What should I do when I have to withdraw?
We get a lot of questions from people, via email or in the chatroom, about what they should do when they have to make a withdrawal from a bookie after a run of winners.
The short answer is that you should withdraw. Trying to ‘pick losers’ so that your money ends up in Betfair is about as easy as trying to ‘pick winners’ when you are punting. Eventually one of those high odds ‘losers’ will win and you will end up with even more in the bookie.
The only way to get funds back to your bank account, or into Betfair, without giving back a large chunk of your profits, is to withdraw.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few things you can do to reduce the chances of being gubbed.
Most of them are already mentioned in our Account Sustainability course. If you follow some of those tips and maintain a ‘mug punter’ profile with the bookie then withdrawals are nothing to be feared.
It is also worth re-enforcing the fact that the first withdrawal is the most important, so your mug-to-promo ratio should be higher during the early days of a new account. You should then put in a small withdrawal request that won’t attract too much attention.
It is best not to empty the account when you withdraw, especially if you have made a profit. Remember, the bookie wants long-term profitable customers. If you leave some cash in the account, and have made some -EV bets, then they will be confident they can keep you betting and recover any losses they have made.
However, if you want to do some advanced mug punter impersonation you could use this approach:
Withdraw a couple of hundred dollars more than you really want to withdraw from the account (if that means emptying it that is fine), then make a deposit again the same day and immediately place some mug bets with it.
From a bookies perspective this will look like you planned on being sensible and withdrawing but you are such a degenerate gambler you that you couldn’t stay away.
Smart withdrawals are part of a wider account sustainability practice that you should be thinking about as soon as you open an account.
If all you do is take +EV bets then it is likely that will be flagged up when your withdrawal is being reviewed. If you have taken precautions to disguise your matched betting activity then withdrawals shouldn’t be an issue.