The Cheltenham Festival 2016 gets underway on Tuesday and Betfair have a cracking offer to kick things off! Simply place a single bet of £25.00 on any race taking place on Day 1 of the Cheltenham Festival 2016 and if our horse wins at SP (starting price) odds of 3/1 or greater, Betfair will give us 3 free bets to the same value as our stake in addition to our winnings. Translated into matched betting terms, this gives us a potential profit of £65.38 and here’s how…
Qualifying Bet:
If you’re unsure about how to place qualifying bets, check out my Qualifying Bet Strategy page for a walk-through guide on how it should be done.
This offer is available on all 7 of Tuesday’s races at Cheltenham…
| Time | Race |
|---|---|
| 13:30 | Sky Bet Supreme Novices’ Hurdle |
| 14:10 | Arkle Chase |
| 14:50 | Ultima Business Solutions Handicap Chase |
| 15:30 | Champion Hurdle |
| 16:10 | Mares Hurdle |
| 16:50 | National Hunt Chase |
| 17:30 | Close Brothers Novices Handicap Chase |
We need to back a horse at SP (starting price) odds of 3/1 or greater, to be eligible for this offer. It’s therefore best that we wait until near the start of races before placing our qualifying bets, in order to ensure that our selection isn’t likely to start the race at odds of less than 3/1.
If our horse wins, Betfair will give us 3 free bets equal to our stake, up to maximum of £25.00 per free bet. So, for example, if we were to back a winner at SP 4/1 for £25.00, we would receive £125.00 in cash (including our stake) as well as 3 x £25.00 free bets.
We know that by using straightforward matched betting, we can extract 80% of any free bet as cash, so in this case, £60.00. This gives us total cash returns of £185.00, which gives us effective odds of 7.40 on our initial £25.00 stake. A quicker way of calculating our effective odds is to simply add 2.40 (80% of the 3 free bets) onto our actual back odds.
We can enter these effective odds as our back odds in my matched betting calculator, in order to calculate the correct overlay stake that will guarantee us a profit regardless of the outcome.
I like to place my exchange lay bets with Smarkets as they have great liquidity, the site is really easy to use and they only charge 2% commission. It’s also a very bad idea to place back bets on the Betfair Sportsbook and then lay them off on the Betfair Exchange for obvious reasons.
As you can see, the calculator tells us that our lay stake should be £35.04…
Place £25.00 on Altior @ 5.00 = Potential profit of £100.00
Lay £35.04 on Altior @ 5.30 = Potential liability of £150.66
Let’s have a look at our potential profit/loss for the possible outcomes…
| Altior wins | + £100.00 – £150.66 + £60.00 (extract 80% from 3 x £25.00 free bets) = £9.34 profit |
| Altior doesn’t win | – £25.00 + £34.34 (£35.04 minus 2% commission) = £9.34 profit |
So, regardless of the outcome of the race, we will make a guaranteed profit of £9.34.
Depending on the odds available, if we apply the same strategy to all 7 races on Day 1 of the Cheltenham Festival 2016, we could make a potential profit of £65.38 on this Betfair Cheltenham offer!
* I actually placed my bets as follows…
| Race | Selection | Back Odds | Lay Odds | Profit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 13:30 | Altior | 5.00 | 5.60 | £7.49 |
| 14:10 | No selection | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| 14:50 | Out Sam | 8.00 | 8.20 | £6.15 |
| 15:30 | The New One | 6.50 | 7.00 | £6.24 |
| 16:10 | Polly Peachum | 8.00 | 9.00 | £3.37 |
| 16:50 | Southfield Royale | 7.50 | 8.00 | £5.39 |
| 17:30 | Aloomomo | 6.50 | 6.80 | £7.16 |
…As you can see, I made a total profit of £35.80 on this Betfair offer. *
More reload offers – Make £300+ per month
With detailed walkthroughs for all the best offers as they’re released, you’ll be bagging recurring profits in no time.
More reload offers
Got a question?
Leave me a comment below…
I usually respond within 24 hours.
Matt Kirman – Matched Betting Blogger
Since 2014, I’ve blogged over £85,000 worth of profit, and made it my mission to make matched betting accessible to everyone.