Paddy Power Free In-Play bets

With Paddy Power if you place a €20 bet on any Premier League game that's live on Sky or BT Sports then Paddy Power are giving you two free €5 in play bets.

I am making decent money on this promotion which now also applies to some of the Champions Leagues matches.

I am not affiliated with Paddy Power and will also call them out when they run a bad promotion for example the 20% bonus on five fold accumulators.

This new promotion though seems legitimate.

Here is how you can potentially make money on this promotion. 

1. Bet €20 on pre-match favourite to earn your free bets.
2. After kick off cover yourself as soon as possible by using one free bet on a draw and the other on an underdog victory.

We discovered before, that the best value in the win-draw-win market is generally on the favourite. So before kick off put your own hard earned cash on the favourite to win. Then wait for kickoff, and wait for your free bets to register, it should be within 5 minutes. As soon as you can, cover off the underdog victory or a draw with your free bets. This way you know that you are winning something (maybe not enough to cover your original bet - but something) no matter what the result. The caveat here is that the odds may change with an early goal (as happened with Everton against Man Utd). Paddy Power don't guarantee that your free bets will be in your account before 5 minutes. But still you will never have your full €20 at risk. 

See example from midweek below. A win for Leicester and the free bet would win back my stake, a draw I would lose a little, and of course a Chelsea win would see me holding on to my €20 stake and pulling in some winnings. I had basically risked €8 for a €35 payout on the Champions in waiting versus relegation contenders. Also, for the risk averse, I could have taken it one step further and bet an extra €1 of my own money on the underdog and another €4 on a draw, in-play. This would have guaranteed a profit no matter what with no risk.  

Using Free Bets to limit your risk

I also wrote before why I like to use the free bets on 7/1 shots for example. Think about a fair payout on rolling a dice. You pay €1 per roll. A fair bookie would pay out €5, i.e. 5/1 for every time you roll a 6 (on average with six rolls, you lose €1 five times and win €5 once so you would break even). A fair payout on the more likely outcome of rolling anything but a six would be 20c or 1/5 in odds (this time with six rolls, on average, you lose €1 once and win 20c five times, again breaking even). Now if it was free to roll the dice the €5 payout every six rolls is a lot more attractive than five 20c payouts every six rolls. In fact 5 times more attractive. Theoretically the longer the odds, the higher the expected value. In reality there is a limit. The bookie doesn't offer fair odds like in the dice example. The bookie needs to make money for himself - and usually builds in a much bigger house edge on longer odds. And you would presumably like to win at least once in your lifetime or before the promotion ends. So, personally I like something like 3/1 because it means that I am winning often enough and significantly enough for me to notice.

So to absolutely maximise your winnings I would wait a little to get better value on your free bets. This time you will have occassions where you will lose your entire €20 stake, since you will not always get a match where you will get 3/1 or similar on the prematch underdog and a draw in-play after 5 minutes gone. So this strategy will be a less attractive strategy to the risk averse punters (if that's not an oxymoron?). But the overall long term average should see you win a little more.

I assume that Paddy Power know that they are losing money on this promotion, but they must be hoping to get you hooked on their in-play products. I can imagine that in-play products are very profitable for the bookmaker. In-play is more fun and exciting encouraging longer play (meaning more money bet).  It also puts more pressure on the punter, when pressure is on mistakes are made! This is all good for the bookie.