subject: It's true - there really are free bets galore! [print this page] There is a common fallacy that the bookmakers cannot ever be beaten.
The basis of this notion is that the price offered by the bookie on any particular event doesn't reflect the true value of the wager. There is always a "house edge" factored into transactions that ensures the more often you fill out your slip (or in 21st century parlance "hit the Send button", the more certain it is that you'll be down.
Those amongst us whose business is betting however can demonstrate that there are exceptions to this rule. There are those who depend on "systems" to beat the book while others engage in the art of "trading" - watching for small movements in the market and backing and laying the same selection to lock in modest but consistent profits.
But the best, safest and simplest way in which to make a guaranteed return is by means of the "free bet".
The free bet is the bait used by the online sportsbooks to entice new customers. In days of old there were only a mere handful of established high street bookies from which to select, and common sense usually dictated that it was the one that was the least far to walk that received your business.
Today however the big British books compete for business with the often equally big European, Asian and US offshore operations which, through our computer keyboards, are now every bit as convenient to access as their traditional UK counterparts.
So why open an account with, say, Corals as opposed to a company operating out of Antigua or Hong Kong?
One way that Corals, like many other sportsbooks, will try to persuade you is through the allure of the free bet. Usually what this amounts to is that once you have placed your first wager of maybe 10 or 20, the sportsbook will give you another bet to the same value free of charge. Once the customer gets used to the experience and "feel" of the sportsbook, the theory goes, he or she will then hang around and use that book for all future transactions.
And it must work, as the bookmakers have been using this means of attracting custom for some years now. But the price they pay is to forfeit these modest amounts of money to the smart players, who will always use the free bet as a guaranteed source of risk-free income.
The trick is either to lay both the qualifying bet and the free bet at small losses (at worst) at a betting exchange such as Betdaq or Betfair, or to "arb" the free bets issued by different books with one another in a way that ensures a guaranteed profit. Played correctly, a free wager of 25 should translate into a guaranteed return of at least 15 to the bettor.
Bearing in mind there are dozens of dependable books, and many more of slightly less dependable ones, offering free bets to new customers, literally anybody with the means to open an online betting account and place a modest wager is able to make hundreds or maybe even thousands of pounds from free bets just by moving around from book to book. It really is that easy.
Of course, the Internet is a big place and shopping around for all the free bets that are available would be an enormously time-consuming and laborious exercise. It is fortunate therefore that there are online sports betting services which consolidate all the relevant info about where the free bets are and how to use them and offer it in a compact and organised format that is so easy to follow. In some cases these dedicated sites will be in a position to offer unique free bets that the customer would not be able to access directly from the bookmaker without clicking their link.
The greed of the bookmaker has created an opening that is there to be exploited. Anyone can quite legitimately make several hundreds of pounds, maybe more, simply by following the advice given by the free bet sports information websites and by playing the field.
It's true - there really are free bets galore!
By: Mark Richards
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