Paddy Power Free Bets

So you read my tweet back in August about Aguero and decided to back him for top scorer at what really was an incredible 6/1 offer.  You backed him on Paddy Power who were offering a €2 free bet every time your player scores.  Now you are getting all these €2 free bets and don't know what to do with them.

The important thing to realise is that the terms of the offer mean that you only get the winnings from the bet, the free stake is not returned.   So there is absolutely no risk, which is the main reason why you would normally stay away from the long shots ie you lose €2 euro each time until the underdog eventually comes in and then you win relatively big.  Normally this would all balance out but the free bet rules bring in a new dynamic to our reasoning!

OddsImplied Probability if Bookie was fairActual Probability accounting for a 5% edgeAverage Return
1/685.71%81.63%€0.27
1/150.00%47.62%€0.95
2/133.33%31.75%€1.27
3/125.00%23.81%€1.43
4/120.00%19.05%€1.52
5/116.67%15.87%€1.59
6/114.29%13.61%€1.63
10/19.09%8.66%€1.73
100/10.99%0.94%€1.89
1000/10.10%0.10%€1.90

See the table above.  If you bet on favourites like 1/6 all the time with your free bets you would expect to win 85% of the time (if the bookie was fair) but more likely 81% of the time (since the bookie builds in an edge when calculating his odds).  This is about as close to certain as you can get, but remember you only get a return of a maximum of 33c per bet and not €2.33 (if you had staked your own real cash) since your stake is not returned.  Taking into account that you will lose close to 20% of your bets then your average return would be about 27c.

 Now think about using your free bets on the underdog result, say something about 3/1.  With 3/1 you will win 6 but only about 23% of the time.  Still it works out that about €1.43 is returned to your account on average per free bet.  This is significantly more than your average return by betting on the favourites.

 The average return increases and approaches €2 as the odds get longer.  However this is assuming that the bookie builds in an 5% edge on all outcomes.  From what I experience the long shots have a much bigger edge in the bookie's favour.  Besides considering that Aguero is probably going to earn you in the order of about 20 free bets, you would be unlikely to win anything back by using your free bets on 1000/1 shots.

 For these reasons I would recommend using your free bets on 3/1 or 4/1 outcomes.  This will maximise your chance of winning and your overall return.

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