Why are free cracks EV+?

Intuitively the concept of a free crack makes sense to be EV+, it’s essentially a free bet. However, why exactly is it so?

Firstly, what is a free crack?

A free crack is a promotion where the bonus or cash back is unconditional. Meaning if your bet wins you win, if your bet loses in any way, then the promotion triggers. As an example you can look at Sportsbet’s special Bet Return SGM offer. The terms and conditions state that the minimum legs are two and the minimum price is $2. If this bet loses (ie. any legs fail) then you will be refunded your stake in BB’s up to $50.

Second, how can we approach these?

Continuing with our SGM Sportsbet example, we can approach this offer in a couple of different ways, lay and no lay. You can see the SGM course for some examples of layable SGMS here. We approach these as normal back/lay triggers with the option to underlay for a profit in either result. For this explanation we will stick with our no lay approach continuing from here.

Thirdly, what markets should I be betting on?

Whilst almost any bet you make as a free crack will be EV+ there are some ways to maximise the value of these promotions. Bookies love multis because it lets them compound the bookies margin/overround. Main markets, such as H2H, line or total will have a lower overround than the more obscure markets, so by sticking to these - as well as only taking the minimum number of legs to qualify - we can minimise the amount of value we give back to the bookie in margin.

Lastly, why are these actually EV+?

The reason these offers are EV+ is because we are comparatively gaining more than we would lose. In our no lay example we can place a $50 SGM paying $2. If we win, we would net +$50, if we lose then we net -$10 after 80% retention on the returned BB. Because we are risking $10 to gain $50 on something that (if it were actually true odds) had a 50/50 chance of occurring. This is the same as betting $10 on a coin flip but returning $50 if you win.

If the bet was actually true odds of $2 then this would have an EV of $20

As calculating true odds on SGM’s can be difficult, a quick rule of thumb would be that any bet with true odds under the actual payout odds would be EV+, in this example true odds of $6 would be the break even.