Bonus rugging meets credit card churning, ft. BowTiedBum
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Quick info: We’ve seen an amazing growth [~ +25 %] of new subscribers during the last week. If you’re new to the BowTiedBettor Substack, welcome & make sure to check out New to BowTiedBettor? ***START HERE*** as well as Bonus Rugging 101.
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Today’s post is a collaboration with , another member of the BowTied-community. His niche is to offer great insight into the world of credit card rewards. Bum has already helped many people create a second income stream through credit card churning and in case it sounds interesting, make sure to check out his material here!
This post is FREE. Next post [expected this weekend] will be an introduction to the Betfair API [we’ve figured out a way for our US subs to get at least partial access] and will be PAID.
BowTiedBum here…
Pure [-EV] gambling is for losers. Let’s skew the odds so you can consistently come out ahead, make some money, and earn credit card rewards at the same time.
Let’s get right into it.
This play is for US residents and very much YMMV depending on your state. It will take some trial and error to figure out what works for you.
We’ll be purchasing gift cards to load to our sportsbook betting apps, so we can earn credit card rewards on top of our winnings.
We have a few options here:
Buy sportsbook giftcards at grocery stores (example buy ABC Betting giftcards and load them directly with the ABC Betting app).
Buy Visa / Mastercard Gift Cards and from Office Supply stores or grocery stores and then load them onto sportsbook from our mobile phones.
Buy Fluz cards and load them onto sportsbooks from our mobile phones.
Note that whether or not your sportsbook allows you to load Visa/Mastercard/Fluz as payments is very region specific, so it’ll require some trial and error on your part. Start small to see if they allow it. Once you successfully load a few giftcards, you can scale up.
Note that you should only buy Visa/Mastercard Gift Cards AFTER your sign up bonus period. If you are working towards a sign up bonus you’ll have to stick to Fluz gift cards only, or wait until the sign up bonus period is over to use Visa/Mastercard Gift Cards.
One universal rule (for almost all sportsbooks) is you cannot simply deposit and withdraw right away to your bank account. You’ll need to play through your deposit. So if you deposit $200 to your sportsbook via gift cards, you’ll need to wager $200 before you can withdraw.
Here’s where BowTiedBettor comes in.
He has figured out how to “hack” the sportsbooks via a concept called bonus rugging which he’ll introduce below. Furthermore, he’ll guide us on how to efficiently fulfill playthrough requirements for credit card deposits (remember, if you deposit $200 to your sportsbook via gift cards, you’ll need to wager $200 before you can withdraw) by use of hedge/arbitrage betting.
Thanks Bum.
Back to Bettor! Let’s assist the credit card churners.
Welcome offers/sign-up bonuses
If you’re not signed up with *all* sportsbooks (most of you won’t be signed up with *any* which is great news) in your state already, step number one is to take advantage of their welcome offers. Freebets/risk-free bets and other sign up offers are easily converted to real world dollars through a concept we’ve named bonus rugging. Quick intro below.
Bonus rugging is a betting strategy that allows you to benefit from bookmakers’ free bet bonuses, offers and incentives to make risk-free profits. Unlike traditional betting, where you take on risk trying to predict an outcome, BR cleverly neutralizes all risk by taking advantage of multiple incentives across bookies and hedging your positions with counter bets, thereby guaranteeing profit.
To execute a bonus rugging strategy, you simply place a bet with the bookmaker who offered you the free bet/sign-up bonus and then bet against the same outcome with a different bookie. This allows you to cover all potential outcomes, eliminate your risk, and lock in a profit irrespective of the final result of the game.
Example: Assume that DraftKings offer a 100 % up to $500 sign-up bonus for new customers.
Deposit $500 via a Fluz gift card → DraftKings adds $500 to your balance, resulting in a new betting balance of $1 000.
Find a suitable game. DraftKings offers 2.10/+110 on Edmonton Oilers v Toronto Maple Leafs in the NHL. At the same time, Unibet offers 1.80/-125 on Toronto.
Bet the $1 000 on Edmonton at DraftKings. Use the qualifying bet calculator to calculate that you should bet $1 166 on Toronto at Unibet.
Here comes the cool stuff:
Case 1: Edmonton wins. 1000*2.10 = $2100 at DraftKings. Meanwhile your deposits sum to $500 (DraftKings) + $1 166 (Unibet) = $1 666. Net profit = $434.
Case 2: Toronto wins. 1166*1.80 = $2099 at Unibet. Again your deposits sum to $500 (DraftKings) + $1 166 (Unibet) = $1 666. Net profit = $435.
Beautiful, right? No matter the outcome of the game, you’ll collect ~ $430, a meaningful part of the $500 DraftKings offered us to sign up with them.
The above is of course an extremely basic overview. For details and to really understand what’s going on, head over to our Bonus Rugging 101 and begin there. Lists with relevant sportsbooks for all states where online sports betting is legal here.
Note: As mentioned by Bum above you’ll have to stick to Fluz gift cards when you are playing with betting bonuses. Furthermore we’d recommend to check the terms and conditions on credit card deposits for sign-up bonuses *carefully* for each site, simply to make sure those deposits are considered valid by the sportsbook.
Manufactured spending meets hedge & arbitrage betting
As soon as you’re done with the sign-up offers it’s time to shift focus onto the pure credit card rewards method. The idea here is to again deposit money into two different sites and then bet the two sites against each other. Let’s say that your credit card rewards are 4% on all groceries. You’d buy either sportsbook cards or Visa/Mastercard Giftcards at a grocery store. Then, if we manage to construct a strategy which loses *less* than 5 % per wagered dollar, you’ll make money. Devising such a strategy is actually very simple:
Deposit $500 via a Visa/Mastercard/Fluz credit card at DraftKings and likewise $500 at Unibet (or any other two bookmakers, you should of course pick the ones that are optimal with regards to the CC rewards).
Find a betting market where the odds are “good enough” to lose less than 5 % (in some cases you may even *win* money by betting both sides at different books, this is what’s known as arbitrage betting) per wagered dollar. Personally we use OddsJam’s bet finder to locate those games/markets but you’re free to go with whatever tool you prefer. Let’s assume there’s a game with one side at 1.96/-104 and the other one at 2.00/+100.
Bet the DraftKings $500 at 1.96/-104. As we did in the bonus rugging section, head over to the qualifying bet calculator, feed it your input and find out that you must bet $490 on the other outcome to obtain a fully hedged position.
An analysis of the two cases.
Case 1: You win at DraftKings. 500*1.96 = $980 on that account. Meanwhile you’ve lost $490 at Unibet which means there’s $10 left there. I.e. a total of $990 (980+10) which translates into a loss of $10. Now, withdraw those dollars and await your credit card rewards ($50). Net profit: $50 - $10 = $40.
Case 2: You win at Unibet. 490*2.00 = $980 + the remaining $10, i.e. $990 at Unibet. Meanwhile you’ve lost the $500 at DraftKings. As in case 1 we have a total of $990 or equivalently a loss of $10. Withdraw those dollars and await the credit card rewards ($50). Net profit: $50 - $10 = $40.
In other words, no matter the outcome of the game you’ll collect ~ $40.
This might not seem like much until you realize that you can iterate this strategy as many times as you’d like to. A 4 % return on something that’s both risk-free and scalable is *extremely* good. Moreover, after having done it 2-3 times it’ll literally take you less than 5 minutes to complete one such iteration. Another proof that WIFI-money indeed is a huge meme as soon as you’ve figured out which buttons to click, lol.
Final notes from Bettor
Everyone’s certainly not 100 % comfortable with the details here and if you feel disoriented right now you’re [unfortunately] most likely in good company. However you’ve hopefully understood the great potential of these two strategies. If you’d prefer to learn the basics of betting prior to actually executing the concepts presented today, visit our Betting 101.
If you have any specific questions, please do not be afraid of asking them either in the comments section below or on Twitter.
Finally: in case you’re a US subcriber we’d definitely recommend checking out BowTiedBum’s material to get the free cash flows from those credit card rewards going.
That’s all we’ve got for you today!
Until next time…
Disclaimer: None of this is to be deemed legal or financial advice of any kind. These are *opinions* written by an anonymous group of mathematicians who moved into betting.