Cash out, or cash in with some bookmakers, is an extremely popular betting tool which gives customers the chance of taking part of their potential winnings before a sporting event has finished.

Sports betting sites are constantly trying to outdo each other, with innovative and unique bonuses, promotions, or offers, different bet types or markets, and fantastic in-play capabilities.

However, cash out is still one of the best and most popular inventions within the world of sports betting and pretty much all of the biggest bookmakers allow their customers to use it to settle their bets early.

Basically, cash out is a feature that can be found on pretty much every sports betting website which allows customers to settle their bet early.

This could be as a way of ensuring at least some of the profit they would potentially win without the frustrating and nerve-wracking last few minutes where punters hope and pray that an opposition team doesn’t score a late equaliser.

For example, let’s say you have an eight-team football accumulator running with a stake of £/€10 and potential returns of £/€350.

With ten or so minutes remaining of the matches, you have seven out of the eight selections winning and the other is drawing 1-1. The drawing selection are under the cosh, having had a man sent off, and you fear that the opposition has more chance of scoring than the team you backed have.

Your cash out value is showing £/€175, which means you could cut and run and make £/€165 profit. However, that return is only half of what you could potentially win if your final selection manages to score.

You can take the money and hope they don’t score, or you can let the bet run and risk ending up with nothing. The sensible option is to cash out and remember that you have made a healthy profit, regardless of what happens after you settle the bet early.

Several sports betting websites are not content with just giving their customers the option of settling a bet before the event finishes, they offer a partial cash out feature as well.

This means that a percentage of the overall cash out value can be taken by the customer and the remaining percentage continues to run on the bet as normal.

So, if you have a cash out value of £/€100, you could cash out 50% of it and let the other 50% continue to run. Which means you could take £/€50. This changes the overall value of your bet, with the potential overall winnings increased by half as well.

Partial cash out will be available several times during an event, with most bookmakers allowing customers to cash out up to 90% of the value in increments of at least 10%.

Every bet has pre-determined odds which will go up or down during a sporting event, based on what is happening in real time. During in-play betting, the odds available will change and this impacts cash out values.

Each betting site has their own algorithm to work out cash out values and in-play odds, with a computer calculating these based on whether your selection is winning or not, the chances of them holding on or coming back to win, and other significant factors including past results of similar sporting events.

Every action and reaction during an event, whether it’s goals, red cards, injuries, etc. form part of the calculations made.

It can be frustrating when you see a ‘cash out suspended’ message during an event, especially when one selection is suspended but another looks like they are going to concede a goal at any time and you want to take what you were previously being offered.

However, suspending cash out temporarily is essential, as this means the computer is making its calculations and betting will be open again once the results are formulated.

This happens several times during an event and gives customers an exact and up-to-date cash out amount which they can choose to take at any given time.

To get the most out of cash out, customers must put the overall potential winnings out of their head and concentrate solely on the figure they are being offered if they choose to cash out their bet.

Many people cling on too long, unrealistically hoping for a few goals in the last five minutes to give them that big-money win, when they should have taken the small amount of profit they were offered and lived to fight another day, so to speak.

Use this feature wisely and it can become an extremely useful tool, but several people have made huge mistakes in using it.

The best possible advice for using cash out is to trust your instinct but also use your head, think sensibly, and work out what is the better option out of making a small profit instead of the potential massive winfall or ending up with nothing because you let the bet run.

And, do not check the scores from your bet once you’ve hit the cash out button. You will only regret it if the miracle comeback that would have made you rich did happen.

As a rule of thumb, a great cash out would be to take an offer that gives you more profit from the original stake than the difference between the offer and the potential winnings.

To explain that fully, here’s an example.

What we mean is if your stake was £/€10, with potential winnings of £/€300 and your cash out offer was £/€200, this represents a good cash out. Your profit is already £/€190, which you would be risking if you let the bet run to win another £/€100 on top.

So, you’re risking losing 190 to win 100, which doesn’t make much sense.

Obviously, circumstances will influence your decision. Things like the status of your bet and what’s happening in the events can sway you one way or the other but risking more than you stand to win is never a good idea in the world of sports betting.

Cash out isn’t the be all and end all when it comes to sports betting and sometimes it’s best to just let your bet run, without the stress of trying to decide whether to take the £/€3.21 it’s offering you in the dying moments of a game when three more goals will give you £/€110.

While cash out is a fantastic and innovative betting feature, there is one circumstance under which you should never use it. That is when the offer is less than your original stake.

Responsible gambling suggests you should only bet in the first place with money you can afford to lose, which means there’s really no point in taking less than that value when anything can happen in a sporting event.

There are many stories about people who cashed out less than their stake early in a match because a couple of teams went behind, in order to place different bets, and kicked themselves when the teams who were losing turned things around and their bet would have returned a big profit.

Cash out is such a popular betting feature nowadays that there are more online betting companies that offer it than ones who don’t. In fact, the sites which do not offer cash out in some shape or form are probably the ones who are struggling to survive in a crowded market and you may not even know who they are.

Ladbrokes were a bit of a late comer to the party with regards cash out and do slightly lag behind their competitors. However, they do offer a decent cash out feature.

William Hill, Coral, Sky Bet, Bet Victor, Bet 365, and Betway are just some of the big name sites where you will be able to cash out your bet.

Not all of these sites allow cash out for every market though, so you will need to read the terms & conditions before placing a bet and look for an indication you will be able to cash out the bet you want to place.

Most sites will have an icon or symbol of some kind to indicate cash out is available, while there is usually a separate page on the website fully explaining this feature and which markets are included.

Sometimes, there may be a line saying ‘subject to change’ or something similar. This means that the cash out feature may be removed from a sporting event after you have placed a bet on it. Ensure you know your rights in cases like these and preferably avoid them if you want to avoid becoming extremely frustrated when your accumulator loses thanks to a last minute goal, and you were unable to cash-out for the last twenty minutes.