We head to Warwick on Saturday for this week’s Sky Bet First Race Special. If our horse finishes 2nd in the 1.50 at Warwick, 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 £18.77 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 with only 5 runners, it would make sense to select a horse with short odds in the hope of a 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…
As you can see, the calculator tells us that our lay stake should be £24.26…
Place £25.00 on Black Hercules @ 1.727 = Potential profit of £18.17
Lay £24.26 on Black Hercules @ 1.80 = Potential liability of £19.40
Let’s have a look at our potential profit/loss for the possible outcomes…
| Black Hercules wins | +£18.17 – £19.40 = £1.23 loss |
| Black Hercules places 2nd | -£25.00 + £23.77 + £20.00 (extract 80% from our £25.00 free bet) = £18.77 profit |
| Black Hercules places outside top 2 | -£25.00 + £23.77 = £1.23 loss |
So we will make a nice profit of £18.77 if Black Hercules places 2nd and we stand to lose £1.23 on any other outcome. Risking £1.23 to make £18.77 profit gives us effective odds of 16.26, 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 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 Black Hercules at back odds of 1.833 and lay odds of 1.95. Black Hercules won the race, meaning I made a loss of £1.73 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.