Rugby World Cup Bet

The 2007 Rugby World Cup allowed Cash Ninja to place a number of bets that at worst would have lost about £13 and at best could have won £600 from a total stake of £150. That's a pretty good risk to reward ratio. In the end the total profit made was about £90, not the maximum possible but still not too bad. Cash Ninja is not an expert on rugby, not even a massive fan, so how did we manage to do this? Here's how:

The teams

The bets were placed at the semi-final stage of the competition, when there were 4 teams left. By comparing the odds at various online bookies it was possible to get the best prices on the outright winner. Whilst at the same time looking for the odds on which teams would be in the final.

The odds

The 4 sites offering the best combination of odds for the 2 bets were as follows:

William Hill South Africa vs England final 7/2 (4.5 decimal odds) England win 15/2 (8.5)
Totesport France vs Argentina final 7/2 (4.6) France win 6/4 (2.5)
Bet365 England vs Argentina final 11/1 (12) Argentina win 8/1 (9)
Sportingbet South Africa vs France final 8/11 (1.75) South Africa win 7/5 (2.4)

The bets

A £25 bet was placed on each of the possible combinations of finalists and then the free £25 bets that each site provided were used to bet on who the winner would be. In addition to that, because the odds on South Africa and France were so short 2 further win bets were placed (one on each of them) in order to hedge the bets and make sure if it was a South Africa vs France final only the minimum amount would be lost. These bets were placed on Betfair gaining one further additional £25 free bet that was used in play during the France vs England match to bet on a France win, to further hedge the bets and ensure that if the final was South Africa vs France at worst it would now be a break even situation.

The payout

It might sound complicated but by using the free bets provided for opening a new account and picking the sites offering the best odds it was possible to get in a virtually no lose situation. On top of that, whilst most of the sites only paid the winnings on the free £25 bets and not the stake as well Sportingbet (where the free £25 to bet was placed on a South Africa win) paid not only the winnings but also the £25 as well! Bonus. That really is free money!

The England vs South Africa final returned £112.50 (from William Hill), the South Africa win returned £58.50 (from Betfair) and £35 (from Sportingbet – the reason for this was we didn't get round to placing this bet until the odds had changed and only got 1.4 not 2.4!) so the total profit was £55.

Cash Ninja checked the odds manually by visiting all the sites that offered good sign up bonuses but you can always try Oddschecker who claim to do the leg work for you. We haven't tried them yet so we're not sure how many different bookies they compare...

Now obviously exploiting the sign up bonuses only works once for each site. However as we've said, there are plenty of online bookmakers out there all offering similar sign up bonuses. Plus, there are other opportunities to do this kind of thing, using the same bookies you've already signed up to. On top of that, they often offer further bonuses and incentives for you to place more bets, that you can make good use of.