A mate of mine, let’s call him “The Dealer” received an email from a bookmaker last week. This e-mail offered him a free bet to the value of 30% of his first bet of the weekend.
Now offers like these normally come loaded with Terms & Conditions, for example the bet that you place must be at a certain price, but he scanned the wagering requirements and found nothing. This appeared to be an opportunity too good to pass up.
The first thing he did was load his account with a fresh R10,000 deposit, by his own admission, much more than he would usually bet on sport, Now the aim was to find a sure thing to back it at prohibitive odds and then enjoy a free crack with the 30% Betting Voucher, which in this case would relate to a tasty R3000 bet.
If you are looking to put on a short price bet look no further than Tennis and The Dealer stumbled upon a game that had already started with in-running betting available. He admits that he cannot remember the players names, but recalls they sounded Russian and I would imagine they were probably ranked somewhere between 300 and 400 in the world. The one player was a 2 sets up and 3-1 to the good in the 3rd and his price with the bookmaker was 1/100 to win the match.
This was the opportunity and he lumped “the baby” on the favourite knowing that he would only collect a R100 for the win, but would then have his free bet. Easy game right?
Wrong! It was round about this time that things started to go pear shaped when the opponent broke back and eventually won the 3rd set and this 1/100 shot actually hit 2/1 at one point as they played the decider. Usually calm under pressure this lad was now sweating bullets as he watched the live scoring.
Thankfully his charge managed to pull it out of the fire in the end and the most stressful R100 he will ever earn was banked. He then placed his R3000 Free Bet which he lost so overall he had gone through absolute turmoil and risked R10,000 in cold hard currency to bank a R100 profit.
I have said it before and will say it again, there is no such thing as free money!
Twitter: @BrentGraham.
This article was written for the CitiGaming supplement of the Citizen Newspaper and was published on the 4 June 2020.
Brent Graham is a blogger on www.goodforthegame.co.za and sends a free weekly e-mail list just CLICK HERE to register