Sunday 28 June 2009

Stan James £10 mobile offer is on again

The Deal
Stan is offering another £10 free bet to anyone placing a £10 bet via their mobile phone. The bet has to be placed at odds of 2 or more.

The Result
I placed the qualifying bet on the U21 soccer for a net loss of £0.64. I did have to call up customer support when my free bet didn't show up. They credited the bet promptly and without fuss though.

I then used my new found horse betting skills to find a nice high odds match, 11 at Stan vs 10.5 at Betfair to grab £9.09 of the free bet.

A net profit of £8.45. Nice one Stan. =)

Thursday 25 June 2009

A £7 voucher from JackpotJoy

The Deal
If you've been following you may remember I signed up with Jackpot Joy a few months back to claim the cashback. That all went according to plan and I haven't been back to the site since.

I got a real paper letter from JackpotJoy a few days ago trying to entice me back to the world of gambling. Included was a £7 voucher for use on the site. There didn't seem to be any strings attached apart from requiring a minimum of £10 in your account before you could withdraw.

The Plan
I considered just depositing £3 and then immediately withdrawing my new balance of £10. I thought it possible that someone might get a bit iffy about that and stop the withdrawal though, so I decided to just try and gamble it up to £10.

The Result
I wanted things quick and simple so I logged in and fired up Roulette. I put £3 on red and spun the wheel. No luck there so I put the remaining £4 on red. It came in giving me £8 in total. So I stuck £2 on red and spun again. It came in giving me £10 in total so I put a withdrawal through for the full amount.

So £10 profit for about 5 minutes work. I hope they send me some more letters soon!

Tuesday 23 June 2009

£100 worth of free bets from Victor Chandler

The Deal
Victor Chandler offer £100 worth of free bets to new customers. You get a £50 free bet after making your first £50 bet at odds of 2 or greater. Once you've bagged that one there is a £25 free bet on offer after making 5 more bets of at least £10 at any odds. There's then one more £25 after your next 5 bets of £10 or more.

The Plan
After the trials of BetAfterBet I was glad to return to an offer that wasn't going to require heavy betting.

I actually signed up for Victor Chandler at around the same time as BetAfterBet, but with my cash tied up and being busy with other things I didn't get around to doing it until I had just 1 week to rattle through it.

The Result
I went hunting for my first £50 bet match and found a footy game between some obscure teams whose names I cannot pronounce. 2.5 at VC vs 2.54 at betfair seemed a good start with a net loss of £2.31.

I didn't get a chance to place the free bet until a couple of days later. Knowing that time was an issue I matched at slightly under my usual target of 80%. 6.5 vs 6.8 netted me £38 from the free bet.

I now had 4 days left to grab the remaining pot and I was really strugging to find a match, so I decided it was time I tried the horses. I'd been intimidated because there are no matched betting sites that will find matches for you, so you have to do it all manually. I was happy to find that getting matches was actually pretty easy. I placed 5 £10 bets on the horses during my lunch break at work for a net loss of £1.84. This was despite getting stung by the fast moving odds costing me £1.66 on one of the qualifiers.

Continuing the horse theme I stuck my free £25 on a nag with odds of 8.5 and layed at 8.4 at Betfair for a net of £21.34.

I got the next 5 bets the next day for a net loss of £1.69 and matched the free bet that evening at odds of 9 for the back and lay to grab £21.23 out of the last freebie.

So at the end of my run I've netted £74.73 from this run. A very respectable total. Victor Chandler was an easy bookie to work with and I'd definitely recommend taking up their offer.

I've also discovered that I quite like betting on the horses. There's a wide selection of odds available and there is a race on almost every 10 minutes. This means you can quickly churn through qualifying bets. The short time frame means I'me quite happy to place my SNR free bets at odds around 10 to maximise the return as I know the money will be back in my float in under an hour.


Monday 8 June 2009

£100 Deposit Bonus from BetAfterbet

The Deal
BetAfterBet offer a 100% deposit bonus of up to £100 for new customers. After claiming the bonus you need to wager £800 at odds of 2 or more before you can withdraw.

The Plan
I figured the way to go for a deal with a wager requirement (WR) was to lay slightly less than required to even up the returns. That way if my first bet loses I'm out for around the same loss as if I'd taken a small hit on all the required bets, but I'd have done it with a lot less hassle. If the back bet wins then I've made a little more profit for my trouble.

The WR of £800 seemed achievable, I figured I'd need a £300 float to cover the first bet and around £800 for the 2nd. Just within my current means and I was happy enough to tip in a little extra if I needed a small 3rd bet to complete the WR.

The Result
Warning, long post ahead. If you feel lazy you can skip to the summary.

BetAfterBet turned out to be a bit of a roller coaster and I risked far more than I would have liked. There isn't a huge selection of sports to choose from and the odds are often sub par. My first bet was at odds of 2.38 vs 2.42. I underlayed to take an easy £85 profit and make a meagre £5.18 profit if the back bet won.

Murphy's law being what it is I won at BetAfterBet and found myself with the better part of £500 there. This had a big affect as I realised that even at odds of 2 I'd need to add some more cash to the pot to be able to cover my next bet. I was also really struggling to find a match. The football season is mostly over and they've been my bread and butter for matches. I tried other sports but couldn't find anything that suited. When you are dropping near £500 on a bet you need a very favorable match to ensure you are losing a lot of cash on the spread.

Finally I got lucky and found a great match, 3.55 at BetAfterBet vs 3.45 at Betfair. There's still Betfair's 5% commission to consider but a loss of just £3.85 on a bet of this size was a great find. The odds were much higher than I'd have liked and I had to top up even more to cover the bet, but I was happy to have found a good match to work through a big chunk of the WR. So happy, in fact, that I didn't stop to think about underlaying.

The education continued as a last minute goal forced the draw leaving me with nearly £1700 at BetAfterBet! So much for covering it with my original float! I still had over £100 of WR left to go and my accounts at betfair and betdaq were empty. There was nothing for it but to get the bank card ready and go looking for a final match.

I hunted around looking for the final match and finally found one with 3.4 vs 3.474 at betfair. At this stage underlaying wouldn't gain me anything, so I kept it even for a £7.09 loss. I was very relieved to have gotten the WR over with and quite happy with the result. A profit of £94.24 is a great return. However my fun wasn't quite over.

I hit the withdraw funds button, put in my password and pin, only to see a 'communication error' message. I tried again with no luck. I clicked on their friendly looking live chat icon and got taken to an email form. Thinking I'd phone them up I went to the contact page and saw their number listed as 123-456-789.

To say I was concerned is an understatement. I used the form to send in a query and got a response the next day saying they needed my id before they could process a withdraw. I sent it in and then waited. And waited. I sent a few emails chasing info and was told that they were 'processing an unsually high number of withdraws', so my request may take longer than usual. That didn't exactly reassure me. I had visions of the bookie collapsing under the weight of all the bonus hunters that had signed up and me being one of the unlucky ones who lost their cash. With just shy of £1600 in there I'd be well and truly in the red.

7 days later and it has all came good though, I just got a wonderful email from moneybookers telling me about the money that was now in my account. Phew! I learnt a lesson here, the biggest one being 'be realistic about the investment required to get at a bonus.' I was fortunate that I had the extra cash or I wouldn't have been able to cover the bets needed to release the money.

The other lesson is in how to handle wager requirements. If I was doing this over (and I wouldn't unless I had a substantially larger float, I won't go at another deal like this with less than £2000) I'd look for higher odds on my back bets. This is for 2 reasons. First it improves the chances of busting out and avoiding any extra effort. Secondly, it improves the return on underlaying, meaning if you don't bust out you'll get more than just a quid or two to show for it.

The Summary
Anyway, this blog has been long. So I'll wrap up by saying that despite the nervousness I experienced, the BetAfterBet deal is a good one. I netted £94.24 and learnt a few lessons about how to deal with wager requirements. Just keep clear until you've got the funds to be comfortable doing it.