Sky Bet Offer – 1.50 Sandown

Attention turns to Sandown on Saturday and Sky Bet are at it again with another of their First Race Specials. If the favourite wins the 1.50 at Sandown, 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 £18.02 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 it should be done.

It’s entirely up to which horse you place your qualifying bet on as long as it’s not the favourite at the start of the race.  It therefore makes sense that we go for a horse with long odds, as this ensures that if the favourite wins, we will automatically be eligible for a free bet refund as our qualifying bet will have lost. It’s always a good idea to wait until nearer the start of the race before placing our qualifying bet.

At the time of writing, the lay odds aren’t great 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 stakes 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 £23.49…

skybet

Place £25.00 on Bold Henry @ 9.00 = Potential profit of £200.00

smarkets white

Lay £23.49 on Bold Henry @ 9.60 = Potential liability of £201.98

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

Bold Henry wins +£200.00 – £201.98 = £1.98 loss
The favourite wins -£25.00 + £23.02 + £20.00 (extract 80% from our £25.00 free bet) = £18.02 profit
Neither wins -£25.00 + £23.02 = £1.98 loss

So we will make a nice profit of £18.02 if the favourite wins and we stand to lose £1.98 on any other outcome. Risking £1.98 to make £18.02 profit gives us effective odds of 10.10, so the fact that current favourite, Arthur’s Oak, is priced at 4.50 to win, 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 Bold Henry at back odds of 8.50 and lay odds of 9.00. Bold Henry won the race, meaning I made a loss of £1.81 on this 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.