Matched Betting Extra Places (Part 1): The Basics

Andrea

17 Jul 2020

Updated: 7 Mar 2023

Useful to Know: Extra Place Offers are considered to be a more advanced type of Matched Betting reload offer and we therefore tend to recommend members only to look at starting them once they've become very good and fast at the basic-intermediate level reloads (e.g. Horse Racing Money Back OffersPrice BoostsSame Game Multi Bets and similar) and when they've built up a good to decent sized Matched Betting bankroll.

In Part 1 of this guide (this article) we are going to introduce Matched Betting Extra Place Offers and the basics we need to know in order to do them. We cover what extra place offers are, each-way betting (backing and laying) and discuss how we make money from doing Extra Place Offers.

In Part 2 we introduce our Extra Place Catcher tool, explain how it works and then do a full walk-through example of a Matched Betting Extra Place Offer, using a multi-horse betting strategy, and make over £22 in profit.

GO TO EXTRA PLACES PART 2

In Part 3 we provide some great tips for getting started on Extra Place Offers.  

GO TO EXTRA PLACES PART 3

Then in Part 4 we discuss different strategies and approaches for tackling Extra Place Offers.

GO TO EXTRA PLACES PART 4

The Basics Behind Matched Betting Extra Place Offers

If you’re relative new to Matched Betting and a member of our Facebook Group you would have undoubtedly seen comments about people doing something called “Extra Places”.

Extra Places can be a very lucrative type of Matched Betting reload offer for you to learn how to do. They are also available for us to do pretty much every single day which further increases their appeal.

The other good news about Extra Place Offers is that they are also available to all customers. This means that even if you get gubbed with a bookmaker, in most cases, you can still make money with them by Matched Betting their Extra Place Offers.

Although Extra Places are considered an advanced reload offer, because they are not risk-free, once you’ve gained some experience on more basic horse racing offers and built up your Matched Betting bankroll enough, they can be very worthwhile you taking on – just as Elle here found out!


What is a horse racing extra place offer in Matched Betting?

At first Horse Racing Extra Place Offers can sound quite complicated, but as soon as you ‘click’ with what’s happening you will find the concept really simple. Honest!

Let’s start at the very beginning.

What is a ‘place’ in horse racing?

In most standard horse races the bookmakers and betting exchanges classify a horse finishing the race in 1st, 2nd or 3rd position as ‘placing’.

In races with large numbers of horses running some bookmakers may also classify a horse finishing the race in 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th position as ‘placing’ as well.

The same occurs in races with a small number of horses too. In this instance some bookmakers will drop the standard number of places to just 1st and 2nd.

The bookmakers and exchanges will state somewhere on the page for a specific horse race what they consider to be the standard number of places for that race.

Here are some examples from Genting Bet and what you are looking for to indicate how many places they are paying out as their standard:

Every bookmaker is different and some don’t write the places as clearly as Genting does – so watch out for this!

We recommend before you start Extra Place Offers to make sure you are acquainted with how to spot where the standard number of places are for a race at different bookmakers.

Just because one bookmaker has classified the standard places on a race as 4 doesn’t mean they all have either!

Again, this is why we recommend getting your ‘eye’ in on understanding how to quickly see and read this very important piece of information first before proceeding with Extra Place Offers.

In comparison, the betting exchanges fortunately tend to be very clear about place markets and sometimes they can ever offer multiple place markets as well. Here’s an example from Smarkets from a race where they are offering odds on both 3 places and 4 places. If only it was so clear at all the bookies!

What is an ‘extra place’ in horse racing?

Now we’ve understood what a place is in horse racing you may have probably already guessed what an ‘extra place’ is going to be!

An ‘extra place’ is when the bookmaker says they will add one (or more) additional places to their standard place classification on a particular race.

So, for example, they may offer to ‘pay 4 places on a race’ instead of the standard 3 places. The 4th position in this instance is then the ‘extra place’.

On races with larger numbers of horses in, they may offer to ‘pay 5 places on the race’ instead of their normal 4 places. The 5th position in this instance is then the ‘extra place’

During big horse racing festivals like Cheltenham and Royal Ascot some bookmakers may even offer to pay out on two extra places on a race.

As an example of this, they may offer to ‘pay 5 places on a race’ instead of the standard 3 places. The 4th and 5th positions in this instance will then be considered as the ‘extra places’.

Horse races that have this promotion applied to them will be emphasized at the bookmaker. There will either be a promotional banner, an extra place symbol, or some kind of note in the race information stating it is an ‘extra place’ race. Here's a few examples of what to watch out for:

What is an ‘Extra Place Offer’ in Matched Betting

Now we know what a bookmaker extra place offer is, how exactly can we profit from such offers in Matched Betting?

In brief - we can make a profit Matched Betting Extra Place Offers from the bookies if the horse we choose to bet on finishes the race in whatever the ‘extra place’ position is on that race.

If the 4th position in a race is the ‘extra place’ and our horse finishes in that exact position – we make money – and usually pretty good money too! (You will see in the walk-through in Part 2 of this guide where we make over £22 profit just on a single extra place race).

If the horse doesn’t finish in that exact extra place position then we make a small loss (as we do with most types of Qualifying Bets we do in Matched Betting).

As with 2up early payout offers in football, although there can obviously be periods of time when our horses don’t come in at the ‘extra place’– over the long run the large profit we make when a horse does come in greatly outweighs the small losses that we make. This is how the Extra Places strategy works.

These profits are what make doing Extra Place Offers ('ex places') in Matched Betting one of the most profitable reload offers – if comments from our profit threads in the Outplayed forum are anything to go by anyway!

There are also strategies we can use to improve our chances of hitting the extra place as well – a few of which we discuss in Part 2 and Part 4 of this guide. Before we get to those though, we first need to make sure we have a good grasp on the basic Matched Betting skills we need to do these offers.


Basic skills we need for Matched Betting Extra Place Offers

To tackle extra place offers we first need to be confident about placing ‘each-way’ bets at the bookmakers and laying off these ‘each-way’ bets at the betting exchange too.

To understand what each-way bets are and how to lay them off though we are best to start with considering standard place betting at the bookmaker and how we can lay such place bets at the betting exchanges.


Also get more information about the odds matcher

What is ‘place betting’, or a ‘place bet’ in horse racing?

At both the bookmaker and betting exchange instead of betting on a horse to win the race in the race ‘winner’ market, you could choose to bet just on a horse to place in the race using the ‘place’ betting market. (Genting refers to the place market as the 'finish market').

This means if you do a ‘place back bet’ at a bookmaker, if the horse you’ve chosen comes in on a (standard) place in a normal race (i.e. 1st, 2nd or 3rd) then you win the bet. If it doesn’t you lose.

The same place rule applies at betting exchanges too.

(For those who are used to football betting markets you could compare betting on the place market in horse racing to betting on the market ‘to win or draw’ in football).

For the purposes of Matched Betting Extra Place Offers we don’t actually need to know about ‘place betting’ at the bookmakers – only ‘each-way betting’ (which we’ll explain further down).

We do need to know about place betting at the betting exchange though – and specifically how to do a lay bet against a horse placing.

(We will assume you already know how to lay a horse to win already. If you don’t know this yet and are a Platinum/Diamond Outplayed member we suggest you start with the basics of betting on horse racing first, then move on to Extra Places once you have the hang of things).

How to ‘lay the place’ at the betting exchanges

If you’re quite confident with the basics of Matched Betting laying the place at the betting exchange will be super easy for you.

All you need to do is find the place market for your particular race of interest, then find the horse you need to lay off, select its lay odds and place a lay bet exactly as you would in any other market.

Here’s an example from a race with just a small number of horses in, where the exchanges (Betfair and Smarkets) were classing the standard number of places as 2 (i.e. 1st and 2nd).

Told you it was easy!

Now we know how to lay the place at the betting exchange we can move onto dealing with ‘each-way bets’ at the bookmakers and then at the betting exchanges.

‘Each-way’ bets – What are they and how to we do them?

An each-way bet is again one of those things that sounds quite complicated but it’s actually really not.

It is just two bets combined as one.

More specifically, it’s a bet on the horse to win AND a bet on the horse to place.

Easy!

There are then only three other things you need to know about placing each-way bets at the bookmakers – how to select to do them, how to write the bet stake amount for them and roughly how the odds work for the place part of the bet.

1) How to select to do an each-way bet at a bookmaker

This is really simple – all you need to do is select the odds for your horse in the ‘win’ market and then check-off that the bet will be an each-way bet in the betslip. (This is usually with a check-box, slider or similar).

2) How to write the each-way stake amount at a bookmaker

This bit is a tad confusing as it’s counterintuitive!

Whatever the stake amount is that you write in your betslip, as soon as you mark the bet as an ‘each-way’ bet your total stake amount will actually double.

This is because when you mark the bet as ‘each-way’ what you are saying is that you want to put that stake on for a win bet, and then again for a place bet too (so you effectively want to use that stake amount twice).

In this example from Genting Bet, you can see how the total stake amount changes from £10 to £20 as soon as we mark the bet as each-way.

This happens because we are telling Genting when we mark the bet as ‘each-way’ that we want to place £10 on Sameem to win, then also £10 on Sameem to place as well (which is a £20 stake in total).

A £20 ‘each-way’ stake is a £40 bet in total. (£20 on the win, £20 on the place).

A £5 ‘each-way’ stake is a £10 bet in total. (£5 on the win, £5 on the place).

A £15 ‘each-way’ stake is a £30 bet in total. (£15 on the win, £15 on the place).

(Remember bookies always want people to bet more with them, hence why they decided on this approach! It makes more sense when you look at it from their perspective!).

3) How the odds work for the place part of the 'each-way' bet.

The odds for the place part of an ‘each-way’ bet are not the same as the odds for the ‘win’ part of the ‘each-way’ bet. (If you think about this of course they’re not otherwise the bookmakers would basically be paying you out at the odds for winning even if your horse places in 2nd or 3rd!).

If they’re not the same odds what odds are they then?

Well, where the bookmakers state the number of places they’re paying out on a race, they also tend to state the odds they’ll pay out on the place part of each-way bets too. Remember these examples from Genting earlier?

The ‘fraction’ of the odds refers to the fraction of the win odds.

For the 14:40 at Haydock if your horse places they will pay you out at ¼ of whatever the horse’s win odds are.

For the 15:00 at Epsom if your horse places they will pay you out at 1/5 of whatever the horse’s win odds are.

We don’t really need to understand how these odds are calculated for Matched Betting Extra Places (as our lovely tools and calculators literally do all the work for you :) ) – so we’re not going to bother worrying about that as it’s just not necessary.

Now we know all about how to place an ‘each-way’ bet at a bookmaker, how do we go about laying off an ‘each-way’ bet at a betting exchange?

How to Lay an Each-way Bet at the Betting Exchange

To completely lay off an each-way bet we’ve placed at a bookmaker we have to do two separate lay bets at the betting exchange.

Specifically - one lay bet on the win market, and one lay bet on the place market.

After doing this you’ll end up with a betslip at the exchange that looks something like this:

This was just a quick example to show a lay bet against the horse Brazen Belle winning and a lay bet against the horse Brazen Belle placing in the top 3.

Whether we’re using Smarkets, Betfair, or another exchange we always do these two lay bets to completely lay off our each-way bet at the bookmaker.

We’re not going to talk about how you calculate your lay stakes just yet as we’ll show you that in Part 2 of this guide on the full walk-through example. The long story short on this though is that it’s basically all done automatically for you in the Extra Place Catcher or the Each Way Calculator –so you only really need to know how to place the necessary lay bets – which you now do! :)


How do we use each-way betting to profit from Extra Place Offers?

Now we’ve completely got the hang of placing each-way bets at the bookies and then laying them off at the betting exchange how do we use this knowledge to make money on Extra Place Offers?

We mentioned before that we can make a profit Matched Betting Extra Place Offers from the bookies if the horse we choose to bet on finishes the race in whatever the ‘extra place’ position is on that race.

Why is though and how does it work?

Well, it works by us exploiting the difference in the ‘place’ classification between the bookmaker and the betting exchange that arises when bookmakers offer an extra place.

Let’s consider a normal race first, where the bookmaker is classifying the place positions as 1st, 2nd and 3rd and so is the exchange. What happens when we do Matched Betting using each-way bets on such a race? (This would basically be each-way mug betting).

(For each position we basically have two winning bets in green and two losing bets in red – so that we’re completely covered).

Now let’s consider an Extra Place race, where the bookmaker is classifying the place positions as 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th but the exchange is still classifying the places as 1st, 2nd and 3rd. What happens when we do Matched Betting using each-way bets on such a race?

(In the 4th position – the extra place – we end up with an extra winning bet – there are 3 winning bets and only one losing bet).

If our horse comes in the extra place our profit basically comes from both the place part of our each-way bet winning at the bookie AND our place lay bet also winning at the betting exchange.

We’d recommend to take a couple of minutes to go over these tables and digest exactly what’s happening and why if our horses comes in the extra place position we win the place bet at both the bookie and exchange.

Once you’re certain you’ve clicked as to how we make a profit you’re ready to continue to Part 2 of our Matched Betting Extra Places Full Guide – the walk-through example using the Extra Place Catcher.

GO TO EXTRA PLACES PART 2

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