Sky Bet Free Bet Offer – 1:20 Cheltenham

It’s time for another Sky Bet free bet offer!  If the favourite wins the 1:20 at Cheltenham, Sky Bet will refund all losing outright bets on that race as a free bet up to £25.00.  Translated into matched betting terms, this gives us a risk-free potential profit of £11.61 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 walkthrough guide on how it should be done.

For this particular offer, we need to select a horse that isn’t likely to start the race as the favourite. Ptit Zig looks likely to start as the favourite at odds of around 2.25, with Champagne West not far behind at 4.33.  Having looked at the other odds on offer, I’ve opted to place my qualifying bet on Urban Hymn.

skybet

Place £25.00 on Urban Hymn @ 8.50 = Potential profit of £187.50

betfair

Lay £22.73 on Urban Hymn @ 9.40 = Potential liability of £190.93

Let’s have a look at our potential profit/loss for the possible outcomes…

Urban Hymn wins +£187.50 – £190.93 = £3.43 loss
The favourite wins -£25.00 + £21.59 + £20.00 (extract 80% from our £25.00 free bet) = £16.59 profit
Neither wins -£25.00 + £21.59 = £3.41 loss

If you’re unsure how to extract 80% of our £25.00 free bet, check out my Free Bet Strategy page for a walkthrough guide on how it should be done.

So as things stand we will make £16.59 profit if the favourite wins.  Unfortunately, we also stand to lose a maximum of £3.43 on any other outcome and so we need to insure ourselves against this by laying the favourite at the betting exchange.  Although Ptit Zig looks like starting the race as favourite at the time of writing, we should really place this next bet as close to the race starting as possible, so we can be sure we are laying the race favourite.  In order to calculate our lay stake, we need to divide £3.43 by 0.95 to account for the 5% commission.  This gives us a lay stake of £3.61.

betfair

Lay £3.61 on Ptit Zig (favourite at time of writing) @ 2.38 = Potential liability of £4.98

Let’s have a look at our overall profit/loss for the possible outcomes…

Urban Hymn wins -£3.43 + £3.43 = £0.00
Ptit Zig wins £16.59 – £4.98 = £11.61 profit
Neither wins -£3.41 + £3.43 = £0.02 profit

So if Ptit Zig doesn’t win, we will break even and there’s no harm done.  However, if Ptit Zig justifies his favourite tag by winning the 1:20 at Cheltenham we will make a nice profit of £11.61!

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Matt Kirman - Matched Betting Blogger

Matt KirmanMatched Betting Blogger

Since 2014, I’ve blogged over £70,000 worth of profit, and made it my mission to make matched betting accessible to everyone.