Multi-Accounting and Gnoming
What is gnoming?
The matched betting community at large have affectionately nick-named multi-accounting as “gnoming”. The basic principal is that you’re matched betting on the behalf of someone else.
Why would you multi-account?
A sensible question. There are two main ways that matched betting is a profitable activity.
Bookmaker sign up offers
Bookies try and entice you to sign up and bet with them (rather than their competitors) with free bet promotions. These vary in nature, but a typical example might be “Sign up and place a £20 bet and we’ll give you a £20 free bet in return”. Using the concepts of matched betting you’re able to extract guaranteed profit from the £20 free bet. Unfortunately you can only do these offers once. As, once you’ve joined a bookie it doesn’t make sense that you’d be able to use their sign-up offer again. And here is where mult-accounting (or gnoming) comes in. By matched betting on someone else’s behalf you can open up a whole new set of bookmaker accounts and get access to all those lovely jubbly welcome offers again.
Reload offers
These are promotions bookies run to entice you to place more bets. They can be very similar to the signup offers – so it could be “Place a £10 bet on the football and, if you lose, we’ll give you a £10 free bet”. These are excellent as they come in
Is it allowed/legal?
Technically, no. Our understanding is that this isn’t allowed and potentially constitutes fraud. We therefore cannot do anything but recommend that you don’t attempt to multi-accounting. That said – a lot of the matched betting community do it. So, ultimately, it is your decision (as everything in life is!) as to whether you want to go down the gnoming path or not.
Do I need a VPN?
Bookmakers often only allow one sign-up per IP address (that’s the unique number your broadband provider assigns you). You can use a VPN (a virtual private network) to change your IP address. There are alternatives too. We recommend you read our Best VPN for Matched Betting guide if you’re interested.
Do matched betting services support it?
We haven’t yet come across a matched betting service that’s specifically setup to support multi-accounting. You’ll typically need to maintain your own profit tracking spreadsheet and record of the bookies you’ve been gubbed on if you start using multiple accounts. If you’re on the lookout for a matched betting site check out our Matched Betting Site Comparison.