Money Management/Bankroll Management. When you are betting on sports you should always set. Pick’em and free online betting sites test your sports knowledge without requiring you to put money on the line There are a number of different formats for free-play sports betting Free online betting sites that use real odds and mimic pay-to-play sportsbooks are a great place to practice sports betting.

The chance to bet on sports for free is an enticing one to an otherwise-hesitant gambler. Many sportsbooks, therefore, use free-to-play sports betting or free-to-play contests to ease the transition.

There are several ways potential bettors can take a shot at free money with sports betting predictions. Pick’ems, trivia quizzes, and social gaming challenges can be a clever way for sports bettors to break the ice with a particular sportsbook or a few different sportsbooks.

If you’re curious about sports betting but nervous about putting your first few bucks on the line, you’ve come to the right place. Here’s a handy guide to the types of free-to-play sports betting contests you can find online in the US.

Top sportsbooks for free-to-play sports betting

What is free-to-play sports betting?

As its name implies, free-to-play sports bets are contests in which sportsbooks offer real money prize pools or specific bets for new or current customers to play without having to contribute any funds of their own.

Given that gambling operators are not known for their generosity, the idea that you could win actual prizes without risking anything may seem hard to believe. In general, the only thing that you will have to contribute is your contact information and the time required to establish an account with the sportsbook.

However, a sportsbook has two main goals in mind when it offers a free-to-play opportunity. The first objective is to expand its roster of player accounts, and the requirement that you sign up for an account makes such an event possible.

The other goal for the sportsbook is to show you how it does business. It hopes that, with any luck, you’ll like the format and feel of the book enough to invest some of your funds later. As it turns out, according to numerous sources, this strategy is fairly successful.

It isn’t nefarious for you, though. Nothing says that you have to play beyond the event itself, and you don’t even have to answer any of those marketing emails that you’re destined to receive. If you end up liking the sportsbook, anyway, then that’s fine.

Types of Free-to-Play Sports Bets

There are three main types of free-to-play sports bets that you may encounter. One of them — event-based contests — is a free-to-play option that you will find more often than any of the others. However, when there’s a possibility of free cash and prizes coming your way, it’s important to know what you might see.

Pick’ems, Predictions and Quiz Contests

Free-to-play contests revolving around major sporting events are quintessential offerings at online sportsbooks. They usually take the form of Pick’em or Survivor games that revolve around the outcomes of the games or player performances.

A classic example of an event-based, free-to-play contest is a March Madnessbracket. Many sportsbooks offer a big guaranteed prize pool to be split among anyone who registers and submits a free bracket.

Your picks compete against everyone’s else to see who picks the most games correctly. The players accruing the most points for picking games right split the prize pool.

DraftKings Sportsbook‘s free-to-play March Madness bracket, for example, had a $64,000 prize pool last year with no entry fee required. It was also open to players in all 50 states not just legal sports betting states.

Another popular free-to-play contest is the predictionquiz. In this type of game, you’re given a set amount of money you must bet on a series of yes or no propositions. At the end of the quiz you keep whatever winnings you have left.

Finally, there are also quiz contests that feature a series of questions that escalate in difficulty. Any wrong answer eliminates you from the competition. At the end of the series, any players who have successfully answered all the questions split a predetermined prize pool.

To be fair, the chance of winning any money in one of these contests can be low. There are always major elements of chance and uncertainty involved, and it takes quite a bit of luck to get things just right.

Because these contests qualify as sweepstakes, you will also be playing against a wider group of people. So, even if you live in a state with legal sports betting, you will have to defeat competition from most states in the country, irrespective of the legality of sports betting.

Free bet giveaways

Another type of free-to-play sports bet is the freebet. A sportsbook will often give away vouchers for free sports bets of a certain value if a player meets certain conditions.

In many cases, the condition for this type of giveaway is merely to register for an account, and perhaps enter a special free bet bonus code. This type of free-to-play sports bet is accurately described as a “no deposit bonus,” also.

A sportsbook may also give away free bets if you like and share a sportsbook’s post on your Facebook feed, for instance, or retweet and comment about them on your Twitter profile.

In any case, this free-to-play bet is a nontransferable voucher that you can only use on specific types of bets. Usually, the sportsbook will mandate that you place your wager on bets that are not enormous favorites to win.

You can’t cash out your free bet voucher. You have to use it for a bet, and if you happen to bet less than the full face value of the bonus, you will lose the remainder. So, there’s no reason to try to divide the amount of the free bet.

The most value you can hope to realize from a free bet will be the profit from a successful wager. You don’t get paid back the amount of the voucher. However, free bets are wonderful ways to build your bankroll for no risk at all. As stated earlier, they are also a great way to see how the sportsbook does business.

Free fantasy sports contests

A third common free-to-play promo is the free fantasy sports contest. While this type of betting is a blood relative with the pick’em contest, it tends to involve a regular group of matches or games, rather than a special event.

The platforms that host these kinds of contests tend to allow both public and private contests to run. So, you can can choose to play against the public at large or simply compete against a group of friends. In this regard, the free fantasy contest is much more along the lines of social gaming, rather than true sports betting.

However, some companies will set aside actual prizes for the winners of these contests so it is a form of free-to-play sports betting.

How to pick a free-to-play sports betting contest

At this point, you’re probably interested in checking out the possibilities for free money floating around these sportsbooks. Of course, not all free-to-play contests are created equally. Some of them might not be exactly free, so you need to follow these guidelines for having a good free-to-play experience:

1. The contest needs to be completely free

The first rule of thumb may seem obvious. However, before you commit to playing one of these games, you need to make sure that it is, in fact, completely free.

Though most sportsbooks are on the up and up, some might try to add language into the fine print that makes it difficult or impossible to collect on the prize money without making a purchase yourself. Nothing could be a nastier surprise than to come out on top of a contest only to find out that you have to come out of pocket yourself.

In reality, very few sportsbooks would try something like this, as it would likely draw the ire of regulators to do so. Still, it’s better to be safe rather than sorry, and you need to read the terms and conditions carefully before you sign up.

2. Free-to-play sports contests can be hard to complete

Before you say yes to a free-to-play contest, look at what you have to do to play. If you have to log onto the site every day for a month, for instance, you need to make sure that you can do that.

The truth of the matter is that when a chance to win money is free, you can’t afford to let the competition gain an advantage over you. Even a single missed day could be fatal to your chances, so you need to be able to play the game to its fullest.

3. Don’t play at offshore sportsbooks

You should also make sure to check out the licensing status of the sportsbook hosting the contest before you surrender your contact information. The last thing to do is supply a fly-by-night operator with your details.

4. The odds of winning free-to-play contests are high

The disappointing reality about free-to-play sports betting is that you can’t expect much when it comes to winning. These contests are promotional gimmicks that the sportsbooks use to build out their player lists and engender loyalty.

The odds involved with most free-to-play contests are prohibitively high in most cases. Even savvy sports bettors have a hard time playing in a meaningful manner here.

However, if you just want to have some fun or you find yourself a bit light in the wallet, there’s no harm in taking a shot at the big prize. After all, someone has to win it.

Making money betting on sports can be tough, but there are a lot of sports bettors who consistently win, and there are even a lot of professional bettors who make a good living off of sports betting. On this page you will find sports betting strategy and tips to help you become one of the winning bettors.

Below I talk about the basic sports betting strategies for beginner bettors, but if you are more experienced you can check out the advanced sports betting strategy articles towards the bottom of this page.

The Basics To Sports Betting Strategy

Online Sports Betting Free Money

In order to help yourself make money or a profit from sports betting there are a couple of basic strategies or tips you will want to understand and follow. None of these sports betting strategies are secrets by any means, but following them will help you win money betting on sports.

The bettors who don’t follow any of these strategies are often referred to as “squares” and those are the type of bettors that the sportsbooks will make their profits from.

Sports Betting Free Play

#1 Money Management/Bankroll Management

When you are betting on sports you should always set aside a certain amount of money, which we refer to as your “bankroll”, in which you can afford to lose. Like with any type of gambling, you never want to bet betting on sports with money you cannot afford to lose. Set aside a certain amount of money that you can use for your bankroll for the week, the month, or the season. A general sports betting strategy for money management is to only make bets with 1%-5% of your bankroll. For example, if your bankroll for the NFL season was $1,000 you would be making $10-$50 bets on each NFL game you wanted to bet on. It is also very important that you do not chase your loses with bigger bets. It is common for some sports bettors to be down money and feel in order to win it back they need to increase the size of their bets. This is putting yourself in the wrong mindset and will often lead to you losing even more money. Work with the size of your bankroll, and look to slowly increase it over the length of the season.

Here’s a video going over Bankroll Management strategies for sports betting:

Online Sports Betting Free Money

#2 Bet Sober and Don’t Go on Tilt

Although betting while sober seems like common sense, you’d be surprised how many people bet on sports under the influence. Is it a coincidence that the Las Vegas casinos offer free alcoholic drinks while you are gambling? I don’t think so. I don’t want to sound like your mother here, but betting while under the influence will impair your judgement and should definitely be avoided if you want to become a winning sports bettor.

The second part of this tips is “Don’t Go on Tilt”. Going on tilt or “tilting” is a commonly referred to term with poker players and basically means letting your emotions take over, which often leads to bad decisions. If you are angry or upset at something, such as a couple bad beats with your sports bets, you shouldn’t be placing any more bets. Take a break, go for a walk, get your mind clear before you start making anymore sports betting picks.

#3 Do Your Homework

This is maybe the most important sports betting strategy. You will always want to do your research before placing your bets. Although going with your hunch when betting your favorite sport may work some of the time, in the long run it will not lead to you winning money betting on sports. In order to profit from sports betting you will need to research, study, and do your homework for each pick you make. Look at stats, find trends, create sports betting systems, analyze past games – basically do everything you could possibly do to ensure you have value in your pick before you place your wager.

#4 Line Shopping

A very big step to becoming a winning sports bettor is to make sure you are shopping for the best lines. What this means is that you will have to have an account at a couple of different online sportsbooks and when you are ready to make a bet on a certain team or outcome you check the different sportsbooks and find which book is offering the best line for you (this ties in with our advanced how to find max value article). For example, if you are looking to bet on the New England Patriots on a 7 point spread, you would want to check a couple different sportsbooks to see if any of them are offering the Patriots at 6.5 points, or at the very least find the best price you can get them at 7 points at. Over the course of a sport betting season you can win yourself a lot of money from shopping the lines that would otherwise would not be one. Line shopping is definitely one of the best sports betting strategies used by winning sports bettors. To see a list of sportsbooks we recommend signing up for visit our Online Betting Sites section.

I’ve created a line shopping video and posted it on YouTube (seen below):

#5 Avoid Buying Points

Avoid falling into “square” tendencies such as buying favorites down or underdogs up. For example, some bettors always feel the need to buy an NFL favorite of -3.5 down to -2.5. The sportsbooks are smart enough to charge more juice to do this, mathematically making it a bad strategy. The same goes with buying an NFL underdog from +2.5 to +3.5 for example. In 99% of cases I would advise against it. Check out the video I made below about buying points on NFL underdogs.

Sports Betting Free Money

Other Sports Betting Strategies and Myths

Sports Betting Free Money No Deposit

Above are the four main basic strategies you will want to follow in order to become a winning sports bettor, but there are a couple of other tips you can use to help you win money.

Sports Betting App Free Money

For one, you can try following a sports handicapper who is using a proven sports betting system. Be careful of scammers out there though. If they don’t show their past records long term plus proof I would pass, and in most cases I wouldn’t be paying for picks at all.

An old sports betting strategy is to bet on home underdogs. The theory is that teams are usually more inspired to play at home, and they will often not fold if they are down like they may when on the road. Betting home dogs in the past could have made you money, but this isn’t true as much anymore. You can read the current betting market article to learn why.

The last tip I have for you is to try and place your bets at the right time. With lines shifting from the time they are posted to the time the game starts, you will want to get your bet in at the time when you are getting the best price. Predicting line movements is extremely hard but it is worth looking into. Check out the video below that I made titled “When To Place Your Bets”.

Advanced Sports Betting Strategy Articles

» How to Place a Bet
» How to Win at Sports Betting
» Sports Betting Math
» Teaser Betting Strategy
» Prop Betting Strategy
» How to Get Max Value When Betting
» Future Betting Strategy
» NFL Bye Week Betting Strategy
» Parlay Betting Strategy
» Pleaser Betting Strategy
» Sweetheart Teaser Betting Strategy
» Current Betting Market
» How to Research Your Bet
» Mistakes You Need to Avoid
» Things Beginners Need to Know
» Win/Loss vs Value