Lay Betting -
What is it?
Lay betting is the opposite of
betting, or a 'reverse' bet. Or better still, when you place a lay bet
you become the 'bookie'. The idea is that you have to pick a loser, instead
of a winner, but instead of winning your stake multiplied by the odds, you are
liable
for your stake multiplied by the odds.
For example, if you 'lay' £10 on a horse at 3/1 and that horse loses you gain
£10.
If however the horse wins then you are liable for the odds at the money you staked.
So in this example you would
have to pay out £30 (£10 x 3).
Easy enough?
Well yes, and then again no. Theoretically your odds are better at picking
a loser, and this is how bookie's make money (and lots of it!). The problem
comes in how often you actually manage to get it wrong compared with the odds you
are betting.
Let me explain. If you decided to lay every horse at 10/1 that means each
time you lay a horse at 10/1 you would be liable for 10 times your stake.
e.g. If you stake £10 your liability is £100 for each and every lay.
However your potential win is only your stake, so in this example you can only win
£10 each time.
This means that in order to turn a profit you need to pick a loser at least 10 times
out of 11. So for every 11
races you lay on you have to get it spot on 10
times, any less and you start making a loss.
This should still be easy right? After all, how often do 'outside chances'
win? Well to be honest you'd be surprised! I know of one gambling professional
who decided to stake £10 on a 150/1 outsider. Easy money eh? Well it
wasn't when it won and he lost £1500!
Gulp, er, perhaps it's not worth it then?
Well not necessarily, you see the whole point of betting is finding a winning 'system'.
There are lots of systems out there and they are all based on the same principal
- find a way of picking a winner or loser whose win/lose ration beats the odds you
are backing at.
Look at my earlier 'Lay betting' system for example, the system states that if you
lay every 10/1 horse then so long as you pick the loser 10 out of 11 times the win/lose
ratio beats the odds.
Or to put it another way, if horses at 10/1 win less that 10% of the time (less
than 1 race in 10) then you will be in profit.
(Incidentaly, this is NOT a tested system, just a simple one I used for an example,
try it if you want but I wouldn't recommend it!)
Okay, where do I find a system?
Well the cheapest way is to write one yourself. To do this, trawl through
all the past years racing statistics, find a pattern, then 'paper chase' it to test
the theory. By this I mean make pretend bets - just put what you would have
bet on a piece of paper, and keep track of the results.
The easiest way would be to buy one. There are lots out there, just search
on google (in fact some should appear in the sponsored listings on the left).
The problems with these are that
a) they cost you money
b) you have no idea if they actually work or not and
c)
most presume you have all day to spend betting or laying - which you probably
don't!
It's hard to find the right ones, but that is where this site comes in. I
have two tools available for you.
My AutoBet software that automates laying horses given your requirements.
On top of that I have built into this site a forum where you can post your experiences
of different systems.
And maybe even post your own systems.