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Sky Bet Cheltenham Offer – Neptune Novices’ Hurdle

It’s time for another Sky Bet Cheltenham offer!  If our horse finishes 2nd or 3rd in the Neptune Novices’ Hurdle (13:30) at Cheltenham on Wednesday, Sky Bet will refund all losing outright bets on that race as a free bet up to £25.00. Translated into matched betting terms, this gives us a potential profit of £8.48 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 walkthrough guide on how it should be done.

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. Having looked at the odds on offer, I’ve opted to keep my qualifying loss to a minimum and place my qualifying bet on Outlander.

skybet

Place £25.00 on Outlander @ 4.50 = Potential profit of £87.50

betfair

Lay £21.43 on Outlander @ 5.30 = Potential liability of £92.15

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

Outlander wins +£87.50 – £92.15 = £4.65 loss
Outlander places 2nd or 3rd -£25.00 + £20.36 + £20.00 (extract 80% from our £25.00 free bet) = £15.36 profit
Outlander places outside top 3 -£25.00 + £20.36 = £4.64 loss

So as things stand we will make £15.36 profit if Outlander places 2nd or 3rd.  Unfortunately, we also stand to lose a maximum of £4.65 on any other outcome and so we need to insure ourselves against this by laying Outlander placing in the top 3 at the betting exchange.  In order to calculate our lay stake, we need to divide £4.65 by 0.95 to account for the 5% commission.  This gives us a lay stake of £4.89.

betfair

Lay £4.89 on Outlander to be placed top 3 @ 1.96 = Potential liability of £4.69

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

Outlander wins -£4.65 – £4.69 = £8.95 loss
Outlander places 2nd or 3rd £15.36 – £4.69 = £11.04 profit
Outlander places outside top 3 -£4.64 + £4.65 = £0.01 profit

We can cover the potential £8.95 loss by placing an extra £2.56 on Outlander to win at odds of 4.50.

All of this means that if Outlander places 2nd or 3rd, we will make a nice profit of £8.48.  If Outlander wins, we will break even and there’s no harm done.  However, if Outlander places outside the top 3, we will have lost £2.56, which I’m sure you’ll agree is a risk worth taking as the potential profit far outweighs the potential loss, making this a profitable offer in the long run.

If you’re unsure how to extract 80% of our £25.00 free bet, check out my Free Bet Strategy page for a walkthrough guide on how it should be done.

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Matt KirmanMatched Betting Blogger

Since 2014, I’ve blogged over £100,000 worth of profit, and made it my mission to make matched betting accessible to everyone.