Reporting from Belfast International Airport, Northern Ireland…
Happy Friday!
I’m currently looking forward to a weekend at a friend’s where we’ll be taking part in a big pool competition tomorrow, while the beers flow and the racing and football play in the background.
Life is good.
However, there is one thing that’s got my goat, and so I thought I better get it off my chest before the festivities begin.
Crucially, it’s also something that will help you to make more money.
Here it is:
Bookie cash-outs are ****!
Think about it
There’s one pretty good rule to live by when perusing a bookmaker website on the lookout for opportunities and that is as follows:
The easier a bookie makes it for you to do something, the worse the value is likely to be.
Take their rampant promotion of ‘bet builders’ (just recently expanded to horseracing, as if the football ones weren’t bad enough), accumulators, and odds boosts which aren’t boosts at all.
Take also, the incredible ease with which you can cash out a bet.
Trust me, when I say that bookies have not made it that simple to help you make more money.
What they have actually done, is introduced an incredibly tempting little button, utterly devoid of any betting value, that will slowly leach away your betting profits.
Read it and weep
Here is a particularly amusing cash-out offer I was presented with on Sunday:
The picture should speak for itself really but, to be clear, I was being offered the following:
A pay-out of just over 50% of my potential profit, on a bet that would only lose if Preston North End got 7 more shots on target than Aston Villa in around 15 minutes, or 8 more corners.
The true likelihood of either of those things happening was probably something in the region of 1 in 1000.
Should I cash out?
Now, granted, that was an especially extreme example (and, in fairness, was heavily impacted by the boosted odds) but it does hint at the con that’s occurring here.
While it will rarely be as obvious as this, I have helpfully put together a simple Q&A that will guide you next time you’re tempted by cashing out. Here goes…
Question 1) Is there a reason why the bet you placed hours ago is suddenly now a bad bet (for example, in the intervening time, you’ve discovered that a key player you expected to be playing isn’t)?
Answer 1) If the answer is no, don’t cash out. If the answer is yes, move on to question 2.
Question 2) Are you getting more money back from cashing out than you would be by laying the bet on Betfair or another exchange?
Answer 2) The answer is no. How do I know this? You will ALWAYS get more money back by laying the selection rather than using the bookie cash-out option. Therefore, DON’T CASH OUT.
The one and only exception
There is only one exception to my cash-out rule of not cashing-out and it’s this:
Are you being offered a life-changing amount of money by the cash-out and the possibility of it disappearing at any moment is very real?
If so, you have my blessing and congratulations!
In all other scenarios… well, you know the drill by now…
Don’t.
Cash.
Out.
