Sky Bet Offer – 2.00 Newmarket (Thursday)

There’s a big day of racing at Newmarket today and it’s time for another Sky Bet First Race Special! If our horse finishes 2nd or 3rd in the 2.00 at Newmarket, 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 £18.56 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.

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 odds are 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…

Back Bet (Bookie)

%

Lay Bet (Betting Exchange)

%

Min £
Max £
Lay stake required: £
Bookie
Exchange
Cashback
Total
If back (bookie) bet wins
£
£
£
= £
If lay (exchange) bet wins
£
£
£
= £
Total profit: £

Optimal Underlay

Lay stake required: £
Exchange liability: £

If back (bookie) bet wins: £
If lay (exchange) bet wins: £

Optimal Overlay

Lay stake required: £
Exchange liability: £

If back (bookie) bet wins: £
If lay (exchange) bet wins: £

As you can see, the calculator tells us that our lay stake should be £24.04…

skybet

Place £25.00 on Taj Mahal @ 4.50 = Potential profit of £87.50

smarkets white

Lay £24.04 on Taj Mahal @ 4.70 = Potential liability of £88.94

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

Taj Mahal wins + £87.50 – £88.94 = £1.44 loss
Taj Mahal places 2nd or 3rd – £25.00 + £23.56 + £20.00 (extract 80% from our £25.00 free bet) = £18.56 profit
Taj Mahal finishes outside top 3 – £25.00 + £23.56 = £1.44 loss

So, we will make a nice profit of £18.56 if Taj Mahal places 2nd or 3rd and we stand to lose £1.44 on any other outcome. Risking £1.44 to make a profit of £18.56 gives us effective odds of 13.89, 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 Taj Mahal at back odds of 3.25 and lay odds of 3.50. Taj Mahal finished outside the top 3, meaning I made a loss of £2.12 on this Sky Bet offer. *

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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.