GAA Interest
I have had relative success taking advantage of the Bookie promotions. For example I pocketed €100 in one month on the Free In-play bets on the Premier League. I have also already won my stake back with Sergio Aguero and look set to pick up the big prize there too.
So this promotion on the GAA has caught my attention.
You have to stake €25 on the outright championship winner (you can bet each way). You get a free €5 bet for each match they win.
My strategy here is
1. Back Dublin to win Outright @ 11/8.
2. Back Kerry to win Outright each way @ 3/1.
3. For each free bet earned, back a 4/1 underdog.
On the straight real bet, I don't have a positive expectation. There is a pretty big bookie edge built into this market with the implied probabilities adding up to 120%. So if you mark down the stakes by dividing by 120% - the estimated long term value from my €25 stake is a €4.17 loss on each bet. Double that to give:
What I mean by this, is that you will win some and lose some, but the edge built into the odds by the bookie will ensure that long term you will always lose.
The expected loss calculated above is assuming that the value is built evenly across each outcome - but in reality the bookie seems to load his edge on the underdogs, so in this case where we are betting on the two favourites, the long term expected value is probably a lot more in our favour - still a loss but probably not as big a loss - but lets stick with the conservative value.
This will earn me free bets, anything from 0 free bets (if my choices don't win a single match) to 6 or 7 free bets for Dublin wins (for example if Dublin win through the backdoor they can potentially win 7 matches - namely backdoor round 1, 2, 3 and 4 plus all-ireland quarter, semi and final) and 5 or 6 free bets for Kerry wins (Kerry play less games as Munster is a smaller province).
Dublin and Kerry are both odds on (1/33 and 1/20) to reach the All Ireland Quarter Finals. If that is the case they will win at least 2 games each - and I will earn €20 in free bets. I roughly estimate that my expected return from €20 in free bets at the odds of 4/1 is at least €13:
This outweighs my expected long term loss due to the bookie's bias on my real money bets. The overall value provided both teams win at least 2 games is therefore:
This will rise though, I expect combined they will win more than 4 - but lets just stick with this conservative value.
According to here, I could make more money out of my free bets, but I like 4/1 in this situation. With anything up to only 11 free bets, going for a 6/1 shot is not guaranteed to come in.
It is possible I will lose both real bets and lose any free bet earned in which case I will have a €50 loss. It is also possible that I will earn 11 free bets win up to €40 (or more) off those, win with Dublin for a profit of about €35, and Kerry to reach the final for a profit of about €18 of my each way bet - all for a total of €93 gain. The reality will be somewhere in between and that is what I have tried to estimate the long term value to be - i.e. €4.67.
I think that I have been conservative in my calculations and there probably is more value here than €4.67. For one thing - every €5 free bet earned past my estimate of 4 free bets will add roughly €3.25 to the value (I base this on this analysis here where 4/1 shots returned an average of about 65c per €1).
I think it shows that although it seems like the bookie is giving out a lot of money, in fact they probably aren't. Still, in saying that, it is a worth while promotion if you want to make some drinking money for some weekend toward the end of September.
Stayed tuned and I will post how the strategy actually pans out.
So this promotion on the GAA has caught my attention.
You have to stake €25 on the outright championship winner (you can bet each way). You get a free €5 bet for each match they win.
My strategy here is
1. Back Dublin to win Outright @ 11/8.
2. Back Kerry to win Outright each way @ 3/1.
3. For each free bet earned, back a 4/1 underdog.
On the straight real bet, I don't have a positive expectation. There is a pretty big bookie edge built into this market with the implied probabilities adding up to 120%. So if you mark down the stakes by dividing by 120% - the estimated long term value from my €25 stake is a €4.17 loss on each bet. Double that to give:
expected loss from real money bets = €8.33
What I mean by this, is that you will win some and lose some, but the edge built into the odds by the bookie will ensure that long term you will always lose.
The expected loss calculated above is assuming that the value is built evenly across each outcome - but in reality the bookie seems to load his edge on the underdogs, so in this case where we are betting on the two favourites, the long term expected value is probably a lot more in our favour - still a loss but probably not as big a loss - but lets stick with the conservative value.
This will earn me free bets, anything from 0 free bets (if my choices don't win a single match) to 6 or 7 free bets for Dublin wins (for example if Dublin win through the backdoor they can potentially win 7 matches - namely backdoor round 1, 2, 3 and 4 plus all-ireland quarter, semi and final) and 5 or 6 free bets for Kerry wins (Kerry play less games as Munster is a smaller province).
Dublin and Kerry are both odds on (1/33 and 1/20) to reach the All Ireland Quarter Finals. If that is the case they will win at least 2 games each - and I will earn €20 in free bets. I roughly estimate that my expected return from €20 in free bets at the odds of 4/1 is at least €13:
expected gain from free bets = €13
This outweighs my expected long term loss due to the bookie's bias on my real money bets. The overall value provided both teams win at least 2 games is therefore:
expected gain from free bets - expected loss from real money bets = about €4.67.
This will rise though, I expect combined they will win more than 4 - but lets just stick with this conservative value.
According to here, I could make more money out of my free bets, but I like 4/1 in this situation. With anything up to only 11 free bets, going for a 6/1 shot is not guaranteed to come in.
It is possible I will lose both real bets and lose any free bet earned in which case I will have a €50 loss. It is also possible that I will earn 11 free bets win up to €40 (or more) off those, win with Dublin for a profit of about €35, and Kerry to reach the final for a profit of about €18 of my each way bet - all for a total of €93 gain. The reality will be somewhere in between and that is what I have tried to estimate the long term value to be - i.e. €4.67.
I think that I have been conservative in my calculations and there probably is more value here than €4.67. For one thing - every €5 free bet earned past my estimate of 4 free bets will add roughly €3.25 to the value (I base this on this analysis here where 4/1 shots returned an average of about 65c per €1).
I think it shows that although it seems like the bookie is giving out a lot of money, in fact they probably aren't. Still, in saying that, it is a worth while promotion if you want to make some drinking money for some weekend toward the end of September.
Stayed tuned and I will post how the strategy actually pans out.
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