There’s a big day of racing at Epsom Downs today and you don’t want to miss this Ladbrokes offer! If our horse finishes 2nd to the starting price (SP) favourite in the 14:00 at Epsom Downs, Ladbrokes 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 £19.07 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.
Ladbrokes run this offer each week on selected Channel 4 races. If there are 8 or more runners and our horse finishes 2nd or 3rd to the starting price (SP) favourite, they will refund our stake as a free bet, up to a maximum of £25.00. If there are 5-7 runners, they will refund horses that finish 2nd to the starting price (SP) favourite. At the time of writing, there are 7 runners due to run, but if this drops to 4 runners or less, the offer will no longer stand.
Having looked at the odds available for the 14:00 at Epsom Downs today, there are four horses with very similar odds (around the 3/1 mark). We should therefore be able to get a nice close match, making this offer well worth a go.
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. With there not being a clear favourite for this race, we need to wait until closer to the race before we select a horse. I’ll therefore use fictional odds in the following example and I’ll update 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…
As you can see, the calculator tells us that our lay stake should be £24.56…
Place £25.00 on Hyperfocus @ 4.50 = Potential profit of £87.50
Lay £24.56 on Hyperfocus @ 4.60 = Potential liability of £88.43
Let’s have a look at our potential profit/loss for the possible outcomes…
Hyperfocus wins | + £87.50 – £88.43 = £0.93 loss |
Hyperfocus finishes 2nd to SP favourite | – £25.00 + £24.07 + £20.00 (extract 80% from our £25.00 free bet) = £19.07 profit |
Hyperfocus finishes 2nd to another horse | – £25.00 + £24.07 = £0.93 loss |
Hyperfocus finishes outside top 2 | – £25.00 + £24.07 = £0.93 loss |
So, we will make a nice profit of £19.07 if Hyperfocus finishes 2nd to the SP favourite and we stand to lose £0.93 on any other outcome. Risking £0.93 to make £19.07 profit gives us effective odds of 21.51, 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 Hyperfocus at back odds of 4.50 and lay odds of 4.60. Hyperfocus finished outside the top 2, meaning I made a loss of £0.93 on this Ladbrokes 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.