We’re heading to Epsom Downs today for another of Sky Bet’s First Race Specials. If the favourite wins the 2.00 at Epsom Downs, Sky Bet will refund all losing bets as a free bet up to £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 it should be done.
It’s entirely up to you which horse you place your qualifying bet on, as long as it’s not the favourite at the start of the race. It’s always a good idea to wait until nearer the start of the race before placing our qualifying bet in order to ensure that we are not selecting a horse that is likely to start the race as favourite.
At the time of writing, the lay odds are pretty poor, so I’ll use fictional odds in the following example and then 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 stakes 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 Monumental Man @ 6.00 = Potential profit of £125.00
Lay £23.51 on Monumental Man @ 6.40 = Potential liability of £126.96
Let’s have a look at our potential profit/loss for the possible outcomes…
Monumental Man wins | + £125.00 – £126.96 = £1.96 loss |
The favourite wins | – £25.00 + £23.04 + £20.00 (extract 80% from our £25.00 free bet) = £18.04 profit |
Neither wins | – £25.00 + £23.04 = £1.96 loss |
So, we will make a nice profit of £18.04 if the favourite wins 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, so the fact that current favourite, Roudee, is priced at 3.75 to win, makes this a profitable offer in the long run.
If you’re unsure how to extract 80% of our £25.00 free bet, check out my Free Bet Strategy page for a walk-through guide on how it should be done.
NOTE: Ordinarily with these offers, I would be looking to place an extra lay bet on the favourite to guarantee a nice profit on any outcome but it’s only really worth doing when there is a clear favourite. The current favourite, Roudee, has lay odds of 3.75, which doesn’t enable us to lock in much profit, so I’ve opted to let this one run as above.
* The favourite, Roudee, didn’t win the race, meaning I made a loss of £1.35 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.