Your First Hedge (Pro)

Why Pro is the right tier if you have a full set of unopened sportsbook accounts and a $10,000 bankroll. Here are the DraftKings, BetMGM and FanDuel new-account offers, how the sportsbooks watch for people who only show up to collect a bonus, and a first Pro hedge that uses all three signup bonuses at once with an A+ Square Score.

DraftKings

DraftKings has been offering this deposit bonus for four or five years now, so it is a staple. You deposit $5,000 and get up to $1,000 in bonuses. It is only on your very first deposit, which means you need to deposit $5,000 into DraftKings.

On top of that you get a signup bonus for using DraftKings. These change constantly, so the one shown here is probably not the one you will actually use, but let's use it for the walkthrough: bet $5, get $150 in bonus bets paid over 14 days.

Sportsbooks like DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM and all the others monitor new accounts to try to detect bettors who are only there to collect money from the bonuses. One thing they are looking for with a promotion like this is someone who comes in, bets the minimum $5, collects the $150 in bonuses, bets those, and leaves. If they see you doing that, they flag you as a bonus abuser and stop sending you bonuses. We want to avoid that.

BetMGM

The next piece of the puzzle is BetMGM. In Virginia they have a very generous new-player offer: up to $1,500 back in bonus bets if your first bet does not win. That means your first bet at BetMGM needs to be $1,500 to get the full value of the promotion.

They do the same thing. If they see you come in, bet $1,500 on something that looks like you are just there to collect a bonus, use the bonus and leave, they are not going to send you any more bonuses.

FanDuel

Rounding out the day-one signups is FanDuel. FanDuel gives you a ton of bonuses by email over the first month your account is open, so the signup bonus you see advertised is just the tip of the iceberg. Structurally this one is similar to DraftKings: bet $5, get $250, and they are watching to see if people just bet the minimum $5, collect the bonuses and leave.

The Pro setup

Here is where the magic happens. In a brand new Pro-tier Ungambled account, this is what your setup looks like before your first hedge:

• BetMGM: $2,000. You have to bet at least $1,500, and if you deposit exactly $1,500 that tells them you are just there for the bonus. So you deposit more than that.
• DraftKings: $5,000. You need the $5,000 deposit to get the full value of the deposit bonus. Easy.
• FanDuel: $2,000. They are going to send so many bonuses that we will need the cash.

Out of a $10,000 bankroll that leaves $1,000 in reserve, your first three sportsbooks are provisioned, and you are ready for your first Pro-tier hedge.

Your first Pro hedge

On the Hedges tab it looks just like it does in Basic, Your First Hedge, but now you are using three signup bonuses instead of two, and the Square Score is a big A+. It is as good as it gets for placing these first three signup bonuses.

With the three signup bonuses, we are sending a parlay to BetMGM, a parlay to FanDuel, and a moneyline on a slight favorite to DraftKings. All of these look very square. A parlay on a bonus at BetMGM looks awfully square, because most people do not know how to hedge parlays; they do not even think it is possible.

The reason this looks square on just about every dimension is on the Place Bets screen. At BetMGM you are using the $1,500 bonus, betting the $1,500, but using it on a parlay, and most sportsbooks know that people do not hedge parlays. At FanDuel you are using a bet-$5-get-$50 bonus and betting $1,400. That is way more than the minimum. If you only need to bet $5 to get the bonus, why on earth would you bet $1,400? That screams square.

Same at DraftKings: $2,875 where the requirement is $5 to get a $200 bonus.

Possible outcomes

Put all of these together and this example is guaranteed at least $564 of profit, ideally more than that: $649 or $589 depending on the outcome.

All three sportsbooks look extremely square from bet number one. If you keep using our system and doing square hedging, they stay looking square, which means they send you more bonuses and higher-value bonuses. And if you can keep betting thousand-dollar or high-hundreds stakes, there is a chance they raise your limits too, because they see someone betting a lot of money on dumb bets and assume you are not sophisticated enough to hedge them and collect the profit.