We’re heading to Newbury on Saturday for another of Sky Bet’s First Race Specials. If the favourite wins the 2.45 at Newbury, Sky Bet will refund all losing bets as a free bet up to £25.00. Translated into matched betting terms, this gives us a guaranteed profit of around £9.14 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 £23.97…
Place £25.00 on Ayrad @ 6.50 = Potential profit of £137.50
Lay £23.97 on Ayrad @ 6.80 = Potential liability of £139.01
Let’s have a look at our potential profit/loss for the possible outcomes…
Ayrad wins | + £137.50 – £139.01 = £1.51 loss |
The favourite wins | – £25.00 + £23.49 + £20.00 (extract 80% from our £25.00 free bet) = £18.49 profit |
Neither wins | – £25.00 + £23.49 = £1.51 loss |
So, as things stand, if the favourite wins, we will make a nice profit of £18.49. Any other outcome and we’ll lose £1.51.
By placing an extra lay bet on the favourite, Eagle Top (at the time of writing), we can actually guarantee ourselves a profit on any outcome. In order to work out our lay stake, we just need to divide £20.00 (our potential profit + our potential loss) by 1.84 (lay odds – 0.02 (to account for the 2% commission)) which gives us £10.87…
Let’s have a look at our overall profit/loss for the possible outcomes…
Ayrad wins | – £1.51 + £10.65 = £9.14 profit |
Eagle Top (favourite) wins | £18.49 – £9.35 = £9.14 profit |
Neither wins | – £1.51 + £10.65 = £9.14 profit |
So, provided we get some decent odds, we should make a guaranteed profit of around £9.14 on this Sky Bet offer, regardless of the outcome of the race.
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.
* I actually placed my qualifying bet on Carnachy at back odds of 4.50 and lay odds of 4.90. I placed my extra lay bet on the favourite, Eagle Top, at lay odds of 1.85, meaning I made a guaranteed profit of £8.30 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.