We’re heading to Ludlow today for another Sky Bet First Race Special. If our horse finishes 2nd in the 1.10 at Ludlow, Sky Bet 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 £18.46 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.
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 placed finish. Having looked at the odds available, I’ve opted to place my qualifying bet on St Saviour.
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 £23.94…
Place £25.00 on St Saviour @ 1.80 = Potential profit of £20.00
Lay £23.94 on St Saviour @ 1.90 = Potential liability of £21.54
Let’s have a look at our potential profit/loss for the possible outcomes…
| St Saviour wins | +£20.00 – £21.54 = £1.54 loss |
| St Saviour places 2nd | -£25.00 + £23.46 + £20.00 (extract 80% from our £25.00 free bet) = £18.46 profit |
| St Saviour places outside top 2 | -£25.00 + £23.46 = £1.54 loss |
So we will make a nice profit of £18.46 if St Saviour places 2nd and we stand to lose £1.54 on any other outcome, giving us effective odds of 12.99. The odds of St Saviour winning the race (1.80) and the odds of him placing in the top 2 (1.30), mean the odds of him finishing 2nd are approximately 4.68, which makes 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 walk-through guide on how it should be done.
* I actually placed my qualifying bet on St Saviour at back odds of 1.727 and lay odds of 1.79. St Saviour won the race, meaning I made a loss of £1.10 on this 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.