NOTE THAT BET365 NO LONGER RUN THIS OFFER. YOU MAY STILL FIND THIS GUIDE USEFUL IF THERE IS ANOTHER BOOKMAKER RUNNING A SIMILAR OFFER.
Horse racing refunds can be a great supplement to your profits. Every Saturday there are a number of horse races shown on ITV. These races typically have a lot of free bet opportunities associated with them. They take place every Saturday, but they do sometimes take place on other days of the week too, especially during major events like Cheltenham festival.
It is advised not to do this offer every day as taking a lot of horse racing offers with Bet365 can get your account gubbed quickly.
With Bet365, they offer a £50 risk free bet in the next race if your horse finishes first at odds of 5.0 or above. Note that your horse must be paid out at odds of 5.0 or greater. If a rule 4 deduction takes your odds below 5.0 then you will not qualify for the risk-free bet. If BOG takes your odds to 5.0 or greater then you will qualify.
The feature race offer and the ITV offer are separate. When you have a winner on the last feature race you need to place your risk-free bet on the next feature race. If you have a winner on an ITV race you need to place your risk-free bet on the next ITV race.
Feature races are listed here.
ITV races are listed here.
There are two methods we can use to tackle this offer.
The Easy Way
The easiest way to approach this offer is the same way we approach the other horse racing refunds. The only difference is with this offer we can only do one race at a time. Load up the first race that the offer applies to and try to find a good match on a Horse that's at odds of 5 or higher. You can use Match Catcher to help you find a match.
Once you've found a good match, simply enter the odds into the calculator like normal. For example, if we wanted to back a Horse at 5.2 and lay it at 5.3, we'd enter this:
- Select "Normal" at the top.
- The bookmaker stake is £50.
- Enter the Bet365 back odds.
- Enter the Betfair lay odds.
- Enter the lay commission.
- Press enter on your keyboard.
Once you've calculated the bet, submit your Bet365 £50 bet and then submit your lay bet. Once you've done this, wait for the race to happen. If the horse does not win, then simply move onto the next race and repeat this process again. If the horse does win, you get a risk-free bet on the next race.
To use your risk free bet, load up the very next race that the offer applies to (so the next ITV race) and try to find a good match at high odds. If you can't find any good matches, wait until the last few minutes before the race starts. If you can't find anything good, just take whatever you can find.
- Select "Free Bet "SnR" at the top.
- The bookmaker stake is £50.
- Enter the Bet365 back odds.
- Enter the Betfair lay odds.
- Enter the lay commission.
- Press enter on your keyboard.
Then place a £50 bet (using your own money) on that horse and lay it on Betfair. If the horse wins, you make an instant profit of around £35-40 (depending on the match). If it loses, you make a small loss, but get your £50 refunded as cash. This must be the first bet you placed on that particular race. This is why we only do one race at a time with this offer.
The best part is, if your risk-free bet won on Bet365, you get ANOTHER risk-free bet on the next race. Do this in the same way as you did the previous one.
As soon as you hit a losing horse, move onto the next race and start over from scratch again.
Harder, but you make a profit on every race
You can find a video tutorial for using this calculator here.
There is a more advanced way to approach this offer that guarantees you around £3+ profit from each race, rather than having several small losses in a row and then one large win.
What we're going to do is lay slightly too much on each bet in order to make a profit every time our horse does not win. When the horse does win, we make a fairly large loss, but recover it with the risk-free bet on the next race.
Firstly, you will need the bonus lock-in calculator set in the correct mode, "bonus applied if bet : WINS" like so;
Secondly, you will need to find a good eligible match. For this example I managed to find a horse that was 6.5 to back with Bet365 and 6.60 to lay with Smarkets.
Note - The closer to the minimum odds (5.0) and closer the match then the more profit you will generate. You can often find decent matches closer to the off if you're struggling to find a match. Alternatively - Check out Match Catcher, our new essential tool for horse racing refunds. Don't look for your bets manually - let Match Catcher do it for you.
Now that you have your match you can populate the calculator to look like this;
The bonus retention is set to a default 80% but you can edit this and change to what you feel you can comfortably extract from the risk free bet on the next feature should your selection win. I am confident I can get £40 from the £50 risk free bet so I will leave it at 80%.
What the calculator does is that it will calculate an overlay of your selection against the bonus value if your bet wins. So as we know we can extract £40 from the £50 risk free bet the bonus value to lay against is £40. The calculator will then work out the standard lay amount and then add the additional lock-in amount on top giving you an equal lock-in profit should your selection win or lose.
If you look at the results section you will see that the lay stake is particularly higher than that of a normal lay stake, this is where your £4.36 profit comes from should your selection fail to win, your profit will be in the exchange.
If your selection does win then you will be at an initial loss of £35.63 BUT knowing that we can gain £40 from our risk free bet this brings our overall position to £4.37 profit.
My selection failed to win!
Because we overlaid our selection our profit is £4.36 which will be in your exchange and you're done with this race. You can now move on to the next one and repeat the process.
My bet won!
So for this example our selection won. We are at a loss of £35.43 because of the overlay. Now we will need to find another eligible selection on the next feature/ITV race. For this example I managed to find a match of 10.0/10.50.
Note - The higher the odds and the better the match the higher the bonus retention we gain. Again, you can often find decent matches closer to the off if you're struggling to find a match.
Standard risk free bet conversion.
Using the standard calculator lay this off as "Free Bet (SNR)" like so;
If the bet loses, because we underlaid, we lost £7.92 from the risk free bet.
Exchange win (£42.08) - Back stake (£50).
The £50 back stake will be refunded by Bet365 because the previous selection won and we was at an initial loss of £35.43 leaving our overall position as £6.65 profit.
If the bet wins, because we underlaid, we gain £42.08 in to Bet365
Bookie winnings of £500 - stake - liability of £407.92 = £42.08
But because the previous selection won and we was at an initial loss of £35.43 leaving our overall position as £6.65 profit and another free bet SNR shot at the next race.
You may well on multiple races before the day's racing begins. A situation may arise where someone has bet on two races in a row, the first bet wins and now their bet on the second race is a normal or overlaid bet (because it was their qualifying bet) when they actually now want it to be SnR (because it has turned in to a risk-free bet due to the winner).
To deal with this situation then read this guide.