Do you ignore small free bets, risk free offers or advantage play offers

Small Free Bets

We’ve all been there: seen an offer that says ‘Bet £10 Get £5 Free Bet’ and thought “is it worth it?” and perhaps more importantly: “Can I be bothered to do it?”

Well, I just wanted to write a little piece on how important these ‘little’ offers can be going forward.

Let’s take a look at a couple of examples to see how your matched betting profits can soon add up:

• Skybet Club: a Free £5 bet every week that you should be making around £4 profit from. Over the course of the year, that’s just short of £200 profit.
• 888Sport’s “Goals Mean More” offer is also worth around £200 over the course of the season.
• Ladbrokes’ Mobile offer “Bet £20 In-Play, Get £10 Free Bet In-Play”. We’re currently seeing this offer at least once a week. Let’s say Ladbrokes offer this offer 30 times during one season (could well be a lot more); in this case, this offer is worth around £200.

These offers alone are worth around £600 profit over the course of the season. At first glance, they might seem like little £4 profits and you might wonder if they are worth doing, but these are so important as they help matched bettors build their bank, allowing them to tackle more, and higher, offers. In my opinion, it’s important to get into the mind set of not ignoring the little offers because the profits add up and they rarely take more than 15 minutes to complete.

Risk Free Offers and Free Spins

I’ll never forget when I first started matched betting and I checked my email: ’10 Free Spins’, the email read…

“Seems pointless, I’m never going to win anything from that”, I said to myself, but I was bored and not doing much at the time, so I thought I’d give it a go. Second spin in, I hit a bonus round which I ended up getting around £200 from. I was buzzing…before I saw that it needed a fair bit of wagering.

I spent a little while wagering through the offer but still walked away with just over £100 profit. From that day on I decided that I would never ignore any risk-free offers or free spins.

You have absolutely nothing to lose by attempting risk free casino/sports offers or any free spins that you receive. My advice is attack everything and anything that you see that falls into this bracket. Over time, you will hit something.

Whilst we can’t put an estimated profit on attacking these types of offers, we can say that over the course of the month/year, you are going to be a lot better off for doing them.

I recently had a 1-2-1 meeting with an OddsMonkey Premium member and explained the above story. Afterwards, I was absolutely buzzing to find a personal message in my inbox to say that he had received 50 free spins from Gala Casino and walked away with over £300 profit.

Advantage Play Offers

Advantage Play offers can often be the most frustrating type for those moving from ‘new account’ to ‘reload’ offers. However, these offers are very important to help you maximize your profits. If you do an offer and don’t hit the refund trigger, don’t panic or feel too disheartened; it happens to everyone. The more you’re doing these types of offers, the more you’ll hit the refunds.

My biggest advice when beginning Advantage Play offers would be to keep your losses to a minimum. However, it’s hard to advise on qualifying losses because that is always relevant to the offer.

In another 1-2-1 call I had, an OddsMonkey Premium member wanted to learn more about Advantage Play offers. They found the example I gave useful in helping them get their head around how value is gained in the long term. I’ll share it below.

Example: 188Bet – £50 Refund On Selected Losing Bets If A Red Card Is Shown (Barcelona v Valencia)

Place your qualifier on Valencia at odds of 5.75 and lay this offer on Smarkets at 5.8 for a loss of exactly £1.25.

You will now receive a £50 refund (worth around £40 cash) if your bet loses and a red card is shown.

So if Valencia don’t win and a red card is shown, you would make a profit of roughly £39. If a red card isn’t shown, then you will make a loss of -£1.25.

So effectively we have risked £1.25 to win £39. This means the true odds we have got on Valencia not winning and a red card being shown are actually around 31.0 (30/1), when in reality a red card with the bookmaker is priced up at around 3.0 (2/1), depending on the game. This shows the huge value and advantage we have long term, and this goes for all Advantage Play offers. If someone was offering you 31.0 (30/1) on a red card to be shown and Valencia not to win, I’m sure you’d bite their hand off!

Hopefully this post has shown you how “every little helps”, to borrow the well-known phrase. Especially when it comes to matched betting and how important small free bets are in the long term.

Find out more about matched betting when you download our free introduction.