Ladbrokes Offer – 16:05 York (Friday)

There’s another big day of racing at York today and you don’t want to miss this Ladbrokes offer! If our horse finishes 2nd to the starting price (SP) favourite in the 16:05 at York, 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 £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.

Ladbrokes run this offer each week on selected Channel 4 races. Provided there are a minimum of 8 runners, if 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 only 5, 6 or 7 runners, they will only refund us if our horse finishes 2nd to the starting price (SP) favourite.

These offers are only worth doing on races where there is a big favourite, as it gives us a good chance of hitting a refund. At the time of writing, there are only 6 horses due to run in the 16:05 at York, with a big 6/4 favourite, Flying Officer.

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 that 2nd placed finish. At the time of writing, the lay odds are pretty poor so I’ll use fictional odds in the following example and 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 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…

ladbrokes logo

Place £25.00 on Second Step @ 3.25 = Potential profit of £56.25

smarkets white

Lay £24.04 on Second Step @ 3.40 = Potential liability of £57.69

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

Second Step wins + £56.25 – £57.69 = £1.44 loss
Second Step finishes 2nd to SP favourite – £25.00 + £23.56 + £20.00 (extract 80% from our £25.00 free bet) = £18.56 profit
Second Step finishes 2nd to another horse – £25.00 + £23.56 = £1.44 loss
Second Step finishes outside top 2 – £25.00 + £23.56 = £1.44 loss

So, we will make a nice profit of £18.56 if Second Step finishes 2nd to the SP favourite, 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.

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.

* Flying Officer was withdrawn from this race. I actually placed my qualifying bet on Clever Cookie at back odds of 3.50 and lay odds of 3.55. The SP favourite, Second Step, failed to win the race, meaning I made a loss of £0.71 on this Ladbrokes 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.