It’s Chester Cup day today and you don’t want to miss this Ladbrokes offer! If our horse finishes 2nd or 3rd to the starting price (SP) favourite in the 14:40 at Chester, Ladbrokes will refund our stake as a free bet, up to a maximum of £25.00. Translated into matched betting terms, this gives us a potential profit of £18.04 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 they should be done.
Ladbrokes run this offer each week on selected Channel 4 races. If our horse finishes 2nd or 3rd to the starting price (SP) favourite, they will refund our stake as a free bet, up to a maximum of £25.00. As Somehow is such a strong favourite (4/6) to win the 14:40 at Chester today, this offer is well worth a go.
It’s worth bearing in mind that we need a minimum of 8 runners in the race to be eligible. At the time of writing, there are 8 runners due to run, but if this drops to 5, 6 or 7 runners, Ladbrokes will only refund 2nd place (if the SP favourite wins).
It’s entirely up to you which horse you go for, but it would make sense to select a horse with fairly short odds in the hope of a 2nd or 3rd placed finish. At the time of writing, the lay odds are pretty poor so I’ll use fictional odds in the following example and I’ll update the bottom of this post with my actual selection after the race.
I like to place my exchange lay bets with Smarkets as they have great liquidity in the run up to races, the site is really easy to use and they only charge 2% commission in comparison to the 5% charged by other betting exchanges.
We can calculate our lay stake using my matched betting calculator…
As you can see, the calculator tells us that our lay stake should be £23.51…
Place £25.00 on Diamonds Pour Moi @ 6.00 = Potential profit of £125.00
Lay £23.51 on Diamonds Pour Moi @ 6.40 = Potential liability of £126.96
Let’s have a look at our potential profit/loss for the possible outcomes…
Diamonds Pour Moi wins | + £125.00 – £126.96 = £1.96 loss |
Diamonds Pour Moi finishes 2nd or 3rd to Somehow | – £25.00 + £23.04 + £20.00 (extract 80% from our £25.00 free bet) = £18.04 profit |
Diamonds Pour Moi finishes 2nd or 3rd to another horse | – £25.00 + £23.04 = £1.96 loss |
Diamonds Pour Moi finishes outside top 3 | – £25.00 + £23.04 = £1.96 loss |
So, we will make a nice profit of £18.04 if Diamonds Pour Moi finishes 2nd or 3rd to Somehow (4/6 favourite) and we stand to lose £1.96 on any other outcome. Risking £1.96 to make £18.04 profit gives us effective odds of 10.20, which I’m sure you’ll agree, makes this a profitable offer in the long run.
If you’re unsure how to extract 80% of a £25.00 free bet, check out my Free Bet Strategy page for a walk-through guide on how it should be done.
* I actually placed my qualifying bet on Diamonds Pour Moi at back odds of 7.00 and lay odds of 8.00. SP favourite, Somehow, won the race, with Diamonds Pour Moi finishing in 3rd, meaning I made a profit of £16.49 on this Ladbrokes offer. *
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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.