Simple Free Bet Strategy
So you've completed the Qualifying Bet and now you want to find out how to extract your Free Bet money right?
First give yourself a pat on the back, you've made it past stage one, committed to your first Matched Bet and you now have £50 (or whichever Bookie offer bonus you signed up for) sat in your account. This is the Bookies money, so lets show you how to extract as much of it as possible into your profit.
We've mentioned it before, but if you haven't already, please do read our Matched Betting Guide. It will really cement a number of the ideas and strategies we put forward and you will start to think 'ah I see why that happens' rather than, 'that doesn't make sense to me'. It's well worth your time to understand the theory behind the practical, as understanding it more will guarantee you more profit.
The vast majority of Free Bets are 'Stake Not Returned' you'll also see this abbreviation (SNR). This just means that you get the winnings back from the free bet but not the stake. After all the stake from the free bet isn't your money in the first place, its the bookies money!
Example, if you bet on England to beat Brazil, lets say £10 at 11.0 (10/1) then you would receive back £100 in your account, but the £10 stake would not be returned. This means that it is always necessary to place your FREE BETS at higher odds, in order to ensure you make higher profits. Don't worry we'll show you some examples in just a mo.
Once again folks, don't forget to read the terms of the free bets. They vary from bookie to bookie, so may say you have to place the Free Bet at odds of 1.5 (1/2) or more, some say you need to place the free bet on the same market as your qualification bet, ie Football, or Horse Racing. Whilst we make every effort to check the terms and place them on our Blog, the bookies reserve the right to change them should they wish and from our time of writing the blog, to your time of placing the bets, things 'could' change, they rarely do, but they could and we always wish to promote safe betting, it's in our name!
Through the process of Matched Betting, you should expect to make around 75% of your Free Bet back as pure profit. This can be more, or less but as an average 75% is a good ballpark figure to base you profits around.
On this occasion, we have opted for Sunderland vs Chelsea.
Lets have a look at the available odds: We've done well on this occasion, finding the same odds for both the BACK (8.0) and the LAY (8.0). At first glance we like the look of the Sunderland WIN ODDS.
Odds from the Ladbrokes website...
Odds from the Betfair website...
Now we know (as mentioned briefly earlier in this Free Bet Strategy) that as the stake is NOT returned, we want to place our bet on HIGH odds this time. Remember it was LOW odds for the Qualification Bet.
So, we know that we want to bet £50 in this instance, we know that we want to bet higher odds, so lets plug the variables into our trusty calculator once again to see what the figure we need to LAY will be...
Lets' take a look...
We have highlighted the areas of importance:
FREE BET - Selected from the top menu
BACK STAKE - £50 (this is the amount you should BACK in Ladbrokes)
BACK ODDS - 8.0
LAY ODDS - 8.0
CALCULATOR SAYS £44.03 (this is the amount you should LAY in Betfair)
* Don't forget to pay attention to the Lay Commission, in this instance 5% as we are using Betfair *
Lets go into a bit more detail about why we choose the HIGH odds for Free Bets and it all comes down to ensuring we generate the highest profit margin. A SMALL Qualifying Bet loss, followed by a LARGE profit Free Bet = winning :-)
Based on our £50 Free Bet at Ladbrokes the results chart would look like this:
Result Back Odds Lay Odds Bookie Profit Exchange Liability Free Bet Profit/Loss
Chelsea Win 1.44 1.52 £22.00 £7.78 +£14.22
Draw 4.50 4.70 £175.00 £139.23 +£35.75
S'land Win 8.0 8.0 £350.00 £308.21 +£41.79
This table shows why we bet on Sunderland to WIN as our Free Bet. If you look over to the all-important Qualifying Profit/Loss box, then you will see exactly why. Betting on Sunderland to WIN easily generates us the best profit margin.
If we bet on the DRAW then we still have a decent profit of £35.75 and sometimes those odds could be tempting, 4.50 BACK and 4.70 LAY are not bad. However, check out the Chelsea WIN odds and profit. A pretty pathetic £14.22 profit from a £50 free bet is shocking. Yes its still profit, but look what you can have from the very same match odds offerings.
* S2B TIP - It's also worth mentioning that you wouldn't be able to place the bets at 1.44, as they are usually too low for FREE BET offers, most Bookies say over 1.5 as a minimum, some say over 1.75 or 2.0 *
It's worth touching on LIABILITY again. The lower the odds, the lower the liability, the higher the odds the higher the liability. In this instance if we want to really make the most of this Free £50 Bet, we would bet on the Sunderland WIN, we would need £308.21 in our Betfair account to cover this bet. This is another reason why you might still consider the DRAW bet, not a bad return and you can see that you need less than half the funds in your Betfair account at £139.23.
* Please remember, whatever funds may come out of your Betfair account in the event of your chosen result WINNING/HAPPENING then although the funds leave your Betfair account, they appear in your Bookie account (Ladbrokes in this instance) as your BACK bet will of WON.
So lets remind ourselves of what we are doing:
We are placing a BACK bet on Sunderland to WIN at odds of 8.0 at Ladbrokes. We know we want to stake £50 (the free bet). Click the BACK odds of 8.0 and in bet-slip amount choose the free bet option... Then click 'Place Bets'... It should show you a bet receipt, saying Bet Accepted. You will also likely notice that the 'free bet' amount will disappear. If you ever want to triple check, you can check in 'my account' in the 'my bets' or 'bet history' section.
We are placing a LAY bet on Sunderland to NOT WIN (lose or draw) at odds of 8.0 at Betfair. Our calculator tells us we need to stake £44.03. Click the pink box showing odds of 8.0, again it will bring up your bet in a bet-slip. Place the desired figure of £44.03 into the box and click 'Place Bets'. You should get a bet receipt saying 'bet matched'.
Your bets are ON!
* Don't forget for a full run-through of the process, including screenshots from the confirmed bets at both the Bookie and the Exchange. Go to our Sign-Up Offer Challenge Blog Page.
No matter what happens in this football match, we are guaranteed the following...
So if Sunderland DO WIN we make +£41.79 profit.
So if Sunderland DO NOT WIN (lose or draw) we make +£41.83
We do need to factor in our initial Qualifying LOSS remember. Which was -£2.25, we placed this in order to qualify for the FREE £50 BET.
So £41.83 - £2.25 = £39.58
The best part of £40 easy, tax-free, risk-free profit. That's worth around £60 in your day job, 5-10 hours work depending on your hourly wage! All for about 30 mins effort tops, minimum effort, maximum profit. That's an hourly rate of around £80, plus did we mention its tax-free ;-)
This may take you longer the first few times, but after a while placing these bets will become second nature, quite often you will find yourself making £30/£40 in 10 minutes.
S2B Top Tip: Try to place your FREE BETS at HIGHER odds, as this will ensure you make more profit overall from your Free Bet. Don't forget you'll need more in your Betfair funds to cover the higher odds liabilities though.
NEXT UP - RISK-FREE BET STRATEGY