How To Profit On Betfair?

Everyone who bets would like to profit consistently, and these days I often get asked ‘How to profit on Betfair?’

With Betfair offering better odds than the bookmakers in the majority of cases, especially on horse racing, it is now easier than ever to make from gambling.

Thousands of techniques, whether they be manual or systematic, exist in order to make long term profits, and I use a number of them myself, which includes normal betting, laying, and trading the odds on Betfair.

For a beginner the easiest way is to get hold of a horse racing system that is profitable, I sell a few on this site, and these are ones I have used myself for years.

DO NOT follow newspaper tipsters, they are paid to tip a horse in every race, and mention many more, unlike myself, they are not professional gamblers, just journalists with an interest in horse racing.

Once you have a profitable system, all you need do is just follow the rules. DO NOT deviate from them, I have seen many people turn a profitable system into a losing one over the years by deciding not to back certain qualifiers for one reason or another, and then when they lose the betting bank they blame the system!! If they had stuck strictly to the rules they would have been in profit.

To be honest, you are always best running at least 3 systems, this ensures that if one hits a losing run, the other 2 usually hold it up. Do not cluster win systems with lay ones though, you are best having 2 separate Betfair accounts, one each for backing the other for laying. This is because laying can be very volatile and can half the betting bank in just a few days.

If you have 3 win systems to follow then you do not need 3 betting banks. You can leverage 3 betting banks from just 2. Simply put, if you are starting with £100 per system, that should be £300 total. However, as this will never all be used at any one time betting 3% you can just use £200. Do not leverage more than that though, you have seen what happened to many UK banks when they did that!

You will also find a few ways to profit on Betfair by looking at the stats on this blog and putting your own system together, though I would recommend including a proven system as well if you are going to formulate your own rules based on stats.

If you have any questions about ‘How to profit on Betfair?’ then just ask on our horse racing forum.

Profit On The Exchanges: Laying Horses with an Official Rating

While doing a bit of research today I was looking at the Official Ratings of horses (OR) and seeing if any trends showed up. The OR is freely available you’ll find it on the Racing Post and Sporting Life sites.

Now all ratings service produce long term losses if you back everything, the way to use them is to do some research and see if any long term trends are profitable, or be selective. Or, since you know they show long term losses you can look for an edge when laying the horses. So while looking at the OR stats from various angles a couple of race type kept showing profits if you laid them on the exchanges.

Year Ran Win SR Lay PL
 Lay ROI
2008 86 42 48.84 12.52 14.56
2009 82 46 56.1 1.27 1.54
2010 79 42 53.16 8.57 10.85
2011 78 31 39.74 24.44 31.33
2012 58 31 53.45 7.27 12.53

Now some may think the stats above aren’t impressive but when I tell you all the selections were ODDS ON FAVOURITES they look pretty good, especially as the average odds were 1.68. And these results have the 5% commission deducted as well, so if you have less than the default 5% then that means more profits.

So although this system has less than 100 qualifiers a year, it helps you target odds on horses with lay betting.

Free Horse Racing System Rules:
1. Check for races in which the favourite will be odds on, do not use forecast odds, you need to bet near the off.
2. Only bet in CLAIMERS or CONDITIONS races, regardless of whether they are a handicap or not.
3. Make sure the selection is the top rated with its Official Rating.

It is as simple as that. All horses in the race need not have an OR. If just one has an OR then that is the top rated.

How To Make Profits on the Exchange?

All punters would like to make a profit from gambling, and with the betting exchanges now a part of the normal betting world it is essential to have an account with at least one of them.

A simple way of showing the profit potential of an exchange is to compare a horse racing system that breaks even or shows a small loss using bookmaker SP, but using BSP (Betfair Starting Price) it shows a profit. You can clearly see this in the example below from real results during 2011.

Year

Runners

Win

SR

P/L Exc

ROI Exc

P/L  SP

ROI  SP

2011

1187

482

40.61

39.25

3.31

-14.72

-1.24

You can see this system would show a profit of £39.25 in 2011 (5% deductions included), while using a normal bookmaker you would have shown a loss of £14.72, ouch!!  The difference is a whopping £55, and this is just to £1 stakes. This is why using Betfair is a MUST.

 

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One thing that using an exchange means is that some systems that worked way back in the 90′s but stopped due to overuse may now again be profitable, so it may be worth searching the internet for old free systems and checking them on the likes of Raceform, Proform or Horseracebase to see if they are now profitable. Some stats sites don’t have BSP so just add 10% to SP as you should average 8%-12% better than SP on an exchange.

If you are already using a profitable system backing at SP then you are losing profits by not backing the horses on the betting exchanges.

Another way of profiting on the exchanges is to LAY horses, that is backing the horse not to win. It’s easy to find a losing horse but it is actually more difficult to profit from laying than it is compared to win betting. This is because the lay bet has to include the overbet, that’s the 8%-12% bonus win backers get.

One line of ‘gambling’ the betting exchanged opened up is trading. This basically means buying and selling the actual Betfair prices to lock in a profit. This is usually done before the race is off, so you may back a horse at 4.0 in the belief the price will drop, and then lay at 3.8 for the same stake which producse a profit on that horse. You can then do what we call ‘greening up’ which splits that profit between all runners so no matter what wins you profit. Simple and easy money? Not quite, many people fail by not bailing out when the price movement goes against you, it is controlling the bailout that usually determines whether you make long term profits or not.

One good thing with trading is that you can use high stakes with little risk. A £100 stakes may only risk less than 5% of it at anyone time, especially if you are only dealing with 1 or 2 ticks.

One further form of profiting on an exchange is to use Back to Lay (Lay to Back is best ignored when starting out). You find a horse that always runs well in a race and expect the price to drop in-running, so you back the horse before the race and lay it in-running, greening up to lock in a profit on all runners. However this is more risky, if the horse falls before you bail out then you lose 100% of the stake, but you do make more profit than just trading the odd tick before the race.

So as you can see, having an exchange account is essential, not only for better odds but also to give you many more options on the types of bets you can do.

 

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