What Are Advantage Play Offers in Matched Betting
Advantage play offers are common when it comes to matched betting, they aren’t like your conventional bet X get Y offers which come with a guaranteed profit, instead, they fall under the positive EV style of matched betting offers. As matched bettors we use these offers to stack the odds in our favour, taking the value away from the bookmaker and placing it with ourselves.
Typically, with advantage play offers we do not lay off our back bet on the betting exchange, we simply place the back bet with the bookmaker and then let it ride. Due to the advantage that we have, we are guaranteed to make much more profit than we lose over a period of time.
The worse case scenario, in the short term, when running advantage play offers is that we may lose a few of these offers in a row. However, this is not a problem as we will be more than profitable over a longer period of time due to the positive EV.
The best case scenario, in the short term, is that we win a few of these offers in a row, because let’s face it, winning a bet feels good!
Regardless of whether we have a winning or losing streak in the short term, we will make significantly more profit than we lose over the course of a short period of time when we bet using advantage play. Remember, trust the maths and you will be profitable overall from advantage play offers.
How Advantage Play Offers Work And How to Make a Profit From Them
Below, I have included a screenshot of a popular advantage play offer which is commonly run by the bookmaker Betfred.
In this offer, Betfred states that they will credit us with a £5 free bet if we place a “pick your punt” bet on a selected football match and our bet loses.
Note: Pick a punt is a promo that is run by Betfred, the player bets on various outcomes to occur within the same football match e.g. the match winner and over a certain amount of goals to be scored.
With this offer, Betfred is targeting average punters who typically don’t have a good understanding of value, they generally make poor gambling decisions based on gut feelings and emotion and not maths and probability which means, overall, more profit for Betfred.
As we are bonus abusers and not gamblers, we only take value from bookmakers when it is provided, these offers are value and therefore we have an “advantage”.
Let’s break this offer down, if our pick and punt bet is to lose we will lose our £5 back stake to the bookmaker, however, we will then get credited a £5 free bet from Betfred.
This £5 free bet that Betfred will credit us with can be used to extract £4 of real money back into our balance, thus leaving us £1 down overall from the offer. Alternatively, our pick a punt bet could win, this would force the bookmaker to pay us back our £5 stake plus our winnings from the offer!
The “advantage play” is due to our significantly reduced risk in relation to our potential profit. With the free bet ready to be used as a fail-safe, overall, we will only be risking £1 opposed to the £5 the bookie wanted us to risk. Whilst we only risk £1 of our money with this offer we are still able to reap the benefits of risking £5.
Here is an example:
We place a “pick your punt” bet using Betfred. I have chosen a team to win and both teams to score.
I place my £5 on the bet at odds of 3.6, this will give me a potential profit of £13 if the back bet wins (along with my initial £5 back stake returned to me). However, if my pick a punt bet is to lose I have my free bet ready to be used in order to extract £4 back into my balance.
This means that I’m not risking £5 which the bookmaker wanted me to risk due to the £4 that I will be able to recuperate from the free bet should my pick a punt bet lose.
If I were to use a £1 stake on the very same “pick your punt” bet (the overall amount that I am risking on the bet) the potential profit would be just £2.60. As you can see, I have a significant value advantage over the bookmaker that comes from the fact that I risked just £1 on this bet opposed to £5 whilst I still get the potential profits from a £5 stake.
These offers are great and will generate nice profits. Remember to remain patient when running these offers, if you are to hit a losing streak in the short term you should trust the maths as these offers are positive in EV in the long run.
