BACK & LAY Strategies

Posted on October 10, 2007
Filed Under Racing Strategies |

Millionaires and bankrupts are made at Betfair everyday. They have something in common, both use back and lay strategies to try to make money.

To back a horse to win or place.

Back strategies rely on the selected horses to go on and win or place in a race for the punter to make money. In the winners market, you have to select THE horse that will win the race. In the place market, you have to select the horse/s that will come in 1st - 3rd in most races. When there are many runners, sometimes they allow for the 4th placed horse to win too. However please be aware that when they have a few runners like maybe 5 horses only, they will only allow for 2 placed horses. You can see this information on the right hand side of the Betfair screen, under Rules.

Let me give you an example ;

You Back Horse A , Stake = $10 , odds = 3.45

If Horse A were to win, you will profit $10 x 3.45, minus stake $10 = $ 24.50 PROFIT

If you lose, you lose your stake only = $10

When placing a BACK bet, you can do it in 2 ways. Bet a level stake, meaning that you bet a similar amount on all races or you can Back as profit. This means that if you want to make $10 for this race, you will need to take $10 divide it with the (odds minus1) to get your stake.

The opposite of Back is to LAY. When you pick a horse and you LAY the horse, this means that you are betting that this particular horse will lose/not win/place the race. In the event that the horse wins the race you will lose money, which is equivalent to the exposure of that bet.

Here is the same example ;

If you lay Horse A , Stake = $10 , Odds 3.45

If Horse A wins the race, you will lose $10 x 3.45 , minus stake $10 = $24.50 LOSS

If Horse A losses the race, you will win $10

When you lay a horse there are 2 ways to profit if your selection loses a race. You can lay a level stake thoughout the day. Meaning that you lay $5 for all races. Or you can lay on liability. This means that you set a predetermined amount as your exposure for each race. Eg. $40 for each race. To calculate the correct stake to bet, simple take $40 and divide it by (odds minus 1) . If the odds is 5 for the next race then it is 40/(5-1) = $10 stake.