Another day, another gamble

Three companies down (SportingBet, bet365 and Jaxx), two pending free bets and a deficit of £12.61.

The next betting site identified was extrabet. Joined via Quidco to get £25 cashback. Here's the free bet offer: Open an account ... and we'll automatically match your first bet stake with a Free Bet of up to £25 on the same selection. A great, no-hassle way of doing the free bet in my opinion. I bet £25 (effectively £50) on there being more than 2.5 goals in the Celtic v St. Mirren game at odds of 1.67. I countered with a Betfair lay of £35.03. If there were less than 2.5 goals, I would lose £25 with extrabet, but win £33.28 (£35.03 - 5%) with Betfair. If there were more than 2.5 goals, I would lose £25.22 with the lay and win £33.50 with the bet. Either way, this was an £8.28 profit.

But now I really messed up.

The next betting site identified was betinternet.com (£10 Quidco cashback). I read the terms and conditions incorrectly and saw what I wanted to see rather than what was written. I bet £25 on Celtic to beat St. Mirren by 1 : 0 at odds of 7.0 - this would have returned £175 (£150 + £25 stake) if it won. The terms of the free bet were Simply place your first single bet of £10 (or the equivalent in your preferred currency) or more, at odds of evens (2.00) or above, on any of the sports markets covered by betinternet.com, and first time new account customers will receive a 50% cashmatch bonus upto the value of £25. I think it was the word cashmatch that threw me. I interpreted this as they would match your bet with a 50% matching stake, effectively betting £37.50 on the Celtic 1 : 0 win. I essentially assumed that this site handled free bets in the same way as extrabet.com. With that thought in my head, I set up the counter-bet on Betfair.

I laid £33.11 against a Celtic 1 : 0 win at 7.6, which was a liability of £218.52, but the bet would only win me £150 rather than the £225 I thought. So - if Celtic DID win 1 : 0, I would be £68.52 out of pocket on this bet.

In the 61st minute, with the game 0 : 0, St. Mirren's defender Will Haining was shown the red card for pulling back Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink. Barry Robson converted the penalty to make it 1 : 0, and I felt rather confident that a St. Mirren team playing with 10 men for the final 30 minutes of the game at Celtic Park would concede at least one more goal and save my bacon. The game ended 1 : 0.

I was £72.85 in deficit.

READ THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS!