⚠️ Ad blocker detected. Running an ad-blocking extension may hide offer titles and descriptions and break links to bookmakers. It is recommended that you disable it or add Matched Betting Blog to your ad blocker's allowlist.
New The MBB Oddsmatcher is now live and completely free during the World Cup. 🎉 Try it today

Stan James Offer – Roma v Real Madrid

Roma host Real Madrid on Wednesday in the last 16 of the Champions League and Stan James are back with another 2/1+ Free Bet Special. Place a single bet on any market at 3.00 (2/1) or greater on Roma v Real Madrid and if it goes on to win, Stan James will match our stake as a free bet up to £25.00. Translated into matched betting terms, this gives us a potential profit of £18.39 and here’s how…

Qualifying bet:

We need to find a selection with tight back and lay odds as close to the 3.00 (2/1) as possible to give ourselves the best chance of bagging a free bet. Having looked at the odds available, I’ve opted to place my qualifying bet on the match being a draw.

I like to place my exchange lay bets with Smarkets as they have great liquidity, the site is really easy to use and they only charge 2% commission in comparison to the 5% charged by other betting exchanges.

We can calculate our lay stake using the following matched betting calculator…

Back Bet (Bookie)

%

Lay Bet (Betting Exchange)

%

Min £
Max £
Lay stake required: £
Bookie
Exchange
Cashback
Total
If back (bookie) bet wins
£
£
£
= £
If lay (exchange) bet wins
£
£
£
= £
Total profit: £

Optimal Underlay

Lay stake required: £
Exchange liability: £

If back (bookie) bet wins: £
If lay (exchange) bet wins: £

Optimal Overlay

Lay stake required: £
Exchange liability: £

If back (bookie) bet wins: £
If lay (exchange) bet wins: £

As you can see, the calculator tells us that our lay stake should be £23.87…

stanjames

Place £25.00 on a draw @ 3.80 = Potential profit of £70.00

smarkets white

Lay £23.87 on a draw @ 4.00 = Potential liability of £71.61

Let’s have a look at our potential profit/loss for the two outcomes…

Draw + £70.00 + £20.00 (80% of our £25.00 free bet) – £71.61 = £18.39 profit
Not a draw – £25.00 + £23.39 = £1.61 loss

So if the game is drawn, we’ll make a profit of £18.39, otherwise we’ll make a loss of £1.61. Risking £1.61 to make a profit of £18.39, gives us effective odds of 12.42, so given the fact that the draw odds are currently 3.80, this is a profitable offer in the long run.

If you’re not sure how to extract 80% of our £25.00 free bet, please see my Free Bet Strategy page for a walk-through guide on how it should be done.

For those of you that would prefer to lock in a guaranteed profit on this offer, you could add 0.80 (to account for the £20.00 extracted from a £25.00 free bet) to your back odds of 3.80 to give you your effective odds of 4.60. This will enable you to make a guaranteed profit of £3.32. Personally, I’m not a fan of this method as it’s more profitable long-term to do it as set out above. We are effectively risking our £3.32 guaranteed profit to make £18.39 profit, which gives us effective odds of 6.54, which are far higher than the actual draw odds of 3.80.

Got a question?

Ask the community on Discord, or leave me a comment below.
I usually respond within 24 hours.

Matt KirmanMatched Betting Blogger

Since 2014, I’ve blogged over £100,000 worth of profit, and made it my mission to make matched betting accessible to everyone.