Laying Horses At Big Prices

This blog post is an updated version that was first posted in 2024 and has been updated with new ideas and results.

Laying horses is completely different to backing horses of course and carries quite a large risk, especially if you are laying horses at fairly big prices. 

Depending on the price of an unsuccessful lay, it will usually take a few winning lays just to get back to where you were before.

In effect you are the bookmaker in this situation, but unlike the actual bookmakers you do not have thousands of people losing lots of money to you at the same to either balance your books or more likely as is for the bookmakers, keep you in profit.

To lay horses you will need to do this on the betting exchanges, with Betfair being the most used of them all. If you can't laying horses on Betfair, you could effectively lay a horse by backing all the other runners with a bookmaker but it is pretty unpractical.

The basics and the odds

To go over a lay bet for you if you are not totally sure how it works. You place the stake as the amount you want to win. 

So a £5 lay stake on a horse that loses will win you the £5, less commission.

A £5 lay stake on a horse that wins, means you lose 5 times the odds.

If the horse wins at 2/1, you will lose 2 x £5, so -£10

If the horse wins at 20/1, you will lose 20 x £5, so - £100. 

Ouch!

With the second bet, you now need 20 successful lay bets just to get your £5 back.

You can probably now see why people either prefer backing horses or laying horses at shorter odds. Unfortunately, finding horses that regularly lose at shorter odds isn't at all easy and it can be a case of one step forward and two steps back without really getting anywhere.

Bigger odds horse lose more often but....

...as you have seen, an unsuccessful lay bet can set you back a fair bit.

However, when I previously said that after a 20/1 losing lay bet you would now need 20 successful lay bets to get your stake back, it is more than likely that you will have just had twenty, thirty, forty or more successful lay bets before that losing one.

So instead of it being one step forward and two steps back as it can feel like when laying shorter priced runners, it can be more like forty steps forward and twenty steps back.

I believe that it is easier to lay horses at bigger odds, as long as you can find an angle that cuts down the losers at those odds.

Using the system builder, you can run any of your system ideas going back ten years, with over 300 form categories and sub-categories, for both backing or laying. 

I have tried a large number of ideas previously and for me personally, I find that odds between 16 and 34 inclusive, give as good results as any.

You could increase this to between 20 and 34 for a slightly better success rate, but that will mean less bets.

Getting the balance right for your betting is what is important, so you can play around with the odds. 

An example of a system I have been testing recently.

I started using this lay system last week on one of my accounts on Betfair.

It has been six days now since the first lay bet at Ayr and these are the results, laying to £10 stakes. This means that the losses on a horse that wins will be between £150 and £330. 

That is £10 at between 16 (15/1) and 34 (33/1).

All images can be clicked to enlarge if needed.

You can see a profit of £637.62 in this six day period and about halfway down the profit and loss column, you can see a loss on one race at Wolverhampton, of £121.91.

The bad news of course is that this race lost me £121.91, however, that was the only losing race over the past six days and I had 4 other winning lays in that particular race as well, which made the loss less than it could have been.

If I open up that race, you can see how the bets went on that race, as well as the losing one on Beta Reader at odds on 17.19.

Downloading these results into excel, you can see more clearly how the number of bets were for each race and just how many races I bet in. Betting £10 and paying 2% commission on all winning bets, means a profit of £9.80 each time.

The No. bets column, shows the number of winning lays per race and you can see, just that one losing lay from  81 other successful lays.

The two bets highlighted in yellow were where I greened up early, as the BSP odds were over 34 as I automate the bets to be placed a couple of seconds before the off time, when the odds were lower.

You can do this or just let them run but as I was at my pc I decided to play safe and in the end both bets did lose so would have been successful lay bets. I just didn't want to have a losing bet that was actually outside my odds range.

What about the long term results?

Whilst I am not going to give away the rules to this current laying system - keep reading for how you can gain access to another one that has also been very successful - I will show you the results going back to the start of 2021.

Over 3,000 points profit, a better than 96% strike rate and a longest run of winning bets of 194!

Already 111 points profit this year and whacking great profits from the previous years as well.

So you can see just how you can use the Inform Racing system builder to build your very own profitable, back or lay systems and then make real money from them too.

Using the result breakdowns on the system builder to filter your set of results, will be a game changer for you if you haven't already used it before.

Watch a video on these breakdowns here. (It is quite an old video but it shows just how these breakdowns can help you.)

Imagine knowing just what parts of your rules, your ideas and your chosen form categories were hindering your success. And being able to find out in a matter of seconds too, on a task that would well, be impossible to do without this amazing feature.

Here is something you can start using very soon.

As current subscribers will know, I have another laying system, again laying horses within the price range of 16 to 34.

And the selections for this laying system, are posted for subscribers every day, for you to follow if you want to- PLUS, you also get the rules to this one, so you can take a look back at all past results and verify everything for yourself, by running it through the system builder.

It is a laying system that runs on flat turf racing only, unlike my one above that runs all year around, but the good news is that we are only a couple of weeks away from the start of the 2025 flat turf season.

A better than 96% strike rate, a very decent overall profit and in fact the best total profit last year in 2024, where there were only 49 losing lay bets right throughout the season.

In fact there have only been 209 losing lay bets from over 6,100 since the start of the flat turf season in 2020!

As a subscriber, you will not only get these selections listed for you each day but you will also be able to download the settings to use alongside the betting software 'Fairbot', so you can load everything up well before the off and just let it all run on auto pilot.

Everything you need, plus a full explanation and videos, are available on the 'Betting Systems' link, once you have subscribed and then logged in.

Finally... a bonus set of backing selections for you too.

If laying is not your thing, you may want to re-think if that is case given the profits that you have seen can be achieved, then we also have a backing system that you can follow.

Again the selections are all posted for you and you get access to another Fairbot strategy that will place your bets for you plus explanation videos and more.

Whilst not quite as potent as the laying systems for profits made, it has still been consistent.

As you can see, it hasn't hit full steam ahead so far in 2025 but there haven't been too many bets.

With a positive strike rate of over 28% since the start of 2020 and a profit of over 100 points to date each year, this may be something that you want to follow as well.

Remember, the selections are given to subscribers each day for both laying and backing strategies and you get the system rules to load into the system builder, play around with, maybe even improve them?

If you want to get the backing selections now and the laying selections when the 2025 flat turf season starts again very soon, then subscribe here now, if you are not already.

A full 12 month subscription with access to absolutely everything we provide, costs just £4.60 a week.

Conclusion

Laying horses at big odds is probably easier than laying horses at shorter odds. You just need an angle in to which ones lose more often.

You must however, set yourself up with a good bank, one you can afford to lose and also you should start to expect that some of your lays will actually win, losing you money when they do.

If you are set up correctly though and can take a hit without too much bother, then the rewards can be really good.

Just keep placing the bets after a losing one and wait for things to come back round into profit.