Don't know where to start?

Click the button on the right to read The Bet Advisers guide to matched betting.

It only takes 10 minutes to learn the basics and you’ll make £15.00 in the process.

Start here

The 138.com sign up offer is a simple offer to complete and perfect for new matched bettors learning the ropes. All we have to do is open up an account and bet £20 to receive a £10 Bonus Token if our first bet loses. This will give us a guaranteed profit of £3.25. Here’s how it’s done. 2.

Terms of the offer

  • Minimum qualifying stake of £20.00.
  • £10.00 Bonus Token (free bet) will be credited if our first bet loses.
  • The minimum odds for our qualifying bet must be greater than 1.80 (4/5).
  • Only deposits made via credit or debit cards are eligible for the bonus. eWallet deposits will not be eligible for this offer.
  • Bonus Token valid for 7 days.

Qualifying Bet and Strategy

Like any offer it’s up to you what your qualifying bet will be on, as long as the market falls under the offer terms and conditions. As usual we will be looking for a market with close back and lay odds. We will be using fictional odds (yes, made up odds!) for the purposes of this example. For this offer we will be using the Risk Free mode on the Matched Betting Calculator to ensure profit is made if our bet wins or loses.

We can enter our details for the qualifying bet on the Matched Betting Calculator as follows, selecting the Risk Free mode: Stake £20.00 Team 1 back odds 7.0, Team 1 lay odds 7.2, lay commission 2%, Cashback £8.00 – this is the amount we stand to make once we extract profit from the £10.00 Bonus Token should our bet lose.

Back Bet




Lay Bet


Adjust Lay

Required Lay £
Bookmaker Exchange Cashback Total
If Back Wins
If Lay Wins

Let’s take a quick look to see whats happening with our bets and how we are profiting from this offer:

Outcome Bookmaker Exchange Profit/Loss
Team 1 win +£120.00 -£113.96 +£6.04
Team 1 don’t win -£20.00 +£18.01 -£1.99
Team 1 don’t win (free bet extracted) -£20.00 +£18.01 + Free bet extraction +£8.00  +6.01

As we can see if is irrelevant if Team 1 wins or loses, we will make £6.04 if our bet wins or we will initially lose £1.99 if our bet loses.

What’s next?

If our bet wins, great! We have now successfully completed the welcome offer. If however our bet loses we will need to extract the profit from our Bonus Token. This is treated exactly the same way as a free bet and we should expect to see at least 80% of the free bet value as cash. Once we have extracted our free bet, we can take away the initial qualifying loss of £1.99 and make a an easy £6.01 profit.

By this point you should know how to extract profit from free bets, but if your still unsure or need a refresher the perfect guide can be found here.

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