|
One of the great things about betting exchanges is the ability to both
back and lay on events. Until recently it has only been possible to bet
on something to win, yet we all know that and bookmakers make a very
successful living from betting against us. Betting exchanges mean that
if you think something will not win or is too short a price you can bet
against it.
You
are now able to be the bookmaker and lay the odds for all the
events that you would traditionally bet on. This may mean
offering significant payouts for small returns if you do it
individually, however if you lay several horses, teams or whatever
then you can effectively create your own book for the event
In this example we have layed the odds-on favourite Lilium De Cotte
by clicking on the pink square . We then entered
the value of backers stakes we were prepared to accept, being £79 in
this example. Prior to making your bet it will tell you what your
liability is to cover those bets £55.36 and when you confirm the bet
this amount is deducted from your available funds. Because of the
rapidly changing odds the price you match at can sometimes be better
than you set (never worse) which is what happened in this case with out
£79 being layed at a variety of different prices with an average of
about 1.7. In this
example because this is an odds on shot, are liability is actually less
than our potential winnings as as you can see from above we win £79 if 8
of the 9 horses win. The process works in exactly the same
way as it does for backing, only this time you are either taking other
peoples offers (i.e. prices they want to back the horse at) or laying
your own odds which would appear as blue squares on the left if they
weren't matched. In this example for Lilium De Cotte there
are people who want to back at 1.75 and more (in the lay columns) and
people who want to lay the horse at odds of 1.61 and below.
Laying bets is a totally new concept for most of us and does take a few
minutes to get your head around. Sometimes it is best to make a
few small bets to get a feel for it.
BetFair has a
minimum stake of £2 so you could pretty safely lay a few £2 bets on odds
on or short priced favourites without it breaking the bank (and you
might even win).
While this example was horse racing, it works in the same way for every
other sport - there really are no limitations. What is probably
most important though is that you learn a bit about the
strategies of laying
bets, since as you might expect its a very different proposition.
For more information on this see our page on
laying horses page.
Next: Taking Profits
|
4. Laying
Losers