Risk-Free Offer Explained

A Risk-Free Offer is whereby a bookmaker offers to refund a losing bet. The refund is usually up to the amount of the stake, and some bookmakers may offer this refund as cash or as a free bet, i.e. ‘Money back as cash’ or ‘Money back as free bet’.

For example, if a bookmaker offers a ‘£20 Risk-Free Bet’, and you place your £20 bet, one of the following scenarios will occur:

• Your bet wins and you receive your winnings as normal; or
• Your bet loses and you receive a refund of £20 as cash or as a free bet, depending on the offer

In this section, we’re going to explain how you can extract profit from a Risk-Free Offer, including whether the refund is offered as cash or as a free bet.

Understanding The Conditions

Before placing your bet, you need to make sure you understand the conditions of the offer beforehand. Although Risk-Free Offers are available across several bookmakers, each bookmaker may have their own set of conditions to qualify for their offer. Make sure that you read the terms and conditions beforehand.

Here, we’ll be using the Paddy Power ‘£20 Risk-Free’ offer as our example. This particular offer is ‘Money back as cash’, not as free bet. We’ll first guide you through the steps of this ‘Money back as cash’ offer; then we’ll provide further steps on ‘Money back as free bet’ offer.

When reading the terms and conditions, you need to understand the key information for completing the offer. Here are the key information for completing this Paddy Power offer:

• Qualifying Stake: The maximum refund is £20, so you can bet up to £20 in order to extract the maximum profit
• Number Of Bets: This offer only applies to your first bet
• Minimum Odds: The bet must placed at odds of at least 1.5 or greater
• Sport: The bet can be placed on any sport
• Time/Date Of Payout: The refund will be paid out within 24 hours of settling your losing first bet
• Restrictions On Refund: No restrictions – can withdraw immediately once received

The above information are correct at the time of writing. So now that you understand the conditions, let’s show you how to profit from this offer!

Odds Display

Before you start, make sure that the odds display is set to decimals (e.g. 2.0), not fractions (e.g. 1/1). The odds display can usually be changed on the main page or within the settings page. If you cannot locate where to change this, contact the bookmaker’s support team for help.

Guide To Profiting From Risk-Free Offer

In order to receive the refund, we need to first bet with our own money. We recommend maximising the value of the refund; so if the bookmaker is offering 100% refund up to a maximum amount, then we should bet that maximum amount. Here, Paddy Power is offering 100% cash refund up to £20, and so we should bet £20 of our own money to maximise that refund.

As our first step, we need to make a selection to place our £20 back bet on. To keep things simple, we like to bet on football, specifically on a major league game. We recommend sticking to major league football matches for now, e.g. Premier League, EFL Championship, English League 1, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, World Cup, Scottish Premiership, Spanish Primera Liga, German Bundesliga I, Italian Serie A, French Ligue 1 etc.

And to extract the maximum profit, you should ideally select a bet with odds of at least 4.0 or greater. Here, we selected to place our £20 back bet on a draw at back odds of 4.0 for Liverpool vs. Leicester.

As you can see, a back bet of £20 on a draw at 4.0 returns £80 including stake (or £60 in winnings).

And you can also see that the lay odds at the exchange (we’re using Smarkets as our preferred exchange) for the draw is 4.2.

There are two options that you can choose for extracting profit from a Risk-Free Offer: you can either choose to make a smaller guaranteed profit, or you can try to go for a larger but not guaranteed profit. We will show you both options and you can decide which one you prefer:

Option 1: Smaller Guaranteed Profit 

With this option, you can lock in a guaranteed profit even before the game begins, similar to a ‘Bet X, Get Y’ Offer. The first step is to open up the free Matched Betting Calculator (click here to open the Calculator) and change the ‘Bet Type’ to ‘Risk-Free’. Then we enter all the key figures we have so far.

As you can see from our calculation below, a bet of £20 at back and lay odds of 4.0 and 4.2, along with a potential refund of £20 (entered below within ‘Free Bet Award’), would guarantee an overall profit of £14.27 regardless of the outcome of the game!

You will notice that we entered ‘Free Bet Retention’ as 100% – that’s because Paddy Power offers the refund as cash; in other words, we will receive back from the bookmaker the full cash value of our bet if it loses, and so our calculation takes this into account – click here for a more detailed explanation of free bet returns. We will explain how this retention differs for free bets in the ‘If Offer Is ‘Money Back As Free Bet” subsection immediately below.

The only thing you need to know here is that, if the refund is offered as cash, always enter the ‘Free Bet Retention’ as 100%.

According to the calculation, we need to place a lay bet of £14.29 at the exchange, giving us a liability of £45.73.

And so we place our back and lay bets at the bookmaker and exchange in accordance to the calculation.

Once our bets are placed, there are no further steps required; we just simply wait for them to be settled once the game is finished.

With ‘Money back as cash’, you can reasonably expect to extract between 55% to 75% of the value of the cash refund (depending on the difference between the back and lay odds). So if we are betting £20 with a potential £20 cash refund, we can reasonably expect to make between £11 to £15 guaranteed profit.

So here, a guaranteed overall profit of £14.27 falls nicely within our reasonable expectation.

We will be making a profit of £14.27 regardless of the outcome of the game – this is further explained in the profit breakdown below:

• If the match ends in a draw, we will win our bet at the bookmaker, i.e. £60, but lose £45.73 at the exchange, resulting in an overall profit of £14.27. Remember, the £45.73 is our liability – click here for a more detailed explanation of liability
• If the match does not end in a draw, we will initially lose our £20 bet at the bookmaker, but will be refunded in full shortly after; therefore, we no lose money at the bookmaker. At the same time, we will win £14.29 (we tend to account for a few pennies difference) at the exchange, resulting in an overall profit of £14.29. The £14.29 is our lay bet, i.e. someone else’s stake that we had accepted and will win if our lay bet wins – click here for a more detailed explanation of a lay bet and returns

Regardless of the outcome of the game, both our bets cancel eachother out, resulting in the same overall profit! Our matched bet is complete and we will make our profit once the game is over and the bets are settled. No further steps are required.

If Offer Is ‘Money Back As Free Bet’

In our example above, we showed you how to extract profit from ‘Money back as cash’ offers. But what if the offer is ‘Money back as free bet’?

Typically, you will never be able to receive the full value of a free bet; in other words, a £20 free bet does not equal £20 in cash, and so our calculation has to take this into account – click here for a more detailed explanation of free bet returns.

The process of extracting profit is the same as our example above, except you enter the ‘Free Bet Retention’ as 80%. We set this at 80% because now the refund is a free bet, not cash. We explained in previous sections that 70% to 80% is typically the ideal target range for extracting profit from free bets. 80% cash extracted from a £20 free bet will, of course, be £16 in cash.

However, since we also take into account that this is a Risk-Free Offer, you can reasonably expect to extract between 30% to 60% of the value of the free bet refund (depending on the difference between the back and lay odds). So if we are betting £20 with a potential £20 free bet refund, we can reasonably expect to make between £6 to £12 guaranteed profit.

So here, a guaranteed overall profit of £11.23 falls nicely within our reasonable expectation.

According to the calculation, we need to place a lay bet of £15.24 at the exchange, giving us a liability of £48.77.

Placing our back bet at the bookmaker will be exactly the same as our example above, but now we need to lay £15.24 at the exchange in accordance to the calculation.

We will be making a profit of £11.23 regardless of the outcome of the game – this is further explained in the profit breakdown below:

• If the match ends in a draw, we will win our bet at the bookmaker, i.e. £60, but lose £48.77 at the exchange, resulting in an overall profit of £11.23. Remember, the £48.77 is our liability – click here for a more detailed explanation of liability. Our matched bet is then complete and no further steps are required
• If the match does not end in a draw, we will lose our £20 bet at the bookmaker, but will be refunded our £20 as a free bet shortly after. At the same time, we will win £15.24 at the exchange, resulting in a loss of £4.76 (-£20 bookmaker loss + £15.24 exchange win). The £15.24 is our lay bet, i.e. someone else’s stake that we had accepted and will win if our lay bet wins – click here for a more detailed explanation of a lay bet and returns. However, the matched bet is not yet complete; in this scenario, there is an extra step to do since we now need to extract the cash from our £20 free bet in order to hit our expected overall profit of £11.24 (we tend to account for a few pennies difference). We shall explain this extra step in the ‘If Free Bet Is Refunded’ subsection immediately below

If Free Bet Is Refunded

In the second scenario where we receive our £20 refund as a free bet, we have to extract the cash from this in order to hit our expected overall profit of £11.24. Here, we would use our free bet and simply follow Step 2 of the ‘Bet X, Get Y’ Offer strategy as our final step.

When done correctly, we will hit our expected overall profit of £11.24:

-£20 bookmaker loss + £15.24 exchange win + £16 (80% cash extracted from £20 free bet)
= £11.24 overall profit 

It is important to remember that our calculated overall profit of £11.24 is based on an 80% free bet retention. To find back and lay odds that offer an 80% free bet retention will require some searching for the appropriate odds across the bookmaker (in our case, Paddy Power) and comparing them with the lay odds at the exchange.

To save you a bit of time, we recommend that you find back odds of at least 5.8 and over, with the difference in the lay odds to be no greater than 0.2. So for example, if you find back odds of 5.8, then the lay odds should be no greater than 6.0.

Of course, the higher the back odds, the greater the difference is allowed for the lay odds to still offer an 80% free bet retention. So for example, back odds of 8.0 can allow a difference of 0.7 in the lay odds (i.e. 8.7) to still offer an 80% free bet retention.

We recommend spending a bit of time searching across the bookmaker and exchange for the appropriate odds and entering the figures in the calculator to see whether they enable you to hit the desired 80% free bet retention.

Odds change all the time, so if you cannot find the appropriate odds, we recommend waiting a few hours, maybe even 1-2 days before searching again. Don’t be afraid if you cannot find the appropriate odds to hit the 80% free bet retention because they don’t occur all the time; in which case, we recommend trying to find odds that offer at least a 70% free bet retention:

-£20 bookmaker loss + £15.24 exchange win + £14 (70% cash extracted from £20 free bet)
= £9.24 overall profit 

As we already explained above, we can reasonably expect to extract between 30% to 60% of the value of the free bet refund (i.e. between £6 to £12 guaranteed profit), so a profit of £9.24 still falls nicely within our reasonable expectation.

Once we have completed Step 2 of the ‘Bet X, Get Y’ Offer strategy, our matched bet is then complete and no further steps are required.

Option 2: Larger But Not Guaranteed Profit

This option is much more straightforward, whereby you simply place a back bet at the bookmaker without placing a lay bet at the exchange.

Using our example once again, a back bet of £20 on a draw at 4.0 for Liverpool vs. Leicester returns £80 including stake, i.e. £60 in winnings.

Once we placed our back bet, no further steps are required. One of two outcomes will occur:

• If the match ends in a draw, we will win our bet at the bookmaker and receive £60 in winnings (or £80 including stake). And since we did not place a lay bet at the exchange, we have no liability to lose – therefore the £60 is pure profit!
• If the match does not end in a draw, we will initially lose our £20 bet at the bookmaker, but will then be refunded in full shortly after; therefore, we no lose money at the bookmaker

We either win a large profit or we are refunded our entire stake as cash if we lose; in other words, we have the potential to win big without any risk of losing our money!

If Offer Is ‘Money Back As Free Bet’

The above scenario relates to ‘Money back as cash’ offers. But what if the offer is ‘Money back as free bet’?

Do bear in mind that although ‘Money back as free bet’ carries a larger potential profit with Option 2 compared to Option 1, it also carries a risk.

Once we placed our back bet under this offer, one of two outcomes will occur:

• If the match ends in a draw, we will win our bet at the bookmaker and receive £60 in winnings (or £80 including stake). And since we did not place a lay bet at the exchange, we have no liability to lose – therefore the £60 is pure profit! Our bet is then complete and no further steps are required
• If the match does not end in a draw, we will lose our £20 bet at the bookmaker, but will then be refunded our £20 as a free bet shortly after. The matched bet is not yet complete; in this scenario, there is an extra step to do since we now need to extract the cash from our £20 free bet in order to recover the majority of our loss. We shall explain this extra step in the ‘If Free Bet Is Refunded’ subsection immediately below

If Free Bet Is Refunded

The second scenario we described above is the risk we take trying for a larger profit with ‘Money back as free bet’ when choosing to do Option 2. Because, as explained above, you will never be able to receive the full value of a free bet, since a £20 free bet does not equal £20 in cash.

In this scenario where we receive our £20 refund as a free bet, we have to extract the cash from this in order to recover the majority of our loss. Here, we would use our free bet and simply follow Step 2 of the ‘Bet X, Get Y’ Offer strategy as our final step.

When done correctly, we should be able to recover up to 80% of our loss, in this case £16, resulting in an overall loss of £4:

-£20 bookmaker loss + £16 (80% cash extracted from £20 free bet)
= £4 overall loss

It is important to remember that our calculated overall loss of £4 is based on an 80% free bet retention, and so our previous explanation on finding back and lay odds that offer an 80% free bet retention, found in the Option 1 ‘If Free Bet Is Refunded’ subsection above also applies here.

When choosing to do Option 2 with ‘Money back as free bet’, we would view the second scenario (in this case, the £4 loss) as a kind of Qualifying Loss for the chance of a large profit in the first scenario (in this case, the £60 win).

Once we have completed Step 2 of the ‘Bet X, Get Y’ Offer strategy and managed to recover the majority of our loss, our matched bet is then complete and no further steps are required.

Although this option does carry some risk, we think it’s still worthwhile to consider because the potential reward, in most cases, far outweigh the relatively small risk in the long term. So using our example, instead of actually risking £20 to win £60 (or £80 including stake); we are effectively risking just £4 to win £60, which, of course, are far better odds!

All of our calculations shown above factor in 0% exchange commission – that’s because as OddsMonkey Premium members, we benefit from 0% commission on Smarkets. However, if you are using a different exchange or are not yet an OddsMonkey Premium member, then you are likely to be paying commission on your winning exchange bets, and so your calculations would need to factor this in.

Factoring Commission

OddsMatcher

In this guide, we have shown you how to extract profit using a free resource, i.e. the free Match Betting Calculator, as a way to introduce you to the profit potential of matched betting without any risk or cost on your part. And if you’re pleased with what you’ve seen so far then you can certainly continue to use the free resource for other bookmaker Welcome Offers.

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