Bet365 – Channel 4/1 Offer for Cheltenham

The Cheltenham Festival 2016 gets underway on Tuesday and you can always count on Bet365 to come up with the goods! Simply back a winner at odds of 4/1 or more on any Cheltenham race televised live on Channel 4 and Bet365 will give us a risk-free bet to the same stake on the next live Channel 4 race. Translated into matched betting terms, this gives us a potential profit of £97.20 and here’s how…

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 it should be done.

This offer is available on 5 Cheltenham races each day as follows…

Day Time Race
Tuesday 1.30 Sky Bet Supreme Novices’ Hurdle
Tuesday 2.10 Arkle Chase
Tuesday 2.50 Ultima Business Solutions Handicap Chase
Tuesday 3.30 Champion Hurdle
Tuesday 4.10 Mares Hurdle
Wednesday 1.30 Neptune Novices’ Hurdle
Wednesday 2.10 RSA Chase
Wednesday 2.50 Coral Cup
Wednesday 3.30 Champion Chase
Wednesday 4.10 Cross Country Chase
Thursday 1.30 JLT Novices’ Chase
Thursday 2.10 Pertemps Final
Thursday 2.50 Ryanair Chase
Thursday 3.30 World Hurdle
Thursday 4.10 Brown Advisory Plate
Friday 1.30 Triumph Hurdle
Friday 2.10 County Hurdle
Friday 2.50 Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle
Friday 3.30 Cheltenham Gold Cup
Friday 4.10 Foxhunters Chase

We need to back a horse at odds of 4/1 or greater, to be eligible for this offer. If our horse wins, Bet365 will give us a risk-free bet equal to our qualifying stake (up to a maximum of £50.00), to use on the next live Channel 4 race.

Having looked at the odds available for the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle (1.30 on Tuesday), it looks like Altior could be a good one to back at odds of 5.00 (4/1). At the time of writing, the lay odds are pretty poor, so the following example is based on us getting lay odds of 5.20. I will update the bottom of this post with my actual selections/odds after the Festival has ended.

If our £50.00 bet on Altior wins at odds of 5.00 (4/1), we would receive £250.00 in cash (including our stake), plus a £50.00 risk-free bet on the next race.

By using straightforward matched betting, we should be able to extract 80% from any risk-free bet. When placing a risk-free bet, we can use the ‘Risk-Free Bet’ setting on my matched betting calculator and enter £50.00 as our ‘Cashback’ figure as Bet365 refund risk-free bets in cash, instead of free bets.

We should therefore be able to extract £40.00 cash from a £50.00 risk-free bet. This gives us total cash returns of £290.00, which gives us effective odds of 5.80 on our initial £50.00 stake. A quicker way of calculating our effective odds is to simply add 0.80 (80% of the risk-free bet) onto our actual back odds.

We can enter these effective odds as our back odds in my matched betting calculator, in order to calculate the correct overlay stake that will guarantee us a profit regardless of the outcome.

I like to place my exchange lay bets with Smarkets as they have great liquidity, the site is really easy to use and they only charge 2% commission, in comparison to the 5% charged by other betting exchanges.

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 £55.98…

bet365

Place £50.00 on Altior @ 5.00 = Potential profit of £200.00

smarkets white

Lay £55.98 on Altior @ 5.20 = Potential liability of £235.14

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

Altior wins + £200.00 – £235.14 + £40.00 (extract 80% from £50.00 risk-free bet) = £4.86 profit
Altior doesn’t win – £50.00 + £54.86 (£55.98 minus 2% commission) = £4.86 profit

So, regardless of the outcome of the race, we will make a guaranteed profit of £4.86.

Depending on the odds available, if we apply the same strategy to all 20 eligible races this week, we could make a potential profit of £97.20 on this Bet365 Cheltenham offer!

Note: If, when placing a risk-free bet, our selection wins, we will qualify for another risk-free bet on the next race.

* I actually placed my bets as follows…

Day Time Selection Back Odds Lay Odds Profit
Tuesday 1.30 No selection n/a n/a n/a
Tuesday 2.10 No selection n/a n/a n/a
Tuesday 2.50 Out Sam 8.00 8.20 £2.71
Tuesday 3.30 The New One 6.50 7.00 £1.25
Tuesday 4.10 Polly Peachum 8.50 9.00 £0.75
Wednesday 1.30 No selection n/a n/a n/a
Wednesday 2.10 Blaklion 13.00 13.00 £2.10
Wednesday 2.50 Rock the Kasbah 13.00 11.50 £11.22
Wednesday 3.30 Sprinter Sacre 6.50 6.80 £2.76
Wednesday 4.10 Balthazar King 6.50 7.00 -£1.39
Thursday 1.30 Garde La Victoire 5.00 5.30 £3.83
Thursday 2.10 Leave at Dawn 8.00 8.00 £4.04
Thursday 2.50 No selection n/a n/a n/a
Thursday 3.30 No selection n/a n/a n/a
Thursday 4.10 Full Shift 11.00 10.50 £5.17
Friday 1.30 Footpad 7.00 7.40 £1.79
Friday 2.10 Great Field 9.00 9.40 £1.19
Friday 2.50 Long Dog 8.00 8.00 £4.04
Friday 3.30 Cue Card 5.00 5.00 £7.07
Friday 4.10 Paint the Clouds 7.00 7.20 £3.23

…As you can see, I made a total profit of £49.76 on this Bet365 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.