Every week, your close personal friend Action Jackson is dipping the pen here at The Odds Factory to not only track my betting performance but offer world-class betting tips completely free of charge. This week I’ll be discussing how to find the best promotions across multiple sportsbooks and leverage them to survive bad losses.

Beginning Balance: 15 Units

Last Week’s Balance: 32.5 Units

This Week’s Balance: 24 Units (-8.5 vs. Last Week)

Total Performance: +9 Units

Action Jackson Scale: Warren Buffet

After an all-time heater last week, I have crashed back down to Earth with a brutal -8.5 unit week. Honestly, it’s what I deserve for spitting in the face of the Gambling Gods and thinking for one second that I’m actually good at betting.

The good news is that it could have been a lot worse. Gambling is a long con, and Iuckily, I’d done well enough the past few weeks that I could handle a cold streak. Even luckier for me is that I have a gigantic brain that has figured out how to shop for the best promotions across sportsbooks and use it to mitigate my losses (fancy word for losing less money than I’m supposed to.)

Here’s how everything went down.

Last Week’s Performance: -8.5 Units

Australian Open Betting

Total Performance: +2 Units

Normally don’t bet on tennis, but I’ll make an exception for the Grand Slam events, especially when the big names are still alive. I lost a quick 2.5 units on Serena against Naomi Osaka, which was an easy pill to swallow. Betting on Serena is like betting on Tom Brady – you’d rather lose with them than lose going against them. It’s better to eat a few units than end up kicking yourself for ever betting against them.

On the men’s side, I went big on Djokovic for the final and netted a comfortable 4.5 units on his win. Since the match was at 3 AM, it was actually a pleasant gambling experience. Rather than obsessively refreshing my ESPN app, I could go to sleep and wake up to a nice little surprise in my account.

NBA Betting

Total Performance: -10.5 Units

My struggles with NBA betting this year have been well-documented, but I simply cannot figure out the league this year. I continued my winning streak from last week into Friday night and at one point was up 14 units. That’s dangerously close to “Book a Trip to the Bahamas” on the Action Jackson scale. Like the moron I am (and apparently will always be), I started daydreaming of my tropical vacation just a little bit too early, took my eye off the ball, and paid the price dearly. I was hit with 9 straight losses. 9. That’s almost ten, people! I was dangerously close to bottoming out, but as always, my massive brain had other plans and decided to help. I was able to scratch and claw my way back and lose way less than I should have through one simple trick: taking advantage of sportsbook promotions.

Shouldn’t be news to you guys, but every sportsbook is simply dying to take your money. With betting becoming legalized more and more frequently, the competition between companies like DraftKings, FanDuel, and William Hill for your hard-earned money is fierce. One of the ways books try to stand out is through promotions. If you do just a little bit of research, you can make your dollars go farther and more importantly, survive bad weeks.

Here are my two favorite types of promotions from sportsbooks and how I use them when I’m in a pinch:

Odds Boosts

Every day, books like PointsBet and DraftKings will boost odds for certain games or player props. This is a great opportunity to get excellent odds and increase your payouts on bets you may not have necessarily considered. You should be perusing these pages every day while you’re placing your standard bets for the night and jumping on good opportunities.

Here’s a quick glance at PointsBets Odds Boosts for tonight. (I’m an NJ bettor, so my odds boosts might be different than yours, but you get a general idea.)

There’s a nice mix of sporting events to bet on and the odds are all very favorable. The bet that jumps out to me is the LeBron triple-double at +275. With AD out, LeBron has been carrying most of the offensive load and has come 1 rebound or assist short of a triple-double in his last two games. No harm in throwing a unit on that and netting a quick 2-3 units for your balance.

Last week, I was able to take advantage of three separate odds boosts (top payouts were Kawhi and PG combine for 55+ and Beal and Dame combine for 70+) to win back some extra money. Odds boosts are perfect if you’re hurting because with the strong odds that they offer, you don’t have to invest a ton to win big.

Free Bet Promotions

Lots of sportsbooks will offer very strong promotions that pay you out in “free bet dollars” or “bonus dollars.” Generally speaking, because the sportsbooks want to entice new bettors, these promotions are 1) easy to win and 2) offer big payouts. The rub is the dollars cannot be cashed out, but can only be redeemed for future bets. Not only is it a way to get new users to come back and bet more, it’s a potential gold mine for degenerates like me who haven’t thought of cashing out their balance in 2 years.

For example, here’s a typical free bet promotion that William Hill ran last night that I won money on.

I was going to bet on the Dallas game anyways, so when I was doing my pre-bet research and saw that William Hill was running this promo, I decided to take my $50 and put it on the Mavs with William Hill instead of another book. Not only did I like the Mavs in the game, but I knew Luka would fill up the stat sheet and get me free bet dollars.

When the Mavs covered +3 and Luka delivered 31, 10, and 8 (plus 1 steal), I ended up pocketing an extra $32 in free bet dollars. Now, that’s not a ton of money, but it adds up. When your balance is running low, it can be a godsend to have $100 in free bets to use and save your ass. Make sure you’re hammering these whenever you see them – you’ll thank yourself later. Trust me.

The Week Ahead

The plan is simple – keep pounding my head against the wall with the NBA and try to finally figure this league out. I caved and paid for League Pass, so I can start watching more games and decide for myself who’s good, instead of trusting people on Twitter. And as always, I’ll be doing my TomBox sports betting algorithm research and hammering every promotion I can find.

Until next week.

Jackson, Action.