The St Leger Festival gets underway at Doncaster on Wednesday and that means it’s time for another Sky Bet First Race Special! If our horse finishes 2nd or 3rd in the 2.00 at Doncaster, Sky Bet 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 £18.62 and here’s how…
Qualifying Bet:
If fewer than six runners come under starters orders, Sky Bet reserve the right to withdraw this offer without prior notice. Following the withdrawal of a horse, there are now only 6 horses due to run, meaning it may be best to wait until close to the start of race before placing our qualifying bets.
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.
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 the 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 £24.10…
Place £25.00 on Dream of Dreams @ 3.50 = Potential profit of £62.50
Lay £24.10 on Dream of Dreams @ 3.65 = Potential liability of £63.88
Let’s have a look at our potential profit/loss for the possible outcomes…
| Dream of Dreams wins | + £62.50 – £63.88 = £1.38 loss |
| Dream of Dreams places 2nd or 3rd | – £25.00 + £23.62 + £20.00 (extract 80% from our £25.00 free bet) = £18.62 profit |
| Dream of Dreams finishes outside top 3 | – £25.00 + £23.62 = £1.38 loss |
So, we will make a nice profit of £18.62 if Dream of Dreams places 2nd or 3rd and we stand to lose £1.38 on any other outcome. Risking £1.38 to make £18.62 profit gives us effective odds of 14.49, 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.
* Despite there only being 5 runners in this race, Sky Bet still refunded 2nd and 3rd place as a goodwill gesture. I actually placed my qualifying bet on Dream Of Dreams at back odds of 2.75 and lay odds of 2.76. Dream Of Dreams finished 2nd, meaning I made a profit of £19.59 on this Sky Bet 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.