harry_rag

Interesting, I'll give it some further thought. A quick look tells me I've lost £144 on 77 bets that earned me a free bet but won £197 on 107 bets where I redeemed them. That includes winners at 45/1, 25/1 and 20/1 all of which look like things I backed because I had the freebie to redeem. (In order they were a player to get an assist in both halves, a horse during Cheltenham and a player to score a brace.) At least I'm up for now whether through luck or judgement!

So is it a better use of a free bet to stick it on something at bigger odds that you fancy but might not otherwise have backed rather than just use it as part of the stake on something you would be backing anyway? e.g. I could have used a fiver freebie as part of a £20 bet on a 2/1 shot but I'm better of finding a 10/1 shot and using it on that? I assume there's a law of diminishing returns if you use it on something you've more or less picked at random versus a shorter priced selection you are confident in?

Barcelona v Granada: 25 points on Depay to score at 2.12 and 25 on Demir to score at 3.45, both on BF Going through a sticky patch so you might want to lay those for a few easy quid!

Home Away Player Sell Buy Mid Fair Lay Back Best Barcelona Granada Demir 22 22 22 2.81 2.53 3.09 3.15 Barcelona Granada Coutinho 19 21 20 3.03 2.73 3.34 2.5

Or just use them as part of the stake for a bet you're going to have anyway? e.g. £2 freebie plus £18 for a £20 bet. I do that quite a lot. I do record when a bet qualifies for or redeems a free bet but I haven't analysed it yet. I have a feeling I need to be slightly more disciplined about not placing bets I wouldn't have placed but for the freebie offer, though I've cut out most of the silly bets of my "youth"!

Is that the Hills offer? Did that myself and wasn't sure how many freebies it had generated so far. Are you sure you get 3 for a hat trick though, rather than one? I thought it was a free bet every time they scored rather than for every TD they scored, so once per game max. Edit: I think you're right, looking at the 3 freebies I've got lined up after yesterday's action.

Home Away Player Sell Buy Mid Fair Lay Back Best Udinese Napoli Osimhen 23 24 23.5 2.67 2.40 2.93 2.625 Udinese Napoli Insigne 20 20 20 3.03 2.73 3.34 2.875

2 for tonight's game to hopefully finish the weekend with a winner! Detroit at Green Bay: 15 points on Dillon to score a TD at 10/3 365 and 24 points on Hockenson at 9/4 PP or Boyles

0 from 7 last night for -115 points, 0 from 10 for the week for -156 points. Very much the famine after last week's feast.

Selection Bets Winners P/L ROI Back at “fair” odds 157 56 -12.59 -8.02% Lay at “lay” odds 157 101 24.93 11.72% Back at “back” odds 157 56 1.75 1.12% Back at best odds 157 56 -14.82 -9.44% Back if best >”back” odds 71 24 -6.26 -8.82% Matched Lays 17 10 14.26 8.80% Sell player goal mins 157 111 633 16.52% Buy player goal mins 157 43 -917 -22.24% Latest figures are more in line with my expectations with backing at the "back" odds moving closer to a break even proposition rather than a profitable one. In terms of potential strategies my current take is as follows; LAYING: Laying at the "lay" odds would be profitable but I've only been matched on 17 out of 157 players and only fully matched on 10 of them so I'd say it's not really viable. You could try laying at the "fair" odds but I'm not sure that would increase the matched rate that much. Laying at the best odds on Oddschecker could be a viable strategy but I suspect it's already a popular one judging by how often you can see a lot of players on offer at the exact same price. I suspect some people simply copy the OC odds and put them up on BF. BACKING: If it does turn out that the "back" odds are, in reality, closer to the genuine true odds then I'd need to revise my idea of what is the minimum price I should be looking to back at. It might be a stretch to get on at true odds plus a 10% edge but I suspect it would happen more often than getting matched on a lay bet with the same edge. I'll rethink when the sample size gets to 200 (in terms of possibly putting up some small trial back requests to see if they get matched). SELLING: Maybe the blindingly obvious is staring me in the face and the solution is simply to forget about backing or laying in the fixed odds markets and just sell. I'll do some analysis of profit by price in terms of seeing if there's a sensible minimum price point (it takes a lot longer to recover a big loss with winning sells at 20 relative to at 35). BUYING: Don't even go there!

Fair enough and thanks for the reasoned response. I'd still prefer it if you were posting selections on here but if it's not frightening the horses or falling foul of @StevieDay1983 and co. then so be it. I'd suggest a separate board for such threads (posting results rather than actual selections) but that would obviously become an out and out spammers' paradise. (I acknowledge the difference between an existing member posting as you are and new accounts spamming links to paid services). Out of interest, do you know how much better or worse the bottom line would look if you just let all the pre-game bets run their course with no trading out? I pretty much let all my spread sells run their course which can see some reasonable profits flip to sizeable losses late in the game but I prefer to do it that way rather than giving some profit away in every game to avoid the occasional late loss. If it turns out that the in game trades add relatively little value then you could save yourself a lot of time and effort by stopping doing them.

354 points up after 131 bets so +482 points from the last 60 bets, something like normal service resumed in terms of the bets posted in this thread. Selling player goal and assist minutes can be brutal; Denmark's 85th minute goal against the Faroe Islands saw Jensen assist Wind and turned a potential 64 point profit into a 106 point loss.

Since the last update there has been the following bets: 3 losing anytime lays for a loss of 6.11 points (all only partially matched) 3 winners from 6 footy bets (all 4-6 cards) for an 8 point profit 0 winners from 7 NFL bets for a 115 point loss. 3 from 14 overall, 241.11 points returned 128 for a 113.11 point loss. 1974.71 points up overall.

Getafe "won" 7-6 on cards so no need for the start. 2-2 and a push for a 0.1 point loss so far with an ROI of -2%.

Home Away Player Sell Buy Mid Fair Lay Back Best Wolfsburg E Frankfurt Weghorst 30 32 31 2.16 1.95 2.38 2.15

And finally for today. Kansas at Baltimore: 25 points on Ty'son Williams to score at TD at 15/8 with Hills

Home Away Player Sell Buy Mid Fair Lay Back Best R Betis Espanyol Jose 19 22 20.5 2.97 2.68 3.27 2.75

Dallas at LA Chargers: 20 points on Jared Cook to score at TD at 13/5 and 15 on Dak Prescott at 18/5, both with Hills Also tempted/suckered in by a couple of boosted specials; 5 points on Prescott and Herbert each to throw 3+ TD at 10/1 Lads and 6 points on Chargers to win/both Ekeler and Lamb to score at TD at 9/1 Hills

Home Away Player Sell Buy Mid Fair Lay Back Best Verona Roma Abraham 21 23 22 2.81 2.53 3.09 2.75

2 from 3 to bring the 100 up. 60 points returned 85 for a 25 point profit. 48 winners from the last 100 bets (48%). 1990 points returns 2055 for a profit of 65 points with an ROI of 3.27% Overall total for the thread now looks like this. 277 winners from 800 bets (34.63%). 13714.5 points returns 13578.63 for a loss of 135.87 points with an ROI of -0.99%.

San Francisco at Philadelphia: 24 points on Devonta Smith to score at TD at 11/5 and 20 on Dallas Goedert at 14/5, both with Hills Goedert price looks most appealing but Smith still ok at bigger than 2/1. PP next best place to go, offering 11/4 instead of 14/5 and matching the 11/5.

Home Away Player Sell Buy Mid Fair Lay Back Best Dortmund Union Berlin Malen 20 22 21 2.92 2.62 3.21 2.625 Dortmund Union Berlin Reus 21 21 21 2.92 2.62 3.21 2.8

Pressing on with the 4-6 cards bets for a while longer, 3 coming up later (all 20 points at the quoted odds). Marseille v Rennes at 11/10 PSG v Lyon at 11/10 Porto v Moreirense at 23/20

Matched on Schick for a whopping 0.24 points at 1.93.

Home Away Player Sell Buy Mid Fair Lay Back Best Stuttgart Leverkusen Marmoush 23 26 24.5 2.58 2.32 2.84 3.4 Stuttgart Leverkusen Schick 29 30 29.5 2.24 2.02 2.47 2.625