Cheltenham Festival 2021 is here and you don’t want to miss this Virgin Bet 3/1 offer! Simply bet on any Cheltenham Festival race and if we back the winner, Virgin Bet will match our stake with a free bet, up to £20.00. Translated into matched betting terms, this gives us a potential profit of £50.00+ and here’s how…
Key terms
- Applies to first single bet on each Cheltenham Festival race.
- Minimum odds of 4.00 (3/1).
- If our selected horse wins, Virgin Bet will match our stake as a free bet, up to £20.00.
Qualifying bets
This offer is available on all 28 races at Cheltenham Festival 2021.
I’ll take you through a worked example below anyway, but for more information about ‘Back a Winner’ type offers and a walkthrough of how they should be done, please see my Bet365 4/1 Offer guide.
If you’d like more information about qualifying bets and how they work, please see my qualifying bets guide.
It’s entirely up to you which horses you place your qualifying bets on.
Happygolucky is favourite to win the 14:30 on Tuesday at back odds of 4.00 (3/1). I’ll use lay odds of 4.30 to illustrate how this offer works and I’ll update the table at the bottom of the post with some genuine selections at the end of each day.
Either exchange works for this offer
Betfair and Smarkets are both great options for this offer. If you’ve not used one of them, now is a great time to give them a try.
- Money back as cash up to £20
- 0% commission for 60 days
Option 1:
We know that if our horse wins, we’ll be able to convert our £20.00 free bet into 80% cash. We can therefore add 0.80 to the back odds to get our effective odds…
4.00 + 0.80 = 4.80
Using my Matched Betting Calculator, we simply enter 4.80 as our back odds instead of 4.00 and lay the amount shown. Overlaying like this is fine, but the guaranteed profits are likely to be small.
Option 2:
Our second option is to lay our bets as normal and hope some of our horses win for bigger profits.
We can calculate our lay stakes using my Matched Betting Calculator…
As you can see, the calculator tells us that our lay stake should be £18.69…
Place £20.00 on Happygolucky @ 4.00 = Potential profit of £60.00
Lay £18.69 on Happygolucky @ 4.30 = Potential liability of £61.67
Outcomes
Let’s have a look at our potential profit/loss for the possible outcomes…
| Outcome | Virgin Bet | Betfair | Free Bet | Profit/Loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Happygolucky wins | + £60.00 | – £61.67 | + £16.00 | £14.33 profit |
| Happygolucky loses | – £20.00 | + £18.31 | £1.69 loss |
So, we’ll make a nice profit of £14.33 if Happygolucky wins, otherwise we’ll lose £1.69. Risking £1.69 to make a potential profit of £14.33 gives us effective odds of 9.48. So, given that Happygolucky is odds of just 4.00 (3/1) to win the race, this is a profitable offer in the long run.
We won’t find a suitable selection for every race, nor should we be aiming to bet on every race. It’s best to be selective, but with 28 races to go at, there’s an overall potential profit of £50.00+ up for grabs on this Virgin Bet offer!
If eligible, free bets will be credited on or before 10:00 the day after settlement. Free bets will be valid for 48 hours and free bet stakes are not included in any returns.
If you’re unsure how to convert your £20.00 free bets into £16.00 cash (80%), please see my free bets guide for a walkthrough of how it should be done.
I’ll update the following table with some actual selections at the end of each day…
| Race | Selection | Back Odds | Lay Odds | Profit/Loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15:40 Tuesday | Roksana | 4.00 | 4.30 | £1.69 loss |
| 16:50 Tuesday | Escaria Ten | 4.50 | 4.90 | £1.93 loss |
| 13:20 Wednesday | Bravemansgame | 5.00 | 5.30 | £1.44 loss |
| 13:55 Thursday | The Bosses Oscar | 5.00 | 5.30 | £1.44 loss |
| 14:30 Thursday | Allaho | 5.00 | 5.40 | £14.21 profit |
| 15:05 Thursday | Fury Road | 5.50 | 5.50 | £0.34 loss |
| 15:40 Thursday | Farclas | 6.00 | 6.40 | £1.57 loss |
| 16:15 Thursday | Royal Kahala | 6.00 | 6.40 | £1.57 loss |
| 16:50 Thursday | Mount Ida | 5.00 | 5.20 | £14.90 profit |
| 13:20 Friday | Tritonic | 5.00 | 5.30 | £1.44 loss |
| 13:55 Friday | You Raised Me Up | 7.00 | 7.20 | £0.89 loss |
| 15:05 Friday | A Plus Tard | 4.00 | 4.40 | £2.11 loss |
| 16:50 Friday | Gentleman De Mee | 4.00 | 4.30 | £1.69 loss |
Don’t miss out on one of the most profitable weeks of the matched betting calendar! For a comprehensive list of available bookmaker offers, please see my Cheltenham Festival 2021 Offers page.
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Matt Kirman – Matched Betting Blogger
Since 2014, I’ve blogged over £85,000 worth of profit, and made it my mission to make matched betting accessible to everyone.