HOW TO WIN ON HORSES THAT LOSE

With betting exchanges springing up everywhere you can bet on a horse, a dog, a football team, virtually anything really - to lose. All those losers you had at Sandown on Saturday could have been winners if you were laying them on Betfair, or any one of the 10 copycats trying to carve out a slice of this exciting market.



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The secret, however, is to pick and choose the horses you decide to lay. It's no good persistently laying horses at 25s because although they almost always lose, every now and then a 25/1 shot goes in, more than likely wiping out any gains you might have made. A 25/1 shot laid to a tenner will see £250 leave your account.

It's far better to lay favourites, preferably at prices of no more than 5/2, limiting any pay-out in the event of a win to only two and a half times your stake. On average about 30% of favourites win so it's fair to assume that if you're laying favourites, around 70% of your bets are going to come good. That makes a change.

The research you need to do to pick losers is every bit as important as the research you should do into finding winners. If your strategy is to lay the favourites at a particular race meeting your research should be into what happens to favourites at that particular course. Have a look at the favourites' record. Your research tells you that at Sedgefield, for example, the favourites win in only 24% of handicap hurdles. In other words, well under the 30% average for favourites across the board. On the card there are two such races so your betting strategy in this example would be to lay the favourites of these two races, providing the odds aren't over 5/2. This is just one strategy but there are many others. Alternative strategies might involve individual jockeys. Tony McCoy might be the champion jockey but his record isn't great at the Cheltenham Festival. Maybe it's worth laying any hot favourites he rides there. What about the trainers? Which big stable has a terrible record at Ascot offering plenty of opportunities to lay short-priced horses? The going is another key area to look at, especially if there's been a recent downpour that has changed the ground to 'soft' or 'heavy'. Which fancied horses have only won on the good ground they're not going to get today?

With exchange betting there are several factors to take on board. Firstly, you should know that you have absolute control over the odds, whether backing or laying. You can request higher odds if you are looking to back something, or offer lower odds according to what level of exposure you are willing to accept, if laying bets.



To become a successful punter, it is worth considering a strategy based on a combination of backing and laying as a way of guaranteeing profits. You can lock in profits by backing something at one price and laying it at another.

Come next March, for example, you have a look at the prices for the Grand National that will be taking place in a month's time. You see that a horse called Montifault is available to back at 50/1. Come the day of the race in April, money has been piling on to the horse because he finished fifth in the race last year, jumps like a stag and is in excellent form. His odds are now 16/1. Having backed him at 50s you can now go to Betfair and lay the same horse at 16s, locking in the gains caused by the price differential.

Say you have £100 on the horse at the original 50/1. If it wins at Aintree your original bet will return £5,100. But you've also laid it to win £200 at 16s too which will lose you £3,200 if Montifault triumphs. Not to worry as your overall profit will be £1,900 which is still enough to take the missus on holiday.

But if Montifault catapults his jockey out of the saddle at Becher's Brook what are you left with? You lose the £100 from the bet you made when the horse was 50s but since you've also laid it to win £200 you're still up by £100 overall. Not enough for a five-star holiday, perhaps, but you can watch the race knowing you'll be in profit.

In this situation you can't lose and situations like this arise every day. Using a combination of backing and laying you can exploit price differentials, lock in profits or minimise losses. You simply couldn't do this before betting exchanges came along.



Reproduced with the kind permission of Inside Edge magazine.



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