Introduction to Promo Betting

WHAT IS PROMO BETTING?

Promo Betting is, simply put, a way to take advantage of the numerous offers that Bookmakers use to compete with each other in order to derive a considerable edge in the market by reducing the likelihood of losing your entire stake each time you make a bet.

In this quick introduction to this new concept, we’ll run through the various types of offers on the market and the types of things that you can do with them.

Make note that at Puntalyser we don’t do Matched Betting (a short term strategy touted by many of the Euro tipsters as the gold standard but which will actually just guarantee you get your betting accounts banned shortly) but instead selectively take positions on high quality tips to significantly increase the edge and put cash back in our pockets.

Every bookmaker has an in-built margin that, over the long term, creates guaranteed profits for the company which is why, with the increased competition between Bookmakers fighting for your punting dollar, several of the major Corporates have begun to turn towards promotional offers in order to lure in punters.

The theory is simple; the more turn-over the Bookmaker can produce, the more liquidity they have in the margin that they’ve posted, and the more likely that you, as a punter, will eventually lose.

This is a particularly effective business model when the Bookmaker is incapable of framing a fair market by significantly reducing the odds and therefore increasing their own margin regardless of whether you win or lose.

Generally, we will see a Bookmaker attempt to dip into the market by offering a Bonus Bet or a Money Back promotion if your bet fails to win, or if your selection places 2nd or 3rd. For sports it will generally be an early payout if your team leads by a specific amount.

Whilst this is a great way for them to entice the casual punter into the fold, what they’ve inadvertently done is to open the door to professional gamblers (like the group at Puntalyser) to essentially provide “insurance” behind each and every race-day event on offer.

In this introduction we’ve outlined a handful of the strategies and secrets that you can use to identify and take advantage of these opportunities and lock in a second income for yourself.

By combining the right selections along with only the best Promotional Offers, you can essentially have the Bookmakers subsidise your risk and significantly increase your edge – a strategy that has allowed us to consistently produce thousands of dollars of profit for our Premium Members each and every month!

BONUS BET OFFERS

Bonus Bet “refunds” are the standard offer available at pretty much every Bookmaker. Don’t be fooled by the face value – they don’t return the stake back on a winner therefore can’t generally be traded out at full value – 70-80% return is a realistic standard.

Bonus Bet “refunds” are a fantastic way for the Corporates to make an offer sound a lot better than it is and take advantage of casual punters who don’t understand the concepts of “stake not returned” and the value that is lost when a “refund” is actually given as a Bonus Beet.

In reality, you need to take into account the fact that these are almost always “stake not returned”, which means in the event that your selection does actually win you’re left with the Bonus Bet disappearing into thin air, rather than the original stake back in your pocket like you would with a normal bet.

This means that you need to discount a Bonus Bet a bit more than a Money Back offer because typically you’ll only be able to trade out 70-80% of the face value when attempting to match it on Betfair due to the price discrepancies.

Whilst some of our Competitors will actually count a Bonus Bet as a positive reward (one in particular comes to mind and counts it as a “profit” of $30!) you are actually experiencing negative cash flow. In fact, at Puntalyser in order to keep things fair we give a 10% margin to our Premium Members and assume that you can only get a 70% value out of each Bonus Bet, meaning a $50 bet that turns into a $50 Bonus Bet is actually an effective loss of $15 (($50) – ($50 * 0.7).

With that being said, we still use Bonus Bets as an effective tool to avoiding complete stake loss – after all, 70% of your cash back is a lot better than 0%! Typically, we’ll identify a card that has strong contenders and place our Bonus Bets on those selections taking into account the higher likelihood of a strike, whilst we’ll take our second or third selection with the Money Back as that has a higher likelihood of placing and returning the full stake back.

However, you’ll typically want to split your Bonus Bet promos across the field rather than piling them all onto a single selection, particularly on a race with multiple offers, in order to reduce your likelihood that you’ll have a total wipe (full stake loss, no placings).

In our example above we had 3 positions across the field with a total of $100 out on #3 Fiesta and $50 out on #5 Pretty In Pink.

In this case, both runners placed either 2nd or 3rd, netting us a $50 Bonus Bet. However taking into account that Bonus Bets are only worth 70% of the face value we can conclude that we’ve paid $50 for a $35 value – it’s a small loss for us of $15 ($50 minus $35).

Together, we’ve lost $45 ($15 multiplied by 3 positions) whereas in any other case of betting on these selections we would have lost the full $150.

As you can see, Bonus Bet promos, despite being the most common offer, are a powerful way to reduce the likelihood of you losing your entire stake. With that being said, pick your selection wisely, particularly when there are multiple offers in the same race that may have better terms, prices or other intangible conditions.

MONEY BACK OFFERS

Money Back Offers are available at very few Bookmakers, and essentially provide a full stake refund, usually without only limited turnover requirements.

These are the highest value offer as you get full face value of your stake up to the limit of the promotion; so unlike Bonus Bets (where you get just 70% of the face value) you in-fact get the full amount back in your account to bet with as you see fit.

Although Bookmakers are generally happy to give you a Bonus Bet which has the stake component removed (essentially worth 70-80% of the face value), very few Bookmakers will go the extra mile and provide a “Real Money Back” promotion as there is little to no margin for them except for the hope that you’ll stick around and turn it over again with them.

Compared to a Bonus Bet promotion, the Money Back offer results in a full stake being returned which is exactly the same as cash. A Money Back offer allows two different types of strategies:

1.) You lay the selection on Betfair and hope that it places.

This is particularly effective for short priced favourites ($2 and below) which do not have a large discrepancy in price over at Betfair. This approach is very limited in that the maximum profit is limited to the total refund amount. For example, a $50 Money Back offer would allow you to make a maximum profit of $50 if you laid it off.

In our purely hypothetical example, let’s consider a case where Winx places 2nd (hah!) but you’ve backed her on the Bookmaker with a Money Back promotion. With her starting price usually around $1.11 you’d only get $5.50 back for the win.

If you had taken the Money Back promotion and then immediately laid her off on Betfair you would’ve won the lay bet (+$50) and had your Corporate stake back into your account for a total profit of +$50; that’s a 900% increase over straight backing her:

2.) You pick a high value selection and reduce your risk by 2 places.

The effective actual odds depend on the selection you pick, the field size and all of the other variables that make up the particular race.

However; by letting the selection run you obtain maximum return if it wins, with a backup of a full stake return if it places as per the promo.

At Puntalyser we operate strictly on this strategy as the best and consistent profit is had by finding a value selection rather than taking the face value of the offer (matched betting).

This means we have full time analysts scouring the markets for prices that are exceptional value against our calculated ratings; a strategy which has produced an average +$2700 in profit each month.

In our example above, our analysts identified #4 Muraqeeb the most likely winner, and at a price of $6.50 we were able to nab +$275 in profit.

We can happily take this position because we know that running 2nd or 3rd is another highly likely outcome; in which case we simply get our $50 stake back in our pocket.

BOOKMAKER DEPOSIT OFFERS

Deposit Offers are incentives given to new customers who deposit certain amounts and typically involve a percentage of your deposit being matched with Bonus Bets which can then be traded out on Betfair for real cash or used to essentially place “free bets” at 70% of the face value of the Bonus Bet.

Typically you’ll see these offers pop up around the main events like Spring Carnival as competition between the Bookmakers heats up.

Sometimes these will take the form of smaller Deposit Offers such as “Deposit $50 get $100 in Bonus Bets” but generally there will also be larger promotions on offer such as those from the major Bookmakers like Ladbrokes, SportsBet and BetEasy which can easily add up to a couple thousand dollars in bonuses.

Whilst many of the offers have state exclusions (generally WA, NSW, SA and VIC), you can usually sign up for an account using the promotional link, verify your account and then contact their Customer Service line to ask if they have any offers that you qualify for, which almost always ends up being the same offer but technically is no longer an inducement offer (illegal in those states).

Keep in mind that this is a once off offer – once you’ve signed up and made a deposit you will no longer be eligible for the majority of Deposit Offers.

Occasionally you may get a re-activation offer to your email or via SMS to convince you to deposit to an account you haven’t used in a while, but these are few and far between.

Deposit Offers are an incredible way to start up a new Betting Bank as they offer an easy way to quickly increase your initial gambling pot – allowing you to directly cash out the value on Betfair at around 70-80% of the face value.

For example, if you were to pick up four of the big deposit offers on the market right now (see our list in the Reference section at the back!) you could easily bring in $2000 in Bonus Bets which you could then turn into $1,400 cash by laying them off on Betfair.

Alternatively, you could also use these Bonus Bets as a normal bet and potentially make more money, but this is technically Gambling and not playing the full value of the Promotion as there’s no guarantee that you’ll actually make a positive return.

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF BETTING PROMOS

The best way to take advantage of Bookmaker promos is to become a member at Puntalyser – we do all the hard work of finding the best offers on the market and tell you exactly which selection to take and how much to bet.

This saves you hours of work each week and you can easily place all bets on each race day in just a few minutes.

Our highly qualified racing analysts have years of experience under their belt along with literally thousands of bets and hundreds of meeting results published directly on the site.

Alternatively you could do all the form yourself – but why waste years of pain trying to squeeze out a winning strategy when we’ve already done the hard work for you?

Check out our Membership options below; with an average monthly return of $2700 our Premium Members can happily say that the membership fees are a pittance compared to the value that they are given each and every week.