Odds Boost Guide and Strategies
Sportsbooks trying to lure you into betting by offering an odds boost or profit boost? You know the saying…
“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
But actually, sometimes Sportsbooks do give away free money. There are reasons they do this I’ve written about. Now that we’ve got it out of the way that sometimes Sportsbooks will offer odds boosts and profit boosts that are worth acting on. Let’s dive into more questions on these “free money” bets. We’ll cover:
- what is an odds boost?
- odds boost vs profit boost
- common fine print on odds boosts
- hedging strategy on profit boosts
- FAQ: are boosts worth it, can’t get odds boost to work, can I hedge, etc
What is an odds or profit boost?
An odds boost is when the Sportsbook increases the odds of your bet. By increase, it means the odds become less negative or more postive. Most importantly, it means you get paid more for the same bet.
So what is the difference between an odds boost or profit boost?
Odds and profit boosts are basically the same thing. Both take your bet and boost the amount you’ll win. The difference is odds boosts usually refer to one specific bet, and it’ll tell you the improved odds (not how much more you’ll make). Profit boosts usually tell you what percentage more you’ll make, and let you make multiple different bets. The improved odds are then calculated to match the amount of profit the Sportsbook promised you.
Examples of odds boosts and profit boosts
I’ll usually an example that Draftkings offered me today. In this case, they offered a profit boost. Specifically, they offered a 50% profit boost for the Colts-Titans game. This meant I could place any bet on the Colts-Titans game, and if my bet wins, I’d make 50% more than I would have without the boost.
I could have bet the moneyline, spread, over/under, or a prop bet. I chose to go with the over/under. It had -110 odds (which over/under’s usually do since a 50/50 bet). Once I applied the 50% profit boost, Draftkings calculated the new odds to be +136. This means that if I put $20 on this bet I would win just over $27 in profit (with the original -110 odds a $20 bet would have won just over $18 in profit. See below:
To show the difference in odds boost vs profit boost, an odds boost would have just said “Colts-Titans under boosted to +136 from -110.” So it would have been the same outcome, but I wouldn’t have had the flexibility to choose the exact bet I wanted.
Another example of an odds boost is this one that was offered the same day as the profit boost:
You can see how specific odds boosts can be. In this case, you’re betting on two specific players in two different sports. The profit is pretty good, though. Crunch the numbers you profit 72% more with the boosted odds.
Common fine print on odds and profit boosts
Since profit boosts can fall into the “if it sounds to good to be true, it probably is” philosophy, you might be nervous there’s some weird fine print.
Every profit or odds boost I’ve had doesn’t have much fine print, but there’s one that is in basically all of them: maximum bet amount. Somewhere in the fine print, it’ll say the max you can bet is somewhere between $5 and $50. This lets the sports book limit their damage since these bets are more for marketing.
A lesson common but fine print I’ve seen is “max total profit/winnings” or similar. This keeps you from killing the sportsbook if you hit on longshot parlay. Usually, you don’t see this probably because, like most longshot parlays, they know most of the time they’ll just be taking your money and not paying you anything.
Odds boost strategy to guarantee you win money
Hedging a boosted bet is one of my favorite ways to build up your bankroll. Hedging means you place a bet, and then you also place the opposite bet.
In normal cases, it makes no sense to hedge your bet because of the Sportsbooks juice (you can read about juice here but it’s basically the profit the sportsbook takes to make money). But when you have boosted odds, the juice is gone.
So if you have a profit 50% profit boost for a game, that takes -110 odds (the most common odds for 50/50 bets) and makes it +138. Let’s say you can bet a maximum of $50. To hedge and make sure you don’t lose money, you’d bet $50 on the boost and that would mean a $119 payout if you win. But if you lose, you’re out $50. However, you can bet $55 on the other team, and you’d win $105 if they win.
This means in total you bet $105. If your favorite teams wins, you get $14 profit ($119 – $105). If the team you don’t like wins, you’re not out any money ($105 bet and $105 won).
Let’s say you want to guarantee you make some money, you can increase your bet slightly on the winning team (let’s say to $60). OR if you really like your favorite team but don’t want to risk the full $50 if they lose, you could make a smaller bet on the team you don’t like. That’d let you still benefit from the boost but not risk so much.
You can play around in the Sportsbooks whether it’s FanDuel, Draftkings, or BetMGM and they’ll show you how much you’d win with each bet. Then, you just have to do a little math to see how much you’d win or lose in each scenario (just add up the total amount your betting and use that number to subtract from the winnings of both your favorite and less liked bet to see both outcomes).
One final note: there are rare times in fine print when they won’t allow you to hedge your bet. In these cases, you could still make the opposite bet but just on a different sportsbetting app.
Frequently asked questions on profit and odds boosts
Here are common questions I get on profit and odds boosts. Feel free to contact me if you have others, and I may add it here!
Are profit boosts good bets?
Yes. Profit boosts are almost always good bets. They give you an edge over the sportsbook because the sportsbook no longer has betting juice.
The better question might be are profit boosts worth it? This depends on the person. If you have a big bankroll, the ‘maximum bet’ on profit boosts, might not be big enough to make it worth it to you. They’re almost always worth it for people who make smaller bets, or who are building up their bankroll (amount of money they have to bet).
Are odds boosts good bets?
Sometimes. This might sound a little surprising since I just said profit boosts are almost always good bets. The problem with odds boosts is they’re very specific. If they’re boosting a certain bet you don’t like–it could be a team you don’t like, player you don’t like, sport you don’t know about, etc–it might not be worth it. The other problem is Sportsbooks often odds boost low-probability bets like parlays. That means they’ll likely be taking your money and you won’t benefit from the boost.
On the other hand, if you like the bet, odds boosts make it a no-brainer.
Draftkings odds boost won’t work
I’ve had glitches with Draftkings odds boosts, and it seems to be a common problem. Every time I’ve had this happen it works eventually. There are two things to try depending on if it’s an odds boost or a profit boost.
For profit boosts, the first thing I’d do is check and make sure that my bet aligns with what the profit boost calls for (sometimes it’s a specific sport or sometimes a specific game). If it does, clear out your bet, and then try placing the bet again. It’s kind of like how any fix to a computer problem is “restart the computer.” This usually works. If that doesn’t work, clear your bet again, try to click the “opt-in” for the profit boost again, and add your bet again. If this doesn’t work, I’d escalate it to DraftKings’ support team. They’re very helpful (I’ve never had to go this far with it).
Odds boosts can be a little different. Since they are a specific bet, usually after you click “opt-in” Draftkings will automatically pop up the bet for you to just add how much you want to bet. Sometimes this can be a little slow, so I’d make sure you give it enough time before clicking your own bet. If it never wants to pop up, you can find the bet in the app and manually add it, and it should have an option to add your odds boost. If that doesn’t work, go with Draftkings support.
Can I bet the opposite side of my profit-boosted bet?
Yes. At least usually. When I started online sports gambling, I found this surprising because you can guarantee yourself a profit (see hedging an odds boost above). Sometimes the sportsbook will specifically state in the fine print that you can’t bet the opposite side of your bet, but this is pretty rare.
Other ways to make money not using profit boosts
I love profit boosts to build up your bankroll. When I started out, I’d often hedge profit boosts to guarantee money. Now that I’ve built up a little bankroll, I just take profit boosts and bet my favorite side and hope I win. Even if I don’t win that bet, when things average out over time, I’m going to beat the sportsbook when using profit boosts (since they gave up their edge).
Here are other strategies to increase your gambling success. It includes my favorite ways to increase odds against the sportsbooks.