your work day? What do you do to relax and unwind?
Football, travel and hiking. I have a season ticket at the football, which isn't always the best way to relax. Taking my dog for a long walk in the hills is my favourite way of de- stressing and I'm always on the lookout for cheap flights and quick 1 or 2 nights breaks abroad.
Do you have any personal betting or sporting highlights which can bring a smile to you and if so what?
I enjoy downing tools for the Cheltenham Gold Cup each year as myself and around 10 mates spend the afternoon at a pub in Manchester and get merrily sozzled whilst bemoaning our luck. It's the one day per year where I have a “gamble” rather than looking for angles. We've done this every year for around 8 years now and it's definitely a sporting/betting/personal highlight, if not a profitable one.
