Cheltenham Offers – 2nd Place Refunds

It’s all eyes on Cheltenham on Tuesday as the 2016 Festival gets underway and you don’t want to miss these 2nd place refund offers! There are a number of bookmakers offering money back if our horse finishes 2nd at the Cheltenham Festival 2016 and we’d be daft not to get involved! Translated into matched betting terms, this gives us an opportunity to make huge profits this week and here’s how…

If your horse finishes second in a live Cheltenham Festival Channel 4 race with at least 5 runners, Ladbrokes will refund our stake as a free bet, up to a maximum of £25.00. First bet per race only. Excludes the first race each day.

Money back as a free bet if our horse finishes second for every race at the Cheltenham Festival this week. Paddy Power will refund our losing single stake as a free bet, up to a maximum of £25.00 per customer per race. Does not apply to races where fewer than 5 runners take part.

Money Back as a free bet, up to £25.00, if our horse finishes 2nd in any races at the Cheltenham Festival with ApolloBet. 5 or more runners must run.

If our selection finishes 2nd to a Willie Mullins-trained winner, BetVictor will refund our losing win stake up to £25.00 as a free bet.

Unibet have selected one race each day where they will give us money back as a bonus, up to a maximum of £20.00, if our horse finishes 2nd. The four races are as follows: Ultima Handicap Chase (2.50 on Tuesday), Fred Winter Juvenile Handicap Hurdle (4.50 on Wednesday), Pertemps Final Handicap (2.10 on Thursday) and the Grand Annual Chase (5.30 on Friday).

BetBright are offering money back if 2nd on all 28 races at this year’s showpiece event. Losing stakes refunded as a free bet, up to a maximum of £25.00.

Money back as a free bet, up to a maximum of £25.00, if 2nd on all races at the Cheltenham Festival with William Hill! Available via Internet, Mobile & Text. 5 or more runners must race for the offer to qualify.

Qualifying Bets:

The strategy for these 2nd place refund offers is pretty simple. We need to select horses with tight back and lay odds in order to minimise our potential losses. It also makes sense to pick horses with fairly short odds, in order to maximise our chances of hitting the 2nd place refund.

Selecting horses with short odds also reduces the amount of liability we need to cover at Smarkets. Also don’t forget that we can make our bankroll go further by selecting different horses at different bookmakers. Not only will this increase our chances of hitting a 2nd place refund, but due to the fact that only one horse can win, it means we only need to cover the horse with the largest liability at Smarkets.

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.

Here’s an example of how you might play the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle (1.30 on Tuesday) with William Hill. Having looked at the odds available I’ve opted to place my qualifying bet on Min.

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 £24.04…

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

So, we will make a nice profit of £18.56 if Min places 2nd and we stand to lose £1.44 on any other outcome. Risking £1.44 to make £18.56 profit gives us effective odds of 13.89, which I’m sure you’ll agree, makes this a profitable offer in the long run.

With so many bookmakers offering 2nd place refunds, the Cheltenham Festival 2016 promises to be a very profitable week!

If you’re unsure how to extract 80% cash from a free bet, check out my Free Bet Strategy page for a walk-through guide on how it should be done.