Bonus Bagging For Beginners

Transcription

1

2 Bonus Bagging For Beginners A Step By Step Guide to Bagging Bookmakers Bonuses By Nick D Chawke

3 Copyright Nick D Chawke 2013 Nick D Chawke asserts the right to be identified as the author of this book. All rights reserved. No part of this publication (whether as book, e-book or in any other medium) may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise without the prior permission of the author.

4 Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1: The Betting Industry 3 Chapter 2: The Theory of Betting Explained 5 Chapter 3: Betting Exchanges 7 Chapter 4: Free Bet Bonuses 12 Chapter 5: A Theoretical Example 14 Chapter 6: Bagging The First Bonus 25 Chapter 7: Bagging Bigger Bonuses 32 Chapter 8: Different Types of Bonus 36 Appendix: Useful links 41

5 Introduction Bookmakers all over the world are fighting for your business and in an increasingly competitive environment, with new bookmakers springing up overnight like mushrooms, they are offering increasingly generous gifts and bonuses for you to join them, sometimes eye-wateringly generous. The aim of this book is to show you how you can quickly earn money by taking advantage of these free bets and bonuses offered as incentives by bookmakers, even if you have never been inside a betting shop or placed a bet in your life. There are literally thousands of pounds waiting for you to pick up from bookmakers across the world. I must stress that even though the source of our money will be the bookmakers, at no time will we ever be betting. This is not gambling, it is taking advantage of bookmakers bonus offers in a way which never risks any of our own money. Provided that you follow the system properly, at no stage will you ever risk a penny, and you can start earning money within hours of reading this book. Indeed you can have your first profit in a little more than two hours from now. I would urge you to follow this report exactly to the letter, do not read the first bit and start opening accounts, you may well lose out on bonus money from some techniques later in the book. Now this may well sound too good to be true, and I have no doubt that you are sceptical, you probably bought this book because it was inexpensive and it raised your curiosity...right? Let me assure you, if you follow the steps in this book to the letter you will soon be building a pile of cash in your bank account at the expense of the bookmakers and it is all risk free. Still not convinced, well take a look at what the well-respected British newspaper The Guardian had to say about the system. 1

6 Free bets mean you can clean up as bookies meet their match. Jason Shearer was curious when he read Guardian Money s article on free bets. Could you really beat the bookies at no risk? He followed our advice, made 770, and reckons it s even simpler than we said. There is an old proverb that says: In a bet there is a fool and a thief, Could I really sit in front of my screen and make money from the bookies for nothing? The answer, to my surprise, was yes. Over the past month I have researched and used every decent online free bet introductory offer from a bookie. I ve taken up 31 offers so far and I ve made in the region of 770. The money I have made has been absolutely risk free, it s not been about gambling but about playing the system. I don t even have to pay tax on my winnings. *** The system we are about to use is generally known as bonus bagging. Explained simply, most bookmakers use the offer of free bets or bonus bets as an incentive to get you to join them. They hope of course that once you have used your free bet, you will continue to bet with them and that they will make a profit out of you...20% of all people who take up these offers do continue to bet and that makes it worthwhile for the bookies to continue them. What this book will show you is how to turn the tables on the bookmakers and put that free bet money into your bank account without risking any of your own. A note about links: Throughout this book we will be referring to two types of web link, the links you must use direct from our website in order to be sure to take advantage of sign-up bonuses and links which are tools to help you find bets and make calculations. Our website is and is free for you to use. We also suggest that you sign up to our mailing list, so that we can you with any new bookmaker offers which you might otherwise miss. On this site you will find a section called Betting Tools. Here you will find all the links referred to in this book in one handy spot. All the links are also listed in the Appendix at the end of this book. If you are reading on a browser-enabled device, the links will be live for you as you go through the text. Since we suggest that you read through the book more than once before placing any bets, if your reading device does not open links for you try to read through at least once with our website open on another device to look at the information live before you spend any money. Please note that all the illustrations in this book are screenprints, the specific information they contain will not be current. 2

7 Chapter One The Betting Industry If you are new to betting you may know nothing of the betting industry or the terminology it uses. Don t worry, everything will be explained in a step-by-step manner and we will take you through all the stages necessary to claim your free money, the first of which you should be able to get as soon as you finish reading this book. The question many people ask is why would the bookmakers want to give me free money? and the answer lies in the changes which have happened in the betting industry in the last 20 years. Not that long ago if you were a betting man you would walk down to your local bookmakers to put your bets on, if you lived in a reasonable sized town you might have a choice of two or three bookmakers, Ladbrokes, William Hill, perhaps a local independent even, but still a fairly limited choice. The coming of the internet changed all that. Now bookmakers are not only competing with other bookmakers in the same town, but competing against bookmakers situated all over the world. It is just as easy to place a bet with a bookmaker in Brisbane as in Birmingham, and all without ever leaving your armchair. This has been a double-edged sword for bookmakers, many of whom were more at home with the flat cap and whippet brigade than information technology. Those bookmakers who were more savvy saw a world of opportunity opening up to them with the ability to attract business in markets across the globe. However it has also made the industry highly competitive and, if anything, swung the odds more in favour of the punters who now have a plethora of bookmakers and odds comparison sites at their disposal. With the aid of a PC your average punter can now compare the best available odds in seconds and the bookmakers are fighting an ever increasing field of competitors to get their share of the pie. The second thing which revolutionised the industry was the advent of Betting Exchanges notably Betfair and Betdaq. Betting exchanges allow punters to strike bets directly with other punters online, therefore totally cutting out the bookmakers. Because there is no bookmaker taking a profit the odds are generally better than those available from traditional bookmakers. The betting exchange gets its profit by taking a small percentage, typically 3% - 5% from any winnings. Don t worry if you haven t come across these, they will be fully explained later in the book. These changes have made the bookmaking industry much more highly competitive than before and in order to remain competitive bookmakers are offering increasingly generous incentives to attract new customers, and it is these which we will be taking advantage of. Usually the incentive is that you place a bet and they will give you a free bet to the same value, but some will give you a free bet simply for signing up without depositing a penny. 3

8 Obviously due to the nature of a book, any offers we list here would be subject to change over time, therefore we have set up a website which will constantly monitor and update offers for you. It is free to use and, as noted in the Introduction, the address is If you are reading this on an internet enabled device you can link directly to it, if not visit the site from your PC or other internet device. You will find it also links to all the other websites mentioned in this book. Check it frequently so that you don t miss out on any free cash. Also if you sign up to our mailing list we can you with any new bookmaker offers which you might otherwise miss. 4

9 Chapter Two The Theory Of Betting Explained If you are new to betting then the next couple of chapters will explain fully how betting works and how betting exchanges work. If you are already familiar with these concepts you might want to skip the next two chapters. I will assume that you have never placed a bet in your life and take it right the way from first basics. Quite simply you are betting or wagering on the outcome of an event on which there are multiple possibilities. This might be football, tennis, horseracing or even who will win X-Factor. When we place bets we talk about odds, typically in Britain we have traditionally used fractional odds such as 7/2, in Europe, and now increasingly in Britain, it is common to use decimal odds and it is these we will use for the most part in this book as they are available now at all online bookmakers. A simple explanation is that if you place a 10 bet on a horse at 7/2 (seven to two) and it wins then you would get back 35 plus your stake of 10, a total of 45. You have bet two fivers so you win seven fivers plus the return of your stake. If it loses you forfeit your 10 stake. In decimal odds 7/2 is expressed as 4.5. The amount you stake is multiplied by 4.5 to calculate your return, 45 just the same. Doing the conversion is easy, divide the lower figure (2) into the top figure (7) = 3.5 and add the figure 1 = 4.5. In practise most bookmakers now allow the option of choosing which type of odds to display, always choose decimal, much easier to work with! I have included a fractional to decimal odds conversion chart here but in reality you are never likely to need it, since all online bookmakers now tend to use decimal odds as the default setting with a toggle to fractional odds for those who prefer them. If you are a seasoned betting person and steeped in fractional odds then get used to decimal, trying to work out our system in factional odds will fry your brain. With some sports, horseracing for example, it is traditional to bet at Starting Price or SP which means that the odds are not fixed until the off. We will not be using SP betting as we need to fix the odds before the off to make our profit. However sometimes a bookmaker will offer that if you take a price (take fixed odds) and the SP returns a better price then they will give you the better price. We will naturally take advantage of this when we can. In the U.K. no tax is now paid on betting and all winnings are tax free. 5

10 Fractional to Decimal Conversion 6

11 Chapter Three Betting Exchanges Betfair was the first of the betting exchanges to come onto the market in the UK and although there are others it is the one we will use throughout this book, and in practise will be the main one we will use for our system. The only other one we will be using is Betdaq because they will accept customers from a wider range of countries. Follow the links to our website, click on the link for Betfair and open an account, this will ensure that you get your free bonus money which currently stands at 25. We suggest that you make an initial deposit of 75. More if you can spare it, it will never be at risk but will be your working capital. You must open an account with Betfair or the system simply will not work. This system is primarily aimed at UK and ROI based customers but Betfair currently accept customers from the following countries. If you are based outside these zones you may be able to operate the system using Betdaq which accepts a wider geographical range of customers. UK Ireland Australia Denmark Spain Italy Portugal Sweden Czech Republic Romania Hungary Netherlands If you live in any of these countries you can operate the system although not all bookmakers will accept you and the free bet offers may differ from currency to currency. Betfair is a betting exchange. A betting exchange allows punters to bet at odds set and requested by other punters rather than by a bookmaker, in essence very much like the stockmarket, prices, since odds move according to public demand and are not set by a bookmaker taking a profit. Members can make both back bets (normal bets on a selection to win) and lay bets (bets on the opposite side of the back, against the selection, betting that a selection will lose), thereby eliminating the traditional bookmaker. We will be using Betfair almost exclusively to place lay bets, in other words accepting bets that the selection will lose, and making our money by using the bookmakers free bet offers to place a win bet on the same event. This is sometimes called matched betting or arbitraging but better known as bonus bagging, because you claim the bonus money without at any time risking any of your own. 7

12 We will show you how. Betfair is perhaps the only slightly complicated part of the system and so we have prepared an 8 minute video for you to watch, the link to which is on our website. Betfair has all sorts of whistles and bells which needn t concern us for now, all we need to know is that we can use it to place a traditional bet, just like a normal bookmaker, and also be the bookmaker ourselves by allowing people to place bets with us; this is called laying. We can also stipulate our own odds and the bet will only be valid if another punter or punters take your offer. Say for example a horse is currently on offer at You could place a bet into the market at say 3.00, but it would only be valid if the price (odds) rise to When the bet is taken it is said to have matched. If nobody is willing to accept your price then the bet is said to be unmatched and your money is immediately returned to your Betfair account. Let s look at a real life example. Let us assume that you have opened your Betfair account and deposited some money, make sure to use the link from our website to ensure that you get your free bonus. When you arrive at the Betfair landing page you will be prompted to log on using your username and password and you will be presented with a screen similar to this. Down the left-hand side is a menu of sports and events, or markets as they are called. Choose the market that you are interested in. We ll use tonight s tennis. 8

13 Here you see the main Match Odds for the tennis match between Leonardo Mayer and Filippo Volandri. The two boxes on the right show that Mayer is the hot favourite to win, available to back at 1.48 or if you want to lay him (play the bookmaker and take bets on him to lose) then you can lay him at The first thing to do is to click on the View full market under the odds boxes. This brings up a slightly different screen, which is the one we will be working with. This next screen shows the fuller market. You will note that the figures have changed slightly since the previous screen shot. This is very common at Betfair, prices can move very rapidly, especially in the minutes prior to the contest beginning. You will notice that the best price for each type of bet is highlighted, and the next best options for backing are to the left and the next best options for laying are to the right. 9

14 You will also see that a number with a pound sign appears under each of the odds. This is the amount of money available in the market at that price. Mayer is now best priced at 1.49 but there is only 3.00 available in the market at that price. If I were to bet say 20 on Mayer at 1.49, 3.00 would match immediately and 17 would await other punters deciding to take that price, so I could either wait to see if it matched or match the remaining 17 at the next best price which is There is 1,367 available at 1.48 so it would match immediately. In practise the difference is so small that we would match the whole 20 immediately, you can safely assume that any difference of less than.05 will match right away. With differences of.05 or more, you should always ensure that there is sufficient money in the markets at prices you are prepared to accept before betting. There is also a one-click button to automatically match any unmatched bets at the best prices available. If I decided to place a bet, either back or lay, then I just click in the relevant box. Let s say we decide to lay Mayer (ie bet that he will lose) at 1.5 we just click in that box. On devices which see colours the back boxes render in blue, and the lay boxes in pink, but if you are reading this on a device which does not render colours you will not be able to see that, but it does state over the top which are which. 10

15 Clicking this box brings up the betting slip to the right of the markets. Now we could just decide to lay Mayer at the price of 1.51 or we could put in our own price and see if the market moves in that direction later. However, when we operate our system we will always match the prices immediately, since we need to know that the bets are on. We put the backer s stake, ie the amount we are willing to let people stake with us in the stake box on the betting slip. In this example we are laying, ie allowing someone to place a bet with us playing the bookmaker at odds of 1.51 and the amount we are prepared to allow them to wager is This does two things before we confirm the bet. On the right hand side above the Place bets shows us our liability. In other words if Mayer wins the match we will lose On the left hand side under the players names you will see the potential profit or loss. If Mayer wins we would lose 10.20, if Volandri wins we would win the 20 staked by the other punter(s) minus the Betfair commission of 5% so we would win the shown under his name. Simple as that. If we are happy with everything click on Place bets and the bet is placed. Betfair will immediately ring-fence your liability, in this case 10.20, and it will not be available for you to use on another event until the outcome of the match is known and the bet settled. This is why we recommend you deposit a minimum of 75.00, to enable you to participate in more than one market at once. Any winnings are normally in your Betfair account less than five minutes after the contest finishes. At the end of the book we will introduce you to a free piece of software which speeds up the Betfair process. 11

16 Chapter Four Free Bet Bonuses Now we know how Betfair works, how do we use this information to make money? At first it may seem a little complicated but once you have claimed one or two bonuses you will find it second nature and be bagging several bonuses per day. I suggest that you read through this book up to the point where we advise you to have a trial go at the system at least twice, or until you really feel that you understand it. As you know from Chapter One, before you start to make money you will need to open a Betfair account and deposit some money. This money will be your working capital but it will never be at risk. I would open each bookmaker account individually as you claim each bonus, some stipulate that it must be done on the day that you open the account and you might miss this if you try opening lots of accounts all at once. Open each account, take the bonus and move on. This also has knock-on advantages. Sometimes if the bookmakers see that you have not used the account for a while they will send you extra bonuses to encourage you back. Of course we will gladly be accepting these. Also bookmakers will frequently make short -term bonus offers, often pertaining to a single event such as a football match. We monitor these for you and if you sign up to the mailing list at our website we will you with these as they come along so you don t miss them. There are literally hundreds of bookmakers offering bonus bets. Why do they do this? Well statistically 20% of people who take a bonus will stay with the bookmaker and become regular clients. Our website lists many of the bonuses currently available and is constantly updated with new offers. Be sure to click the links on the site to sign up to ensure that you get the bonus offers, and revisit the site daily so you don t miss any new offers. Each bookmaker has slightly different rules for their offers so this is one instance where it really is necessary to read the terms & conditions to make sure that you abide by the rules. Not reading the terms and conditions is the only way that this can go wrong. We are concentrating here mainly on British bookmakers and well-trusted overseas ones but once you have claimed your bonuses from all of these, spread your wings and Google free bets or bookmakers bonuses or whatever and you will find bookmakers all over the world willing to give you money to sign up with them. Just be careful how you transfer money between your accounts, many bookmakers will not pay bonuses to accounts funded by Neteller or Gamebookers, since these are often misused for the purpose of scamming multiple bonuses. For this reason, fund your account using a credit or debit card, or often they will accept PayPal. Now let s take a look at how we convert these bonuses to real cash... Simply by backing and laying the outcome of the same event! 12

17 Remember though that we have a free bet, so we are only using our own money for the lay bet, the free bet will cover the corresponding back part of your bet. We will also place our stakes in such as way that whichever side wins, we will make a handsome, risk-free profit. It is important to fully read the terms and conditions of the offer to ensure that you qualify, and more importantly, that you do not make a mistake and end up losing money. It s worth repeating...the ONLY way to lose money on this system is to fail to read the terms and conditions fully. Broadly speaking bookmakers will offer several different types of bonus. 1) Stake an amount, usually 25 or 50 on any event as your first bet after signing up and receive a free bet to the same amount. Usually the stake is not returned with the winnings from the free bet, but as you haven t paid the stake you receive exactly the same amount of winnings as if it were a normal, paid for bet. 2) Stake an amount, usually 25 or 50 on any event as your first bet after signing up and receive a free bet to the same amount, but the stake is returned with the winnings. These are very rare, but when we find one it s an extra bonus. 3) Stake an amount, usually 25 or 50 on any event as your first bet after signing up and receive a free bet to the same amount but only if your original bet loses, you do not get the bonus if it wins. 4) Free bet immediately on signing up with no qualifying bet and no deposit needed. These types of offer are becoming more common as the market becomes increasingly competitive and of course, we take immediate advantage of them. 5) A double your stake first bet, so if your first bet was a 25 win bet and it wins, you will receive your returns as if you had bet 50, minus the 25 part of the stake which you did not pay. These are less common but you do see them. It is primarily offer types 1 & 4 we will be dealing with. 13

18 Chapter Five Some Theoretical Examples In this chapter we will follow some theoretical examples, step-by-step. A typical bonus or free bet might be a straightforward free bet of say 50. You could just place a bet on some likely favourite at around even money and hope it wins. If it does then great, you are 50 up, but if it doesn t you have wasted your free bet. With the method we are about to employ, you will put money in your pocket from these bonuses every single time. Suppose we have a free bet of 50 from Joe Bloggs the bookmakers. We are going to look for an event where we can both back and lay the two possible outcomes at close to the same odds. You will usually, but not always, be laying at slightly higher odds than backing. Typically we will be looking for some event where we can both back and lay at around 4.00 (three to one), or higher to maximise our return on our free bet. Mostly we will use football matches for these as they are plentiful and the odds we want are usually easy to find. Later in the book I will introduce you to a piece of inexpensive software which you can use to locate these but for now you can find them easily using odds comparison sites such as oddschecker.com. Example One Immediately we see that there are lots of football matches where we can bet and lay at the same price but there is only one with enough money in the market for our purposes. I am writing this a few days ahead of the games, in practise I would be doing this on the day when there would be lots more money in the markets. We are interested in Swansea v QPR where we can both back and lay QPR at

19 As the odds are evenly matched we could just bet our free 50 at 5.00 and if QPR win we would win 200 as the free bet stake is not returned. We would also lay QPR not to win (the draw counts as not winning) at Betfair with a stake of 40 to lose 160 should they win. So if QPR win we win 200 at Joe Bloggs and lose 160 at Betfair, a profit of 40. If QPR lose we lose nothing at Joe Bloggs as it was a free bet and we win 40 (because we re pocketing the backer s original stake) at Betfair minus their 5% commission of So whatever happens we have converted the free bet into a profit of either 38 or 40 without risking a penny of our own money. These odds are very simple so it is easy to do the maths in our heads but fortunately there is no need. There is a free online calculator which we will explain later which does the exact calculations for us as you can see below. We will give you the link to this software later in the book. 15

20 Example two. Here is an easy example of a type 4 offer as above. This is SkyBet, the same company who operate the satellite TV. As you can see they are offering a 10 free bet just for signing up. Sign up and your 10 free bet is immediately available in your account. The first thing we do is to call up the terms and conditions to make sure that we qualify and that we do not make the silly mistake of voiding the offer by contravening any of the rules. Pretty straightforward but there are a couple of pitfalls, mainly that you must be a resident of Great Britain or ROI and you MUST NOT use Moneybookers or Neteller for money transfers in and out of 16

21 the account so use your credit or debit card, or they also accept payments by PayPal. Although the offer is only available to residents of Britain or ROI, SkyBet do accept customers from many other countries and if you live in one of these countries you will often find that there is a comparable offer in your currency, just click the SkyBet link from our website to find out. Now we have signed up and we have the free bet available in our account we could just use it to make a bet in the normal manner, if our selection wins we take the winnings, if it loses then the bet was free, we have won nothing and lost nothing. With smaller offers like SkyBet s 10 I might often do that for fun, but we will use this as an example for the system as if you do make a mistake, you won t be risking much. Now what we want to do is find some sporting contest where we can back and lay both outcomes of the event at roughly the same odds. Usually you will have to place the lay side of the bet at slightly bigger odds than the back, but as long as the difference isn t too great that doesn t matter. Ideally, we want the lay and back odds to be around 4.00 or greater to get maximum value from the bet. I use a paid for piece of software to find these opportunities quickly and easily, it is a subscription piece of software but it only costs 10 per month and if you move on to sporting arbitrage after bagging all your bonuses, then it will be invaluable. (I will be covering sporting arbitrage in another book, but basically it is placing bets which can never lose.) You can cancel at any time so why not try it for one month? It will make your life so much easier. You ll find the link to Bonus Bagging Arbitrage Software in the appendix and on our website, you ll find it will save you loads of time. Also if you really are struggling with the maths and finding bets they operate a service whereby they will the bets to you. Here s a screenprint of the software in action, I have asked it to compare the best value odds from SkyBet on different contests against the two betting exchanges. 17

22 Immediately we see that there are 3 opportunities to back and lay at roughly the same price and at odds of 4.00 or over. However, two of the events are horse races. For now I suggest that you ignore horserace betting as there are complications with deductions for non-runners which can put you in a loss-making situation. (In fact, I would avoid horse racing entirely until you are fully up to speed with the system, to be honest I really ever use it.) I find football is usually the best medium for these bets so we are interested in Colchester v Swindon and we are going to both back and lay Colchester. In other words we are going to bet on Colchester to win at SkyBet using our free bet and we are going to bet on them not to win at Betfair. The draw counts as not winning so we needn t worry about that. Let s do the maths. Don t worry if it seems a little complicated, remember there s an online calculator which works it all out for you. Firstly, always place the bet with the traditional bookmaker, the back bet, before placing the lay bet at the Betting Exchange, in this case Betfair. The reason for this is that sometimes, smaller bookmakers will limit the amount you can bet, especially in less popular markets, and the last thing you want is a 50 lay bet riding at Betfair to find that your bookmaker will only let you get a fiver on. The way to do it is to open up both the bookmaker s betting slip and the Betfair betting slip in different windows and fill them both in but do not click place bets. Confirm that there is still plenty money available in the Betfair market and place the back bet with the bookmaker. As soon as you get the confirmation slip that it has been accepted then place the bet with Betfair, don t worry if the odds have moved slightly, they often will, but it s swings and roundabouts, sometimes you ll gain a few pence, sometimes you ll lose a few. Providing that there is money in the market your bet will always be accepted at Betfair. So in our example we head on over to SkyBet, find the Colchester match and use our 10 free bet to back Colchester to win at odds of 4.00 (3/1 in fractional). As the bet is free the stake is not returned with the bet and so if Colchester win then we are 30 up on our free bet. Now we place a lay bet on Colchester not to win. Each time we take one of these bets we are trying to pocket as much of the free bet as possible, with odds around 4.00 this will always be approximately 70%. So we place a lay bet on Colchester not to win with a lay stake of 7.41 giving us a liability of should Colchester win (don t worry, the calculator works it all out for you). So, if Colchester win then we win 30 at Skybet but lose at Betfair giving us a profit of If Colchester lose we lose nothing at Skybet as it was a free bet but we win 7.41 at Betfair minus their 5% commission, which brings it to exactly the same, a win of Use the calculator below to work it out easily every time, if you are using a free bet, tick the free bet box be sure to tell it that the stake is not returned (if that is the case) or it will wrongly calculate the stakes. Now you see the power of this system, at no time was any of our own money at stake and we were guaranteed a profit regardless of the event outcome. You just need to make absolutely certain that you are backing and laying in the same market every time. You always back and lay the same team or outcome. Back to win at the bookmakers and back not to win (lay) at the betting exchange. One or the other must happen as the draw counts as not winning. 18

23 Remember, you must tell the calculator if this is a free bet by ticking the box, and the amount of stake ie the free bet amount not returned. Now winnings of 7.04 may not seem a very great deal but it will have taken you only a few minutes and some bookmakers are offering bonuses of 250 or more. You d have to leave a couple of hundred pounds in the bank for a year or more to earn 7.04 in interest, and remember, at no point was any of your money at stake. Example Three Let s move on to the type of bonus we are likely to be dealing with most often, a type 1 where you have to place a qualifying bet in order to be awarded your free bet. Let me show you how we deal with those. Again it is vital to read the rules before betting. If the offer is a free matching bet up to the value of say 50, you cannot qualify for this by placing 5 x 10 bets, it is only your very first bet which qualifies so you must bet the full amount of 50 in one bet. However, we will of course show how to do this risk free again. Let s head on over to Stan James for another 10 free bet. 19

24 Here we see that Stan James are offering the most common type of free bet, a type 1, stake one get one free. The first thing we do as always is to pull up the terms and conditions to avoid falling foul of anything. 20

25 Now there are several things here to note. Firstly, the qualifying bet must be at odds of 1.8 or greater, again there are territorial limitations and lastly they add a rider at the bottom accounts that Stan James deems in its absolute discretion to be taking advantage of arbitrage opportunities. And in effect that is what we are doing so it is vital that we do not alert them to this. In practise that is easy as we will be betting in nice round punter sized bets, 10, 25, 50 etc. Never, ever, ever place bets like with a bookmaker, because no punter bets like that. Odd figure bets like that scream out professional and will get your accounts closed in quick-sticks. It s fine at Betfair of course, they don t care what you are doing, they are getting a percentage no matter what. Of course we will always only be betting the amount of the free offer so it will always look natural, but later when you have built up a balance from Bonus Bagging then you may decide to move onto true arbitraging and there you must be careful not to alert the bookies and get your accounts limited or worse still closed. As a rule always stick to round figures and as bets get bigger in multiples of round figures. 1-5 okay to bet in single pounds, then up to 20 bet in Above bet in multiples of 5 Above bet in multiples of 10 or 75 is acceptable. This looks like normal mug punting and will not set any alarms off, a bet of screams out trader and they ll close you down. Okay, this time we have to place a qualifying bet and now we have to use our own money on both sides of the bet and the odds must be at 1.8 or greater. In practise, for these qualifying bets we want the odds to be as low as possible, around 2.0 and the back and lay odds to be as nearly the same as possible. Again we use the software if you have subscribed, or Oddschecker if not, it s only a tenner a month and will save you loads of time. 21

26 Now here we find an example which perfectly suits our needs because it is a true arbitrage, in the Norway v Ukraine match we can back the Ukraine to win at higher odds than we can lay it to lose. So in this case as the odds are equal to all intents and purposes we would just back and lay each with 10 but for purposes of example let s use the calculator again. Now in this example we do not tick free bet as it is a qualifying bet in order to qualify for a free bet and we do not forfeit any stake as we are using our own money to cover both sides of the bet. So following our rules we first stake a qualifying 10 of our own money on the Ukraine to win at If the Ukraine wins our bet returns a profit of 17.50, if they lose we are down So now we lay the Ukraine to lose at 2.71 at Betfair with a stake of giving us a liability of So, if the Ukraine win then we win at Stan James but lose at Betfair, a loss of 0.29p. If the Ukraine lose then we lose 10 at Stan James but win 9.71 after commission at Betfair, again a loss of 29 pence. So whatever the outcome of the event (remember draws count as losing) we will lose 29 pence, but we have now established our free bet for a cost of a mere 29 pence. So let s repeat what we did before and head off back to Stan James for some odds at around 4.00 to enable us to bank our profit. 22

27 And here we see that in the Stoke v Reading match we can both back and lay Reading at the same price 4.8. Don t worry if the odds have moved slightly when you get to the actual betting sites, they usually will, but a small movement will only affect the profit marginally either way. So this time we have a 10 free bet to play with, so back to our calculator. 23

28 So this time it is a free bet, and so we tick the box, and the stake is not returned so we place the in the forfeit box and do the calculation. This time we back Reading to win with our 10 free bet at Stan James at 4.8. If they win we win We also lay them to lose at Betfair at 4.8 with a stake of 8.00 so if they lose we lose 30.40, if they win we win 7.60 after commission. So if Reading win we win at Stan James and we lose at Betfair, a profit of If Reading lose we lose nothing at Stan James as it was a free bet and we win 7.60 at Betfair. Either way we are 7.60 up minus the 29p we lost in setting the free bet up, a profit of 7.31 without ever risking a penny of our own money. Are you starting to see the power of this yet? If you are still a little confused then I suggest that you go back to the beginning and read through again before we move onto the larger bonuses where it is important that you get it right. If you are following it fully then we ll move on to the bigger stuff. 24

29 Chapter Six Bagging The First Bonus What I suggest you do now if you feel ready is to open your account at Betfair and fund it. Do so from the links at our website to ensure you get your sign up bonus. Now before we start to claim any of the above bonuses, and this is most important, there is the question of Betfair s own bonus offer which at the time of writing stands at BUT here s why you have to read the rules properly, charge in headfirst without reading them and you will lose it. The first thing we see in tiny writing is that only the first bet counts so in order to get your 25 free bet your first bet must be at least It is most important that you follow this next stage to the letter, read and re-read it as it is the only part of the system where you might make a mistake. 25

30 When you open your account you must quote one of the above promo codes, since this is a screenprint they may change after this book is written so always check for the current ones. The MOST important thing here is that the first bet MUST be on the Betfair FIXED ODDS coupons, not in the betting exchange where we will be doing all our other transactions. In addition to being a betting exchange Betfair also act as a traditional bookmaker and it is only in this market where the free bet is valid. That s not a problem. Let me show you how we pocket this money. Pick an event where there are only two outcomes, for example tennis where there is no possibility of a draw. Also the odds for your selection must be greater than

31 For this example we will use the tennis match between Cilic and Youzhny, it is a market where fixed odds are being offered so qualifies for the free bet. Fixed odds are not available on all markets. If fixed odds are available then a fixed odds button will appear as above. Click on it. This will bring up the fixed odds coupon where the odds will always be slightly less favourable than the normal exchange odds. We are going to back Cilic at This will be the only time we will ever use Betfair for backing purposes, in the future when we are operating the system proper it will always be for laying. Next head on over to oddschecker.com and pull up the odds comparison for the event. Here we see that Youzhny is best priced at William Hill at 2.5. Now this is where it is really important to have your wits about you and concentrate as we are about to hit two birds with one stone. We are about to back Cilic at Betfair and Youzhny at William Hill, clearly one of them must win and one must lose, but we are going to use this bet to establish our free bets at both Betfair and William Hill, so we need to head over to William Hill and find out firstly if they have a free bet offer, and secondly what the terms are. If the best odds shown at Oddschecker are with a bookmaker who does not have a free bet offer, or has a very poor one, then pick the next best bookmaker who does have one. So let s take a look at William Hill... 27

32 We see that it is a standard place a 25 bet get a 25 bet with no complications other than you have to quote the promo code F25 when opening the account. So open your account at William Hill using the link from the website Now we want to use this first bet to qualify for our free bets at both Betfair and William Hill so we need to make sure that we place at least 25 on both sides of the bet. This is not difficult to work out in our heads but we needn t, there are loads of arbitrage calculators available on the internet, and we have links to this one on our website. 28

33 We input the odds for both players in boxes one and two and a stake value in the Max Bet box, you will need to play around with this figure you get both parts of the bets at over 25, or whatever the qualifying level is. Then the stakes will work out as follows. Don t worry about the results being in dollars, it doesn t affect the maths! So we are going to back Cilic at Betfair at odds of 1.57 with a stake of 40 and remembering what we said earlier about only betting in round sums, even though the calculator says for Youzhny, we are going to back him with a round 25 at William Hill at odds of 2.5, a total stake of 65. So if Cilic wins we have a return at Betfair of 62.8, a win of to a 25 stake after Betfair commission. A loss of If Youzhny wins we have a return of 62.5, a win of to a stake so in both cases we have lost an average of around 3.00, however we have now established our free bets at both companies at a cost of just Now the temptation is just to match these two free bets against each other but that is not the most profitable way of doing it. They should be treated as two separate free bets. Lay against the William Hill free bet in the Betfair exchange in the normal manner, it is no different to any other free bet now. The Betfair 25 is slightly different as it has to be used in the fixed odds market, so going back to our original method, find a football match with odds around 4.00 or higher on one outcome. 29

34 Here we are interested in the Liverpool v West Brom game and we are going to both back and lay the draw. Now you must be very careful here, we are going to use our 25 free bet to back the draw at Betfair at 5.0 ******IN THE FIXED ODDS MARKET****** You must make sure to click the fixed odds box, if you are in the right place the odds will turn green. Now go back to the exchange market and lay the draw at 5.5 with a stake of as below. 30

35 There are only two outcomes, either it s a draw or one team wins it matters not which. If the result of the match is a draw we return 100 for a stake of zero, but we lose on the lay bet, giving a net profit of If the result is not a draw we return on the lay bet which after Betfair commission is just the same. Now move on to follow the system to use the free bet that you have already established at William Hill. If you follow the system correctly it will return you around 20. So we have now opened our accounts at Betfair and William Hill, crystalised and claimed two free bets and we should be around 38 pounds in profit and never at any stage did we risk losing any of our own money. If you are feeling more confident after trading on a couple of occasions go back to SkyBet and Stan James, open your accounts by clicking the links at our website and get a bit more practice on these smaller bonuses before moving on to the big boys. You might want to re-read the whole book up to here again before moving on. 31

36 Chapter Seven Bagging Bigger Bonuses Now we ll nip over to one of the biggest Bookmakers, Ladbrokes who are offering a 50 free bet. The first thing we notice is that we need to enter a Promo Code FB50 when we register, if we forget that bit then we will not get our free bet, so it is important to note it down and make sure we enter it in the appropriate place when we register. As always we must check the terms and conditions for anything else which may affect us. 32

37 Immediately there is a very important rule here First bet must be made on the same day as registration in other words your qualifying 50 bet must be made on the same day that you register, and your free bet must be used with 7 days or you lose it. In situations like these I would wait until I have found a suitable market to bet in before registering rather than trying to find one afterwards. Again you must place the 50 qualifying bet in one go, not on a series of bets. The process however, is exactly the same as we did before, first we find a market in which to qualify, with odds on both the back and lay as near to 2.00 and as near equal as we can find them. Remember, you must place this first bet on the day you register, and you must then complete the next stage of placing your free bet within 7 days. So again we head over to our software if we have subscribed or Oddschecker if not. 33

38 Here we are interested in Turkey v Czech Republic where we can back Turkey at 2.2 and lay them at 2.22, close enough odds for our needs. Again using the calculator we can work out our staking plan. Here this is our qualifying bet so we uncheck the Free Bet box and clear the Stake Forfeit box as we are using our own money to cover both sides of the bet. 34

39 We needn t go through all the figures again, you should have grasped the concept by now and the calculator does everything for you. Basically we are going to back Turkey with a stake of 50 and lay Turkey with a stake of locking in a loss of 1.84 whatever the outcome. It has now cost us 1.84 but we have our 50 free bet. In exactly the same way as before we go back to our software or Oddschecker to find some odds at around 4.00 to crystalise our profit. You should have the picture by now so no need for me to repeat the odds market, suffice to say that the odds I found were 4.0 back and 4.1 lay, so into our calculator... Again this is a free bet so we tick the box and insert the 50 stake forfeit. We bet 50 at 4.00 to return 150 after deduction of stake. We lay ay 4.1 for a potential loss of Either way, whatever the result we have locked in a profit of Take away from that the 1.84 it cost us to get the free bet and we are up without risking a single penny. At no stage could our bet fail, so long as we follow the rules. So you are now an expert in trading these simple buy one get one free bonuses. You will find a list of them on our website. As the expression goes, Go fill yer boots. Check back at the website daily as new offers are added all the time and sign up for our mailing list so we can let you know of any short term offers, there are many. 35

40 Chapter Eight Different Types of Bonus Let s take a look at some slightly different types of bonus. Bet 365 for example always have very generous bonuses but they are slightly different in their terms and conditions every time. A common bonus with Bet 365 is a matching bet of 250 but it must be claimed as five separate bets of 50. This is no different to any other BOGOF bonus, you just use the exact same system as always but you repeat it five times, five qualifying bets of 50, followed by five free bets of 50, just repeat the process five times. One issue with Bookmakers like Bet 365 is that they watch your account like hawks, after all they are offering 250 in bonus money so they don t want nasty traders like us playing. The way to throw them off the scent is to have a silly punt between each free bet, maybe claim the first two free bets and you ll be around 80 up and then place a small mug punter bet, a 20p Yankee or Canadian or something, risking a couple of pounds, bet a small amount like a regular Saturday afternoon mug punter and you ll look less like a trader. You might even get a nice win. The way the system is set up means that the majority of your income will come in at Betfair, they don t care that you are trading but the bookies do. Cover your tracks or you will find your account restricted or even closed. If you do happen to have a run of winnings at the bookmaker end of the trade it is especially important to play the mug punter before diving in for the rest of the bonus. At the time of writing Bet365 have an absolute cracker of a free bet offer available where you should be able to bank around 150 or more. 36

41 Quite simply it is an immediate matching bonus of up to 200. Open your account, follow the instructions, deposit 200 and they will immediately double it up to 400. The catch is that you can t withdraw it until you have played it through three times, ie placed bets to the total value of But that is not a problem to us. Here we see the rules which are quite simple. Head over to our website and click the Bet365 link to be taken to their sign-up page. Register for your account but DO NOT deposit any money until you receive an from them giving you a 10 digit code ending in NCDB2. Once you have this code you enter is when you make your deposit and it will immediately give you 400 to bet with, doubling your deposit. Now in order for us to bank this lovely money we need to read the extended terms and conditions to make sure that we do not foul up. 37

42 Firstly we note the date that the offer ends, obviously as this is a book the date above may well be ancient history by now, but Bet 365 are one of the leading players in the bonus game and nearly always have offers of this magnitude. Just read the rules carefully. The salient points here are that there is a closing date, once you have made your initial deposit you have 90 days to meet the wagering requirements which are that you must place a total of 1200 in bets and certain markets do not qualify, but they are not markets in which we play. Also any bets placed at odds of below 1.5 do not count towards the wagering requirement. No problem to us as we are always looking to bet at around 4.00 or greater. Now the wagering requirement does not have to be met in one bet, you have 90 days and you can make as many bets as you need to fulfil the requirement, however we are not looking to fulfil it, we are looking to lose the money at this end of the market and win it at Betfair. Because we are always looking to bet and lay at odds of 4.0 or greater this means that we are nearly always going to be backing the outsider at the bookmakers, in other words the likely loser, and nearly all our winnings will come in at Betfair. 38

43 This keeps the bookmakers happy as you will be a regular losing client, and they love those! It can t be repeated too often, bookies and Betfair have different attitudes to you. Betfair don t give a damn if you win or lose as you aren t betting against them. They get their 5% of the winning market whoever wins so they don t mind you trading one little bit, in fact they run courses teaching people how to do it! How you play this one depends on your finances, obviously in order to play all of this in one bet you would need 1200 in your Betfair account. Just play it through as a series of bets as your cash allows, you might play it as 4 x 100 bets or 8 x 50 and with a bit of luck you ll get 4 straight losers in a row and the money will all be in your Betfair account. Just try and find markets where you are backing and laying with odds as close together as possible and where the likely loser is going to be on the Bet 365 end. Once you ve lost the 400 at Bet 365 that s the end of the promo, and your profit is in your Betfair account. You might want to leave this one until you ve built up a stash of profit if you don t already have the liquidity to cover it, just watch the closing dates of their offers. Bet 365 are also very good at sending you new offers if you don t use your account for a while. Keep your eyes peeled at our website we monitor the offers so that you don t have to. Finally, let s take a look at a couple of other types of free bet offer which you will come across sooner or later. Firstly a type 5 bet, double your stake money. In other words you bet 25 and if your bet wins then they pay you out to a 50 stake minus the 25 free stake money. This is a very simple one to calculate, in effect it is no different to our normal stake and free bet, it just means that you are getting your free bet at the same time as your qualifying bet is placed. The way to deal with it is to use the betting calculator and work it out as two separate bets, firstly as a normal 25 stake refunded bet, and then as a 25 stake not refunded free bet. Add the two sets of stakes together and place your bets. If you feel easier you can place it as two separate bets, it makes no difference. The other type of offer which you will encounter is more tricky, a type 3 where you only get a free bet if your original bet loses. This is a more difficult bet to deal with. The best way to approach this is to look for an event where you can pick a likely loser, so you are probably going to be looking at odds around 4.0 and then under-stake the lay side of the bet a little. That way if your bet wins you will make a nice profit and if it loses you will make a small loss but you will have crystalised your free bet which will cover your losses and show a profit. You will need to play with the calculator to get the stakes right. You won t come across these very often so best left until later when you are more experienced. Now all that remains is to head on over to our website and follow the links to claim your free money. 39

44 Links to all the tools we use are given both in the appendix below and on our website, where you can sign up to our mailing list. Bookmakers very often have great offers on single events, these are great sources of income after you ve used up all the sign-up bonuses but because they are very short term you will probably miss them. If you are on our mailing list we will you about them and also advise you how best to stake them for maximum profit. Good luck and happy Bonus Bagging. 40

45 Appendix Useful Links Our Website Betting Calculator Arbitrage Calculator Oddschecker Bet Angel Bet Finding Software If you really want to automate the process, and don t have the time to find the bets and do the maths then there is an automated service which will find the bets for you, and do the maths, telling you the exact amounts to stake and where. Bonus Bagging 41