Lay Betting Explained
Lay betting is when you bet on an outcome not to happen. For example, if you placed a bet with us on a horse not to win a race, bet on a football team not to win a game or bet on a golfer not to make a birdie on a particular hole. In lay betting, you essentially become the bookmaker. It is exactly the same as the times in your life that you might have said to a friend: “I bet you that xxx won’t happen”.
Matched Betting is not a new concept.
It can be difficult to understand.
But when leveraged, it’s a powerful money-printing MACHINE.
The basic idea is simple. You bet on every outcome of an event to ensure a guaranteed profit independent of the outcome. It doesn’t matter whether your bet wins or loses, you still make a profit no matter what.
You see, most of the time, gambling is not a good idea. You’ll always lose in the long run because the odds are designed to ensure that the bookies always win in the long term. So, what we do, is use “free bet” promotions given by the bookmakers, in order to shift the odds back into our favour. We can use these free bets to be sure to make money no matter what happens.
What is Lay Betting?
Lay Betting is a feature offered by betting exchanges where punters become bookmakers, offering odds to sell bets, instead of the typical odds to back a bet. "I bet this team can't win the next two games."; "I bet that player won't score more than 20 points"; this is called laying a bet and is possible at many exchanges.
Lay Betting is the option on Exchanges such as Betfair where punters can play the role of a traditional bookmaker but offering odds to sell a bet instead of the usual odds to back a bet. "I bet you won't get a bullseye"; "I bet you won't finish all that"; "They'll never win if he plays."
When Matched Betting is Done Correctly, You Can't Lose!
It doesn’t matter WHO you are. It doesn’t matter how much time you have spare or how smart you are. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never placed a bet before.
Anyone can do this and make a LOT of money (as long as you follow our guides).
This website is your new treasure trove of information about Matched Betting. There’s a lot of information about it on the Internet in general, but there’s nowhere else out there that will literally walk you through every offer available and how to do it. That’s what makes us unique.
So without further ado, lets get into the nuts and bolts of exactly how this works. It may seem a little complicated the first time you read it, but with the tools we have available and the videos you’ll be watching to follow this in our members area, you shouldn't have any problems.
The majority of the bets you’ll place involve a back bet and a lay bet. A back bet is a standard bet: you’re betting on your selection to win. This bet it usually placed with a bookmaker, like William Hill.
A lay bet is the opposite. With a lay bet, you’re acting as a bookmaker yourself; betting against your selection to win. The two bets cancel each other out. Your lay bets will always be placed at a betting exchange; usually Betfair.
For the sake of this example, we’ll demonstrate how to complete the William Hill sign-up offer.
William Hill offer a £50 free bet for new customers that register and deposit using the promotional code FBET50. In order to take advantage of this, we need to create an account with William Hill using this promotional code. We also need to create an account with Betfair.
Once both accounts are registered, we can deposit £50 into William Hill and £50 into Betfair.
In order to receive our free bet, we need to place one qualifying bet of £50 at odds of 1.5 or higher. Our first goal here is to find a selection where the odds on William Hill are very close to the odds on Betfair.
We can find a good match using the oddsmatching software, or by simply comparing the odds for events over the next few days.
With our oddsmatching software, the higher rating the bet has, the better; however we need to ensure that the back odds are 1.5 or higher. Anything less and we won’t qualify for the free bet.
Using the oddsmatching software, we’ve found a good match on Russia vs Morocco, backing Russia at odds of 1.5, and laying them at odds of 1.51.
So now that we’ve found a match, we need to calculate our bets. We know that the back bet on William Hill will be £50, because that’s the amount we need for the promotion. To work out our lay bet, we use the calculator. Load it up, then enter the bet amount of £50. Enter the back odds of 1.5, and the lay odds of 1.51. The lay commission is 5.
Once it’s all entered, press calculate. Underneath, the calculator tells you that your Lay Stake is £51.37, and the liability on the bet is £26.20. This means you will need £26.20 in Betfair to cover the bet.
So, we go to the Russia vs Morocco market on William Hill and place our £50 bet on Russia. We then go to the same market on the Betfair exchange, and select the pink “lay” column next to Russia, that shows the odds of 1.51. We then enter our lay stake, which is £51.37. Finally, press Place Bet, and then Confirm Bet.
Congrats, your qualifier is all done. Let’s go over what will happen.
If Russia wins, you win your back bet on William Hill and lose your lay bet at Betfair. You lose your liability of £26.20 at betfair, and win £25 at William Hill.
If the match ends in a Draw, or if Morocco wins, you lose your back bet on William Hill, and win your lay bet on Betfair. You lose £50 at William Hill and win £48.80 (after commission) at Betfair.
You lose £1.20 from the qualifier no matter what. That’s ok though, because now we have a £50 free bet ready to use.
Once William Hill credit you with the free bet, it’s time to find another match.
Using the oddsmatching software again, we look for another match. With free bets, it’s a good idea to go for higher odds to maximise the profit - usually odds of between 4 and 10. Note that the higher odds you select, the more money you need in your Betfair account to cover the liability.
For this example, we’ll use the free bet on England vs Honduras, on the Draw at odds of 5.0. Again, we use the calculator to determine our lay stake. At the top, select “Free Bet SNR (Stake Not Returned)”. The bet amount is £50, the back odds are 5, the lay odds are 5, and the lay commission is 5.
Once it’s all entered, press calculate. Underneath, the calculator tells you that your Lay Stake is £40.40, and the liability on the bet is £161.60. This means you will need £161.60 in Betfair to cover the bet. If your bank cannot support this, you can use lower odds for the free bet, although this will also decrease your profits.
So, we go to the England vs Honduras market on William Hill and place our £50 free bet on the Draw. We then go to the same market on the Betfair exchange, and select the pink “lay” column next to the Draw, that shows the odds of 5. We then enter our lay stake, which is £40.40. Finally, press Place Bet, and then Confirm Bet.
If the match ends in a draw, you win your back bet on William Hill and lose your lay bet at Betfair. You lose your liability of £161.60 at betfair, and win £200 at William Hill.
If the match ends with England or Honduras winning, you lose your free bet on William Hill, and win your lay bet at Betfair. You lose nothing at William Hill, and win £38.38 at Betfair.
So, you make a profit of £38.38 from the free bet. Since we lost £1.20 from the qualifying bet, our total profit from this offer is £37.18.
In less than 10 minutes, you’ve made £37.18 from nothing. That’s equivalent to £223 per hour.
Read through this again, watch the video, and you’ll see that there is no way you can lose out here. It may sound complicated, but after a few attempts you’ll literally be able to do this in less than 10 minutes. Compare the odds, enter it into the calculator, place the bets, done.
Even better, in our members area we have detailed videos showing you how to complete a HUGE variety of offers out there, that can literally pull thousands of pounds into your bank account. That is as effortless as it gets.
Also read about match bet calculator