So, I have an offer for a free bet of £20 on any sport at Paddy Power - but it must be placed this weekend. To qualify I also have to place a £20 bet - again on any sport.
Furthermore, I’m also allowed to place a £1 bet (payed for by me) at roulette this Sunday - and if I do so, I will get £5 added to my balance on Monday, also (I think) to be put on roulette.
So - on what should I place my sports bet? And on what should I place my roulette bets?
By the way the free bet on sport will be stake not returned. So while the minimum odds are 1/2 (using fractional odds; sorry I am not familiar with american odds - 1/2 corresponds to 1.5 decimal odds) it is obviously better to go for something with higher odds than that.
If you play against the spread, as in the NFL example linked above, the fractional odds are 10/11; which means you place £20 to win (if you win) £18.18. Since you say your stake is not returned, depending on the result you either end up with £0 or £18.18 in this case.
If you have to ask, I assume you’re not well-versed in the world of sports betting. In which case, you’re probably better off not letting such “free” offers entice you into going down that road.
As a life long punter, this doesn’t sound all that attractive. It may work though.
If I understand you, you need to bet 20 quid of your own money. You then get another 20 quid to place but you’ll only get any dividend without the stake.
So, if you like a soccer team or something at two to one on you could place the whole 40 quid on that. If they win you end up 20 quid in front (plus your own 20).
So you are getting even money about a two to one on shot. As long as you can walk away after it- and be prepared to lose your twenty quid.
You can turn these things into guaranteed profit of a few pounds. First you make the qualifying bet, and a similar, balancing bet on the opposite outcome, so that you get the same return whatever the outcome. Place the opposite bet on another site such as Betfair, because bookies sometimes don’t let you, or at least approve of you, betting both ways on the same market. And you tend to get better odds at the betting exchanges.What’s more, betting exchange allows you to Lay, i.e. effectively bet against one particular outcome. If you use a traditional bookmaker instead, you will need to bet on something that only has two outcomes.
This procedure will lose a small proportion of the stakes so far, but now you cash in your free bet:
Place the free bet on some eligible event on Paddy Power, and again make a balancing bet on another site. The balancing stake will probably be a lot less than £20, because the odds will be higher. Balance it correctly (a little spreadsheet may be helpful here!) and you can guarantee a final overall profit of maybe £5 whatever the outcome. It depends on the odds available.
Quite a lot of work for a few quid, but sometimes betting websites have introductory offers where you get a lot more than £20 in free bets. Sometimes it is possible to make £100 or more out of those offers, with care.