Lay Betting Explained
The traditional way of betting is to back a horse to win, so you put £2 on a horse at 10/1 and if it wins, you win £2 x £10 = £20, plus you get your £2 stake back as well.
Nowadays you can place what is called a lay bet and, in this case, we are backing a horse to lose. You cannot do this with most traditional bookmakers but you can do it with what are called the betting exchanges. The biggest I have already mentioned is called Betfair and is the one that I suggest that you use.
When lay betting, the positions are switched, so in the example above, you are now placing the bet of £10 to win the £2, plus your stake back. This is effectively what the bookmaker does when you place your traditional back bet.
If you have a race with 12 runners and place a back bet to win on one horse, you have that one horse on your side with the other 11 running against you.
With a lay bet, you have 11 horses on your side and just one, the horse that you are laying, the horse you are betting to lose, running against you.
Just going by the numbers, you have more chance of finding a successful horse to ‘lay’ than a successful horse to ‘back’. What you need to take into consideration however are the odds.
If you lay ten horses for £2 at 10/1 and one of them wins, you have 9 successful bets @ £2, = +£18 and one losing bet at £2 x 10 = -£20, so you will have lost £2 over these ten bets.
Horses at shorter prices win more often than those at bigger prices, so we have more chance of finding horses that will lose at bigger prices. The downside is that the odds are bigger so we stand to lose more if a horse we bet to lose, goes on to win.
My sweet spot, range of odds, is between 16 and 34, so for a £2 bet we stand to lose a minimum of £30 or a maximum of £66. The odds we use are decimal odds so we take 1 away from the odds to get 15/1 for odds of 16 and 33/1 for odds of 34.
Make a Passive Income from Horse Racing - Free selections
I use a combination of two systems for these selection, one for the flat turf season and one for the all weather, so there will be selections all year round.
Following these from 2020 to mid way through 2024 would have given you an average, passive monthly income of £240 a month using £5 stakes.
As I previously said, we are betting on horses between the decimal odds of 16 and 34, or 15/1 and 33/1 and the bet placement software I advise you to use, will ensure that if the odds are below or above this range, then no bet will be placed.
What you want to understand is that if you are using £5 stakes and a horse we want to lose, wins and at odds of 33/1, you will lose £165. You now need 33 winning bets to recoup that loss but is possible that you have just had a run of 70 or 80, 100 or more successful bets before that loss.
Knowing, understanding and accepting this fact will either make or break your success with this strategy. I am not going to try and sugar coat anything, I want to be honest and let you see what can happen in plain terms.
It is almost a set and forget strategy where you are playing the long game. You will get some losing days but your attitude and discipline to accept this will be key to your success.
The worst case there has been to this point, is a losing streak of 3.
The odds of these three losing bets were 19/1, 16/1 and 29/1, meaning that using £5 stakes, our bank dropped by 95 + 80 + 145 = £320.
There have been a number of winning streaks of 100 or more, so at £5 stakes that would be £500 or more, without a losing bet.
There have only been 3 losing bets from 192 at odds of 34 or 33/1
There has been a successful strike rate of 96.2%
The average losing odds have been 23 or 22/1
It is really a case of knowing that the odds are on your side and just accepting losses and moving on is part of the process.
Being prepared
I would suggest that a bank of £200 or £300 would be the minimum to get started with, maybe nearer £500 would be a better way to start, if that is possible for you.
You don’t have to bet £5 you can bet £1 if you want as a profit is a profit and just seeing your batting bank increasing over time is all some people want to achieve.
Losses are inevitable but being able to deal with these when they come along is very important. Your attitude and discipline to take a loss with a pinch of salt and continue, will make all the difference to you and will decide whether you can successfully make yourself a passive income from horse racing or not.
The number of winning bets come thick and fast and it doesn’t take long to increase the bank again but is very necessary to know that there will be dips and losing bets before you get back on track again into more profit.
I want to be very clear about what can happen so that you are prepared. Like I say, just place the bets each day and wait, be patient.
96% of your bets will be winning ones, remember that.
Commission on all winning bets
As you are going to use Betfair for this strategy, then there is a small amount of commission to pay on each winning bet. You have the choice of how much commission you pay and you should of course choose the smallest amount where you only pay 2% on all winning bets.
Once you have signed up to Betfair, go to your account and select the Basic Plan and if things haven’t changed since I did this myself, you will have to wait until the start of the next month before your commission drops from 5% to the 2%.
If you are using £5 stakes, then 5% commission will mean you make £4.75 on each winning bet, whereas if you are paying just 2% then you will make £4.90 on each winning bet, which is quite a big difference over the long term.
Your starting betting bank
It is essential that you set yourself up in the right way from the start and that includes the betting bank that you are going to use.
You will need to add funds to your Betfair account when you get started, just please make sure it really is money that you can afford to lose or money that you do not need for your everyday life.
Getting these selections
These are posted everyday on the Betting Systems link on the menu, once you have logged in. So you will need to be a subscriber to Inform Racing.