How to Maximize the "No Sweat Bet"

A popular promotion offered by sportsbooks is as follows: make a bet, up to some maximum level, and if it loses, they will credit you an equivalent amount in “bonus bets”.

The book may call it a “no sweat bet” or describe it in literal terms, like “if your cash bet loses, you’ll get it back as a bonus bet”. It is a common new player hook, paired with a high maximum limit.

Here’s an example:

As I’ll explain, maximizing this promotion can make it worth as much as 60% of your bet size; $600 of expected value on a $1000 first bet. Most people botch it, however, and receive closer to $100 of expected value.

The books love this offer because it feels super generous and exciting to new customers: “One THOUSAND dollars, wow!”. In fact, it costs them a lot less than $1000.

Today, as always, I’d like to cost the books a little money and put it in your pocket instead!

I’ll walk through the math behind maximizing the value of this offer, and we’ll find live bets for this weekend. I’ll make sure this week’s bets are a great fit for maximizing the value of a “no sweat bet”. Let’s go.

Mechanics of a “No Sweat Bet”

There are important things to understand about these offers up front:

1. They will only apply to a single bet. — If you join Caesars and want to maximize this offer (use our link here), you need to bet $1,000 on your first bet. Later, we’ll address how to maximize value with minimal risk, even if betting $1,000 feels scary.

2. You’ll only gain value from the offer when you lose the first bet. — If you win your initial bet, great, you get that profit, but you won’t gain any value from the promotion itself. This concept is important when we discuss strategy below.

3. Hitting a “push”, or tie, is the worst case scenario. — When we do not lose our “no sweat bet”, it’s important that we win and don’t tie. This is because a tie will neither win us money, nor get us the “bonus bet” promised when we lose! It’s a disaster. Because of this, we will avoid lines that could lead to a push (so never bet on whole numbers in spreads or totals — always -2.5 or -3.5, never -3).

4. The value of a $1,000 bonus bet is not $1,000. — This confuses people, even smart ones. If you lose your $1,000 “no sweat bet”, you’ll receive $1,000 of bonus bet credit. When you bet with that bonus bet credit, and win, you will not receive your initial stake back. So whereas betting $1,000 of real money on a winning +200 underdog would pay out $3,000 total (including your initial stake), a $1,000 bonus bet on the same wager would only pay out $2,000.

What’s the Best Strategy?

Optimal strategy all flows from one key nuance about this promotion: you only get the bonus bet when you lose your initial wager.

Because of this, to maximize the value of this offer, you must choose an initial bet that will lose much of the time, but pay you a lot when you win. For example: A moneyline underdog at +300 or +400 would be a good choice.

Here’s the math to show how value can be unlocked from the promotion.

Let’s consider three scenarios with a $1,000 “no sweat bet”:

Scenario 1: Betting Heavy Favorites

My nervous friend Ricky is uncomfortable betting large sums, so he chooses a bet that’s likely to win: a -500 favorite who will win him $200 and will come through 80% of the time. In the rare instances he loses his first bet, Ricky will make a similar wager with his bonus bet.

Here are the scenarios he encounters:

While Ricky ends up with a win of $200 in 80% of cases, the other scenarios are painful. Ricky’s average account balance with this approach (sum of the Expected Value column) is $992. Yikes.

That means that by wasting this offer by betting on heavy favorites, Ricky has somehow turned a $1,000 “no sweat” promotion into an expected value loss of $8. That’s not good!

Scenario 2: Betting 50/50 Shots

My basic friend Tyson doesn’t like to think too hard, so he chooses straight bets at -110 that come through 50% of the time. Tyson will make the same type of wager with his bonus bet when the opportunity arises.

Here are the scenarios he encounters:

The average account balance with this approach (sum of the Expected Value column) is $1181.75.

By using this offer on standard bets, Tyson has turned a $1,000 bonus bet into an expected value win of $181.75. That’s a real bowl of lukewarm broth now isn’t it?

Scenario 3: Betting Big Underdogs

My savvy friend Mae likes money and math, so she chooses a +400 underdog that will win just 18% of the time. She’ll make the same long-shot bonus bet when she loses the first time around.

Here are the scenarios she encounters:

The average account balance with this approach (sum of the Expected Value column) is $1490.40.

By using this offer on sizeable underdogs, Mae creates an expected value win of $490.40. That’s more than double the return Tyson gets in the coin flip scenario above — winner winner chicken dinner!

The main challenge with this approach, is that Mae ends up with $0 in her account more than two thirds of the time. Many bettors don’t have the stomach for that type of risk in pursuit of hypothetical value.

Let’s switch gears to cover some practical ways to reduce downside risk while maintaining value.

How to De-Risk These Bets

My recommendations for maximizing value of these new player offers, while limiting risk, fall into two categories (you could combine the two as well).

1) Open More New Accounts, Diversify

While betting big underdogs to maximize a “no sweat bet” maximizes value, it’s pretty risky as we saw above.

If, however, you could open two new accounts instead of one, and take Mae’s approach, you would reduce the probability of ending up with nothing from 67% to 45%. Expected value is just as high, but you reduce the chances of a dire outcome.

If you increased to three new accounts, the chance of ending up with $0 would be down to ~30%.

The detailed math on these cases is in the appendix, but you can see big risk reduction comes from taking more swings at hitting a long shot bet.

If you’re reluctant to open accounts at too many books, find a friend or two to share upside and risk with!

Here is an extreme (but awesome) case:

Grab three friends, and each of the four of you open two accounts each. Bet every potential outcome in a three team parlay, over two independent rounds, and guarantee yourself a $4,000 profit on the $8,000 you put in up front. Exactly how to do this in the appendix.

2) Look For Opportunities to Hit a “Middle”

If you want zero risk, don’t mind giving up a little expected value, and have two “no sweat bets” to take advantage of, you can look for lines that offer a “middle” at the two sportsbooks you’re using.

A “middle” opportunity exists when you can bet opposing sides of a game, at different sportsbooks, and find lines that leave you room to win both bets if you hit the perfect outcome.

Use Juice Reel to shop around — you’re looking for something like this:

Or even this:

In the first outcome, a 12 or 13 point Wisconsin victory would win you both bets.

In the second, you’d need Virgina to win by exactly 3 in order to cash both, but as we all know, 3 is the most common margin of victory in football.

While you’ll give up some value by paying the vig on both of these bets, you’ll always win at least one to realize value from the promotion.

And, when the game happens to land on the margin you need to “middle” and win both, you’ll feel like Luke when he destroyed the Death Star.

PS - remember, only use half-point spreads, avoid the push!

Bet of the Week $$

Last week we looked at winless NFL teams to find value, and took the Bengals -4. We won handily, as they beat Carolina 34-24. I hope you joined me on that bet! Starting next week, I’ll do some accounting on how all of the picks given out in this slot are performing.

This week, I like the following NCAA football long shots as good value to bet with a “no sweat bet” (or without). I only considered options with lines at +300 or longer. All would be “one unit” bets, but bet the full amount if you’re maximizing a $1,000 new customer promo:

To kick off our referral program, we’re offering $50 worth of “Juice”, the Juice Reel in-app currency, to anyone who refers two new readers to our newsletter! Please share this with some bettors who want to get better and collect your juice!

Please fill out the survey about today’s newsletter and let me know your thoughts!

Appendix:

To understand the probability of different outcomes when one opens multiple new accounts and takes long shot bets, you need to build a probability tree. For each branch, you multiply the likelihood of occurrence by the number of combinations. For example, our first branch, winning both initial bets, uses this formula:

(18% x 18%) x 1 = 3.24%

Here is all of the math in cases when you open two accounts:

Round 1

Round 2

The cells highlighted in green add up to 100% and show all potential outcomes from betting this promotion on long shots, in two different accounts, until you either win or exhaust the bonus.

To visualize the strategy where you’re covering all legs of a 3-team parlay with three friends and two account each, see below. The two sides in each game of the parlay are represented by the letters A and B:

Friend one bets: (A + A + A) and (A + A + B)

Friend two bets: (A + B + A) and (B + A + A)

Friend three bets: (A + B + B) and (B + A + B)

Friend four bets (B + B + A) and (B + B + B)