Dealing with cash bonuses

[Elyss2]

Hi,

I'm having trouble getting my head around how to treat free cash. Deposited £100 with Bet at Home and got a £45 bonus. The WR is 4 on £145.

My first bet was for the full amount and I treated the £45 as SNR (hope that was right!). If I win at the exchange all well and good, but if I win at the bookies how should I treat the £45 for the next bet(s)?

[Admin]

Deposit bonuses are always SR. Always try and bet the full amount in your account to try and bust out in one. Keep doing this until you bust out or complete the WR and then you can withdraw any funds that remain. Remember to bet over any minimum odds specified otherwise it won't count towards the WR. A slight underlay at odds around 10 is a good tactic for your first bet in case you happen to win at the bookie. The net result of this underlay means you will then have more cash at the bookie than you would have had with a true matched bet and this will mean more profit for you when completing the WR.

All your subsequent bets will also be SR ( just remember this is a cash bonus not a free bet). The downside to cash bonuses are the WR. The downside to free bets is they are generally SNR.

[Elyss2]

Thanks for that. I suppose I achieved the underlay by treating the £45 as SNR when calculating the lay stake. So far so good. What I still don't get is this:

As things stand, I'll be £25 in profit if I win at the exchange and that's the end of it. But if I win at the bookie's I'll still be £25 up and I'll still have the £45 bonus. So, if I repeat exactly the same process - place another bet of £145 and count the bonus amount as SNR when calculating the lay stake - aren't I going to continue making a profit as well as keeping the bonus until I lose at the bookie's (in which case, any further bets are completely SR)?

Maybe some numbers might help:

£100 + £45 back at 3.35 - return = £485.75 (net 340.75)
£131.57 lay at 3.4 - liability = £315.76

Bust out, and I have my original £100 + £24.99 (after commission)
Win at bookie and I have 485.75 - 315.76 = 169.99 = £100 + £45 + 24.99

By treating the bonus as SR and going for higher odds (which I can't really do just yet anyway), I would bust out with a greater profit but win at the bookie's with a lot less. On the other hand, completing the WR at lower odds and SNRing the bonus could make a profit of around £100 plus the now cashable bonus if I don't bust out at all.

Or is that considered gambling? Or have I missed something blindingly obvious?

[Admin]

Thanks for that. I suppose I achieved the underlay by treating the £45 as SNR when calculating the lay stake. So far so good. What I still don't get is this:

As things stand, I'll be £25 in profit if I win at the exchange and that's the end of it. But if I win at the bookie's I'll still be £25 up and I'll still have the £45 bonus.

Yes treating as SNR is an underlay of sorts so your right on that point but the rest of your post is indeed missing something blindingly obvious. Without even looking at your actual bet you've mistaken your bonus as being cashable and still available to you if you win at the bookies. The £45 you've been given has been included in the stake of £145. You've had it and that's that. I'll look at your figures later and re post.

[Elyss2]

I must be being very dim. I did win at the bookie so, along with my winnings the whole £145 stake was returned. As £45 of that wasn't mine to start with surely I do still have the bonus? At least, I now have £485.75 in the bookie account; I lost £315.76 at the exchange - a difference of £169.99. The profit from the back/(under)lay match was 24.99, leaving my original £100 deposit plus £45. The bonus would only be gone if I'd lost at the bookie, in which case I'd take my £24.99 and run:-)

I've just placed a second bet of the same amount, again treating the £45 as SNR for an underlay of about £18 which nets £25.66. If I lose the back bet then I'll have a total gain of £50.65 (over the two bets) for the loss of the £45 bonus. I'll still be £50 better off, minus any small losses on the remaining WR bets. If the back bet wins then I still get the £25.66 and the £45 is returned in the stake, so I can do it again:-)

Assuming one doesn't mind accepting a smaller return if the first back bet loses, and that the bonus isn't real money until withdrawals can be made, then I'm having trouble seeing a flaw in this strategy.

BTW - this deal at Bet at Home is very different from that described on the main FEM site - time for an update?

[Admin]

Update on the way.
What you are doing here is underlaying by treating it as SNR. There is an element of gambling in this as in order to maximise profit you have to win at the bookie as you've described. If you don't mind gaining less money out of the process if the lay wins then it's a good tactic especially when betting the whole amount to bust out or achieve the WR.
If you take underlaying to it's extreme and lay zero you are in fact gambling on the bookie bet winning. No problem there either as long as you know what to expect.
I did try it once when trying to complete a foreign site with a big WR. I eventually lost at the bookie but the exchange rate meant I didn't profit as much as you might expect. Sharpshooter does the underlay a lot I believe and I think he reduces the amount of underlay as the bets continue.

[Elyss2]

Point taken about the gambling aspect. I had reasoned my way through to not underlaying the final WR bet, if I get there, but hadn't considered reducing the underlay on the earlier ones. Not sure why I would - if I lose at the bookie then the bonus is gone in its entirety; it doesn't reduce the more I bet (and win). I'll give it some thought.

Very helpful - many thanks.

[edit] Regarding foreign sites, I've used one so far. To make sure I knew exactly what amounts were involved I used the exchange rate I got when I deposited (i.e. €25 = £23.15) and only used the sterling figure when calculating the lay bets. I made sure I bust out at the bookie so I didn't have to re-convert. That, incidentally, is proving harder than I expected - I seem to have a talent for backing donkeys at the races that turn into thoroughbreds when they take to the field!!

[Elyss2]

Just a quick update as I've now completed the WR on this bonus. I worked through it in four bets - the first one, which won, and then three more of the same amount (don't have the resources yet to have done it all in one go). All four back bets won netting me £107.97. If any of the bets had lost it would have been (cumulatively):

Bet 1 - £24.99
Bet 2 - £50.25
Bet 3 - £72.10
Bet 4 - £107.97

Bets 1-3 treated the bonus as SNR, Bet 4 as SR which, in retrospect was foolish (the total for bet 4 includes the bonus which I can now cash out). Having won back bet 1 I was guaranteed to make at least the bonus amount; SNRing on bet 4 would end in a total profit of £150ish with a back win and £97ish on a lay win.

I think I've decided this is an approach worth taking. After all, if bet 1 loses then I still profit by about half the bonus - anything beyond that is a..er..bonus.

[SharpeShooter]

It's good to see you developing your own techniques.

The trick is to adapt them to suit each book. A bookie which is full or arbs there's no need to underlay to preserve bonus, but you may choose to underlay to reward completing the wr.

I usually look for higher odds for the first bet. If you think of this as an SNR bet the higher the odds the better the reward. If I have a £150 bet with 50% of this being bonus money I may lay to recover £140 if I can find adequate odds around 10. I'm at work so don't have my spreadsheet with me but you can check this for yourself with the MB calculator. If I can find odds of 10 / 9.6 and lay to recover £140 then if my bet wins I'm up by approx £90-100. Then complete the wr with minimum odds possible.

This doesn't give me anymore profit than your method if my bets win, but if my 1st bet loses I only give up 20% of the bonus. Like I said, everybody will skew their bets to suit their circumstances and it's always worth discussing techniques

[Elyss2]

Good idea! I would have gone for higher odds on the first bet if I could, especially if I could have found a decent arb, but, at the moment, I don't have that luxury. Just a matter of time though........

On the subject of calculators, I've replicated the FEM calculator in Excel and put it alongside a slightly modified version which takes the stake/odds/commission figures from the first but lets me vary the lay bet so I can see the effect on the profit/loss on each side of the bet. It's really helping me understand how it all works so that eventually I hope to have it all in my head and not have to waste time faffing around double-checking my mental arithmetic.