Cash-out offers and what the underlying market says

A cash-out is an offer from the book to settle an open bet immediately for a stated amount, replacing whatever the ticket might have returned. It is not a market you trade into and there is no counterparty other than the book. The number is computed by the book from its own live prices with a margin applied, and it changes on every refresh.

The value of an open ticket is its potential return multiplied by the current probability of it landing, and the live market publishes an estimate of that probability in its own prices. That makes every cash-out offer checkable: the fair figure and the achievable figure can both be computed from numbers already on the screen.

The comparison is not always won by hedging. Where the live market has moved against your side, or where the opposing price is thin or unavailable, the offered figure can beat what you could construct yourself. The point is that all three numbers are computable in under a minute.

Which is where it goes wrong. The offer is presented as a decision under time pressure, on a button that moves while you look at it, at the moment the bet feels most fragile. Cashing out a bet funded by a promotion also frequently forfeits the promotion's terms, which is stated in the terms and nowhere near the button.

What to do with it. Before accepting, work out potential return multiplied by current implied probability, and the stake that would lock the position by hedging; take the largest of the three numbers.

Work it out. The hedge calculator gives the stake that evens out the result for any two prices, and what is left on each side.