Promo bonuses

How bonuses are tracked

A sportsbook bonus — the free-bet credit, deposit-match balance, or no-sweat refund you earn by completing a promotion — is part of your real profit even though it never came from a bet you graded. SmartStake records each bonus as a settled free-bet wager tagged bonus, so it lives in the same place as every other bet: your Bet Tracker and Performance page.

There is no separate transactions ledger. A bonus is simply a free bet that has already won, which keeps your tracker on one consistent money model.

Recording a bonus

You record a bonus when you complete a promotion. On a promo guide, the Complete Promo button asks for the bonus you actually received; enter the amount and SmartStake creates the bonus wager for you. See Promo guides for the full completion flow.

The bonus appears immediately in both the Performance page and the Bet Tracker, tagged bonus so you can filter your promotion winnings apart from your regular bets.

How a bonus affects your numbers

• Profit — the bonus amount is added to your profit on the date you completed the promo, the same as a winning bet's payout.
• Stake at risk and ROI — a bonus is a free bet, so it carries no stake at risk. It raises your total profit without inflating the stake in the denominator of your ROI. See Performance charts for how those figures are derived.
• Tags — every bonus carries the bonus tag automatically. It is deliberately not given a "free bet" tag, so filtering by your own free-bet tag still shows only the free bets you placed yourself. You can add your own tags on top.

Recording other money by hand

For anything that is not a promo bonus — for example a stray free bet you want to log manually — use Add Bet in the Bet Tracker and turn on the Free bet toggle. A free-bet wager counts toward profit at no stake at risk, exactly like a bonus. See Adding and editing bets.

For context on how bankroll figures tie in, see Bankroll, Kelly & stake sizing.