"Free crack" is Australian punting slang for an offer that gives you a go at a market with no prior turnover condition: a first bet whose stake comes back if it loses, or a credit placed on an account with no qualifying bet to put on first. It is community wording rather than any bookmaker's own term, so two people using the phrase are often describing two different things.
The distinction that decides the value is what the refund is paid in. A stake returned as cash is worth its face value. The same amount returned as a stake-not-returned bonus bet is worth materially less, and the gap is arithmetic rather than opinion. This page sets out the shapes the term covers, how to value one before you place it, and the conditions most people skip.
What the term covers
Three shapes travel under the one name, and the terms will tell you which you are looking at.
A stake back in cash. A nominated bet, often the first on an account, is refunded in cash if it loses. Cash is withdrawable and can be staked again on anything, so the refund is worth exactly its face value.
A refund paid as a bonus bet. The same structure, except the refund arrives as a bonus bet, which normally settles stake not returned: a winner pays the winnings and not the bonus amount back. It is worth less than its face value, and how much less depends on the price you use it at.
A credit with no qualifying bet. A bonus bet or bet token placed on an account without a prior turnover requirement, so there is no qualifying bet to get out of the way first. It is still a bonus bet, with the same settlement and the same conditions wrapped around it.
The first and third are what most people mean by free crack: the first because the money comes back as money, the third because nothing has to be staked to reach it. The second gets called the same thing and is not the same thing. Where each sits among the other shapes is covered in betting promotions in Australia.
Risk: Betting involves risk. This page describes offer shapes, not any current promotion: nothing here is an offer, the terms of any promotion are the bookmaker's, and the bookmaker decides whether a bet qualifies. A promotion does not stop a bet losing, and a bonus bet that loses pays nothing. There is no guarantee of profit. See responsible gambling for limits and support.
Why a cash refund is worth more than a bonus refund
A $50 cash refund is $50. There is nothing to work out: it lands as cash, it is withdrawable, and its value is its face value.
A $50 stake-not-returned bonus bet is not $50, because a winning one pays the winnings only. One way to put a figure on it is to convert it: back a selection with the bonus bet, lay the same selection at an exchange, and you keep close to the same cash whichever way it lands, less commission and less the gap between the two prices.
On illustrative prices, a $50 bonus bet backed at $3.50 and laid at $3.60 at an illustrative 5% commission rate, both bets matched in full: the lay stake is 50 x (3.50 - 1) / (3.60 - 0.05) = $35.21, and that keeps 35.21 x (1 - 0.05) = $33.45 either way, a conversion of 33.45 / 50 = 66.9%. So the same $50 printed on the offer is $50 in one currency and about $33.45 in the other, a gap of 50 - 33.45 = $16.55, or 16.55 / 50 = 33.1% of face value.
The conversion moves with the back price, the lay price and the commission rate, so run your own prices through the bonus bet converter rather than carrying one rate around in your head. The best way to use bonus bets weighs converting against simply betting it, price by price, with the liability each lay ties up.
Risk: Betting involves risk. Bookmakers can restrict or close accounts and void bets, prices move, and a positive expected value bet can still lose. A bonus bet that loses pays nothing, and the kept amounts above assume both bets are matched in full at the prices shown. There is no guarantee of profit. See responsible gambling for limits and support.
Valuing a free crack before you place it
A cash stake-back has a value you can write in one line. If the bookmaker's price matches the fair price, the bet wins 1 divided by the price of the time and pays price minus 1 in profit, while the refund covers the stake the rest of the time. So the value per $1 staked is (1 / price) x (price - 1), which simplifies to 1 - 1 / price.
That figure is also the chance of losing, which is the tidy part of it: a full cash stake-back is worth, per dollar staked, exactly the share of the time the refund gets claimed.
The same line values a stake-not-returned bonus bet staked outright, because that bet also pays price minus 1 on a win and nothing on a loss. What it does not value is a bonus bet you mean to lay off, which keeps less than that, as the 66.9% above shows.
| Price used (illustrative, at fair) | Value per $1 staked | A $50 stake-back |
|---|---|---|
| $1.50 | 1 - 1 / 1.50 = 33.3% | $16.67 |
| $3.50 | 1 - 1 / 3.50 = 71.4% | $35.71 |
| $5.00 | 1 - 1 / 5.00 = 80.0% | $40.00 |
For the bonus-bet version of the same offer, multiply by the conversion. At the illustrative 66.9% worked out above, a $50 refund-as-bonus-bet offer placed at $3.50 is worth 35.71 x 0.669 = $23.89 rather than $35.71: one shape, one dollar figure on the tin, two values about $11.82 apart.
Two limits on that sum. It is a long-run average and not what any single attempt returns, and it assumes the bookmaker's price is the fair price. A price below fair takes value straight back out, so the first move is to compare the offered price against the market rather than against the headline on the offer. How to value a betting promotion runs the same method across the other promotion types.
Risk: Betting involves risk. Bookmakers can restrict or close accounts and void bets, prices move, and a positive expected value bet can still lose. A value worked out at a fair price is an average over many attempts, so a run of losses says nothing on its own. There is no guarantee of profit. See responsible gambling for limits and support.
The cap and the minimum price
Two conditions change the arithmetic more than anything else in the terms.
The cap. A refund is capped at an amount, and staking above it leaves the excess at ordinary risk. If the cap is $50 and you stake $150, the covered share is 50 / 150 = 33.3%, and the other $100 is an ordinary bet with nothing behind it. The cap, not the stake you feel like placing, is the size of the offer.
The minimum price. These offers almost always require a price at or above a floor. That raises what the offer is worth rather than lowering it, because the table above climbs with the price: the refund is claimed about 80% of the time at an illustrative fair $5.00 against about 33.3% at $1.50. What it also raises is the variance, since at $5.00 losing is the ordinary outcome and the refund is the ordinary result.
A floor above the prices you would otherwise bet is a real constraint. The offer is worth the number in the table only if you are willing to take a selection you would not have chosen on its merits.
Risk: Betting involves risk. A higher minimum price means the bet loses more often, the uncapped part of a stake is an ordinary bet, and no promotion stops a bet losing. There is no guarantee of profit. See responsible gambling for limits and support.
The part people skip: expiry and market restrictions
An offer with no qualifying bet still carries the rest of the terms, and two of them quietly decide what the credit is worth.
Expiry. The terms state a window, and an unused credit is gone at the end of it. That turns a valuation into a deadline. If the only selections inside the price band before expiry are short, the value drops: staked outright at an illustrative fair $1.60, a $50 bonus bet is worth 50 x (1 - 1 / 1.60) = $18.75, against 50 x (1 - 1 / 3.50) = $35.71 at $3.50. A deadline that forces you short therefore costs about 35.71 - 18.75 = $16.96 of that $35.71.
Market restrictions. The credit is usually limited to certain sports, codes, race types or bet types, and sometimes to win bets only or to one market. A restriction to a market you cannot lay cheaply raises the cost of converting, and a restriction to a market carrying a wide bookmaker margin lowers the price available, which is the same loss arriving by a different route.
Three more lines in the terms worth reading before you count the credit as money:
- Whether it can be split across several bets or has to go on in one.
- Whether the winnings are withdrawable. Under the National Consumer Protection Framework for online wagering, winnings from a bonus bet must be withdrawable with no turnover requirement (National Policy Statement, updated 3 May 2022). How the credit itself may be used is set by the bookmaker's terms.
- How a void, an abandonment or a scratching is handled, and whether the credit returns to the account with its original expiry or a new one.
Promo turnover requirements covers the turnover side of the same terms, and bonus bets explained covers expiry, minimum odds and eligible markets in detail.
Risk: Betting involves risk. A deadline does not make a short price good value, a restricted market can be the dearest place to use a credit, and an unused credit simply expires. There is no guarantee of profit. See responsible gambling for limits and support.
Terminology varies, so read the terms
Free crack is not a defined term anywhere. It moves between promo chat groups and comment threads and gets attached to anything that feels like an attempt without a cost: a cash stake-back, a bonus bet with no qualifying bet, sometimes a money-back special on an account that has been betting for years.
So do not transact on the name. The terms say what the refund is paid in, what the cap is, what the minimum price is, when it expires and which markets it covers, and those five answers are the offer. If someone cannot tell you which of the three shapes above they mean, they have not read it either.
And treat a no-downside framing as a warning rather than a feature. An offer described as having no downside is usually being valued at face value, which the arithmetic above shows is wrong whenever the refund is a bonus bet: $50 on the tin was about $33.45 on illustrative prices.
Where B337 fits
B337's sessions use only the promotions and bonus bets a bookmaker has already issued to your account, within that bookmaker's rules. They never create, unlock or claim an offer: with no token on the account, no promo bet is placed, and the bookmaker decides whether a bet qualifies.
Two parts of the product speak to the conditions above. Auto Scan Promos reads the offers on your accounts during the day, and the Promos page lists them with the expiry date each bookmaker states, with opt-in Discord warnings for offers in their last 48 hours: the expiry problem handled as a reminder rather than a calculation. And bonus betting is part of the Classic Racing strategy, which Full Automation runs in accounts you own while the bot is running on your own computer. A bonus bet goes on only where the runner sits inside your odds range and its conversion, worked out against the Betfair price at the time, clears the threshold you set. Converting with a lay can be done by the optional auto-lay in your own exchange account, which is off until you turn it on; left off, the lay stays yours to place.
Full Automation shows no price: the team confirms it, including any charges on top of the plan price, before you pay, and bets placed through B337 use credits. Automation makes it possible to bet far more, far faster, than by hand, so the deposit limits you set with each bookmaker are the firmer cap rather than the settings in any software. Bookmaker and exchange names are trade marks of their owners. B337 is not affiliated with them.
For free and confidential support call 1800 858 858 or visit gamblinghelponline.org.au.
Risk: Betting involves risk. Many bookmakers restrict automated betting in their terms and can limit your stakes, void bets or close your account, prices move, and a session places nothing while your computer is off. Promotions carry each bookmaker's own terms. There is no guarantee of profit. See responsible gambling for limits and support.