Strategy

How to maximize common promos with simple, repeatable math

The principle

Some people who think they know better than the sportsbooks/public may utilize promotions to maximize their expected payout -- this approach is of course ignorant of the utility of wealth which I find most people are not. While it is technically true that if you knew for certain lines in a market did not align with their true probabilities, your expected payout would increase if you adjusted your hedges to take this imbalance into account, it is extremely bold of you to assume this position. Furthermore, this type of thinking can lead to a serious addiction. My hope here is that you utilize the tools on this site (and a free trial of OddsJam which it is easy to get a month of) in conjuction with new user promotions to maximize your minimum net results and then never think about sports gambling again. I believe this approach would not engender a new generation of gambling addicts given the absense of any thrill or significance to actual sporting outcomes, but if you feel that you are at risk please avoid signing up for any platform. Getting back to this essentially risk free guaranteed money, it is important to note that time in the form of having to sign up for different platforms is essentially what you are giving up here. For a few platforms, you may deem your time more valuable then the risk-free money available to new customers on that platform. In that sense, this site is not for Elon Musk, but I imagine the mass majority of Americans would gladly pounce on the opportunity to earn thousands of dollars in exchange for a little bit of time on your computer/phone. I will now go into detail about how to maximize your earnings depending on the promotion type, as well as any tips on how to to utilize promotions that don't fall squarely in those categories.

Bonus Bet

A bonus bet only has meaningful value when it is paired with a hedge on the opposite side. The closer that paired position behaves to a normal two-sided cash wager, the more of the bonus bet’s value can be realized.

The defining limitation of a bonus bet is that the stake is not returned. On short odds or near pick’em prices, most of a cash bet’s payout comes from getting the stake back. Because a bonus bet forfeits this component, it behaves very differently from cash in this region and leaves little usable value for a hedge to capture.

On long-odds wagers, the structure changes. A much larger portion of the payout comes from winnings rather than stake return, so the absence of the stake matters far less. In this sense, a longshot bonus bet behaves much more like a true cash wager.

Hedging a longshot bonus bet does introduce a real downside. When you bet a heavy underdog on one side, the opposing favorite must be wagered at a much larger dollar amount to equalize outcomes. This increases the total amount of money placed across both sides of the market. Because sportsbook vig is effectively applied to every dollar wagered, a larger total hedge size means a larger absolute loss to vig.

Importantly, this loss comes from scale rather than inefficiency, resulting in a dollar loss far smaller than the value that would be lost by using a bonus bet on short odds or allowing it to go unused. The strategy therefore concentrates nearly all remaining cost into the vig if present, while preserving the majority of the bonus bet’s cash-equivalent value. Of course, by shopping around manually on OddsChecker perhaps or by using OddsJam, you can certainly find markets with major favorite and not too much, if any, vig. It shouldn't be too hard if there are a lot of highly liquid sporting events going on (NBA basketball moneyline wagers are great for this because they often have big favorites in games) to manually find places that reach or exceed 65% bonus bet equivalent to a $1. In fact, I verified that as I'm writing this early afternoon on a weekday in January, I could find a market manually in less than 10 minutes on NBA moneyline actions on every single major sportsbook where I could make a bonus bet wager that reached or exceeded that threshold -- many at 70% or better. It's also very important to say there are tools online that may help you do this. OddsJam will give you a 14 day free trial (if you cancel the trial on the last day, they will offer to extend it even longer, or you could just get a new free trial using another email), and their software is very good at finding the best lines for maximizing a promotion. This is certainly anecdotal but when I made my own free trial last night to review the site, it showed me an arbitrage oppurtunity on a player getting a double double: BetRivers had the yes market at +650, while BetMGM had the no market at -400. I then confirmed for myself that those lines were, at the moment at least, both steady. Not only is this incredible arbitrage for straight wagers - a guaranteed 4.02% ROI - but it would give a bonus bet on BetRivers a 109% equivalency to $1. It's important to note that you very well may run into wager limits here, and that you should not expect to come across arbitrage like this often. Rather, take that OddsJam can be a great freeand easy tool which should certainly, depending on where you have a bonus bet available, raise your standards for what market to use your bonus bets in.

Deposit Match

A deposit match promotion credits you with bonus funds equal to some percentage (often 100%) of your deposit, but unlike no-sweat or bonus bets, these funds usually require a playthrough (also called a rollover) before withdrawals are allowed. A 1× rollover means you must wager an amount equal to your deposit plus bonus before cashing out—for example, depositing $500 with a $500 match requires $1,000 in total wagers. In practice, this requirement is often much easier to clear than it sounds, especially when the sportsbook has tight lines. Because the platforms covered here all use a 1× playthrough, the expected cost of clearing the rollover is usually limited to the small amount of vig paid while placing those wagers. This becomes especially powerful when you are already hedging bets placed on other sportsbooks to extract value from their promotions: those hedge bets typically count toward the playthrough, meaning you often clear the rollover incidentally while doing what you would have done anyway. In other words, the same wagers used to lock in value elsewhere naturally satisfy the deposit match requirement, with the only real cost being vig. Low-vig sportsbooks are therefore ideal places to grind through playthrough, as they minimize expected losses while money cycles through the account. Some platforms do not impose minimum odds on playthrough wagers, and on market-exchange or no-vig sportsbooks this can lead to effectively predetermined outcomes being available. In my own experience, I cleared a first-purchase match on NoVig by betting on a live men’s college basketball game where one team was up by more than 50 points with only minutes remaining in the second half—virtually no real risk, yet fully counting toward the rollover. Traditional sportsbooks generally do not allow this, as markets that are effectively decided are usually closed, so similar opportunities are rare. While betting heavy favorites can reduce variance when working through a rollover, doing so without an appropriate hedge still exposes you to unnecessary downside and is rarely worth the risk. Finally, it is critical to read the terms and conditions of any deposit match: while all sportsbooks discussed here use a 1× playthrough, some offshore platforms impose much higher rollover requirements (5×, 10×, or more), which can completely eliminate the value of the promotion.

Profit Boost

The true value of a profit boost only appears once the wager is paired with a hedge. In arbitrage, the relevant quantity is not just payout, but the total amount of money that must be committed across both sides of the bet. When a profit boost is applied to a large underdog, hedging that boosted wager requires placing a much larger stake on the favorite. This dramatically increases the total capital involved in the arbitrage, and since arbitrage profitability is typically measured as a percentage return on total money deployed, more capital means more absolute profit for the same ROI.

Of course, this only holds if the underlying market is reasonably efficient to begin with. Just as with bonus bets and no-sweat bets, profit boosts should be used on markets with relatively low vig before the boost is applied. Applying a boost to a highly inefficient line simply amplifies losses rather than value. In practice, the ideal candidates for profit boosts look very similar to those for bonus bets and no-sweat bets: competitive markets, tight pricing, and a clear hedge available elsewhere.

By contrast, using a profit boost on a favorite produces the opposite effect. Hedging a boosted favorite requires only a small stake on the underdog, meaning very little total capital is involved. Even if the percentage return appears attractive, the absolute profit is limited because the boost is being applied to a wager that does not force meaningful money into the hedge. This is why profit boosts are almost always most valuable when applied to longshots. The boosted underdog increases the size of the required hedge on the favorite, effectively scaling up the entire arbitrage position while leaving the vig loss roughly proportional.

Pick’em Hedging (DFS-style)

On DFS-style platforms there are usually several contest formats available, but once you impose the most important rule — that any wager should be hedgeable — nearly all of them are eliminated. In practice, the only format that reliably meets this requirement is pick’em contests. These involve selecting player props and receiving a fixed payout multiple depending on how many legs are correct, such as 3× for two picks, 6× for three picks, or 10× for four picks. While these headline payouts may appear attractive, they are actually far lower than what the same collection of wagers would return if placed individually at a traditional sportsbook like DraftKings, where odds are quoted directly and stake is returned on winning bets.

The objective here, however, is not maximizing theoretical payout but converting non-withdrawable DFS funds into cash. In a playthrough scenario, the optimal approach is to place a two-pick entry using non-alternate, widely available player props, structured so that the first leg settles before the game involving the second leg even begins. This allows you to immediately place a straight hedge wager on the opposite side of the first prop. If that hedge wins, the pick’em entry is dead and the process ends; if it loses, you then place a second hedge against the remaining leg, which at worst should be priced around -110. This sequencing ensures that only the minimum necessary capital is committed at each step.

When dealing with bonus bets on DFS pick’em platforms, the same logic applies but with a three-pick entry instead. Because stake is not returned on bonus bets, a three-pick entry typically pays 5× rather than 6×, making it the correct analog to the two-pick playthrough strategy. Using this structure and sequential hedging, you can generally expect to recover roughly 68% of non-withdrawable playthrough funds and about 53% of bonus bet value in cash. While these percentages can sometimes be improved — for example, if a platform offers slightly enhanced multipliers or exploitable alternate props — such opportunities are rare, time-consuming to identify, and often not worth the marginal gain.

Finally, it is worth noting that the required hedge stakes in these consecutive pick’em scenarios are not guesswork. They can be calculated precisely using the parlay hedging calculator, which determines the optimal hedge size at each step to equalize outcomes and minimize exposure.

Promotions dependent on winning first bet

You may notice, at least currently, that new user promotions of DraftKings, FanDuel, and theScore all require you to win your first bet to receive bonus bets. In two of the cases the first bet has no minimum odds which means you should just pick as close to a near certain winning wager as possible (equal hedging is certainly always promoted but I must say that when I did this on FanDuel, I made a wager a $5 wager that netted me 2¢ and didn't hedge the other side). You must however on Draftkings make a hedge wager since they have a -500 min odds requirement for their current "Bet $5, Get $300 in Bonus Bets if Win" offer. If it's not obvious, hedging a wager like this requires a little bit of math on your part. Essentially. a $5 wager here with odds -500 will pay out $1 along with 300 bonus bets, which has an equivalent conservative value of $1 + $195 = $196. This means that -500 wager has a real value in American odds of +(196 x 20)= +3920. You can then just use the arbitrage calculator tool here to get you hedge stake value. For example, if you chose to make your first wager on a favorite with odds -500 and hedge odds +400, my calculator tool would tell you your hedge bet needs to be $45 -- that said, if it hadn't crossed your mind, this is the perfect situation to hedge with a bonus bet from another platform.

Final Note

Firstly, know that sportsbooks often offer multiple options for new customers, and it is up to you to determine which choice has a greater value. In my map section I listed only the top promotion in my opinion at the time of writing, but since promotions are always subject to change, the best choice may be more uncertain, but know quick calculation can be easily done using the tools here to help. In January 2026, Fanatics offered a promtion of a max $200 no sweat bet for the first ten days afer registration. This is equivalent to a $2000 no sweat bet which if you assume a conservative 39% conversion rate, is worth roughly $775 (personally, I would value it even higher, especially if I were in a state where NoVig operated). At the same time, Fanatics offered a seperate promotion that offers to match a qualified wager with min odds of -200 in bonus bet funds up to $100 for your first 10 days. Using a 65% bonus bet conversion rate, this is essentially worth $650 minus the rollover cost of having to spend $1000 on Fanatics whihc we can say is $50. Clearly the latter is the better option and I hope that this quick math is done by you if you ever unsure what promotion to take. It should be quite obvious, but a number of platforms offer promotions based on first purchase/deposit and typically it is in your best interest to choose the option that requires the largest bankroll, as the bonus promotion part is almost almost more valuable that the potential larger playthrough cost. For instance, Prime Sportsbook in NJ offers new users 25% first deposit match up to $250 in bonus bets, as well as 100% match up to $100 in bonus bets. Looking at T&C, the difference here is that the latter offers $150 bonus bets more (~$97.5) but requires you to playthrogh $1050 more. Betting $1050 on a big favorite and hedging shouldn't cost more than $25 at the very worst, which ultimately makes your decision an easy one.