Horse Racing Offers
- The TopTrap Greyhound Profit And Loss Account On Betfair - March 17, 2022
- Betfair Best Execution – 11 Requested & Filled At 320 - January 16, 2022
- BTB System e-book - March 13, 2015
Strategies for:
Bet365 Offers
Fallers Offers
2nd Place Offers
Best Odds Guaranteed
Happy Hours
Pricewise
Extra Place Offers
Ante Post/Non Runner No Bet
Horse Racing Multiples
There are several offers specific to Horse Racing, for which the arb finder is very useful. Many of these offers don’t look great at first glance and are best tackled as arbs, with a massive bonus if the offer comes in. Wherever I label these “Arb Offer Strategy” what I mean is that you look for arbs (or very near arbs) and make no adjustment for the offer. If you can find an arb on the relevant race at a different bookie you can take a near arb at the offer bookie and use the original arb to offset the loss. If you do enough of these offers you WILL sometimes win, and the whole point is that when you do win the rewards are large.
For Strategies for Bet365 Horse and Greyhound Offers see this page.
Fallers Offers
Risk category B Arb Offer strategy
Typical offer:
We will refund your stake as a free bet if your horse falls, is brought down, unseats rider or refuses, max refund £25.
Bookies which have this offer occasionally include VC and Sportingbet. Bookies have been known to have this offer on the Grand National.
These are perfect for the arb offer strategy – just grab as many horses in the race as you can at as many bookies as you can. The more horses you can bet on in the race the less likely you are to have to pay any commission (because if one of your horses with a red P&L wins you are on an overall loss on the race). This means that you can take level odds on horses at the offer bookie (eg 8/8 and back/lay 25/25) with a much reduced chance of losing any money. Fallers are very common in jump races and if you do this often enough you will get some refunds.
To find out if your horse fell, the best place to look is the sportinglife website:
http://www.sportinglife.com/racing/r…/settlers.html
Give them about half an hour after the race has finished to put up the full result. You can find these by clicking on the race you want in the dropdown menu at the top.
2nd place offers
Risk category B Arb Offer strategy
Typical offers:
Money back if your horse is 2nd to the SP favourite
Money back if your horse is 2nd beaten a neck or less
Money back if your horse is 2nd to a horse in an odd numbered stall/lower numbered stall etc
Money back if your horse leads over the last fence but fails to win
and various other similar offers.
There is usually one of these offers at both Paddy Power and Boylesports every single day. Other bookies do them occasionally.
Treat these races exactly the same as for the fallers offers (above). Some of them will trigger the offer.
Best Odds Guaranteed
Risk category A Arbing strategy
Several of the bigger bookmakers offer Best Odds Guaranteed on UK racing, and some of them include Irish races as well. This is just about the best offer ever for arbers, and can also benefit you if you are matched betting on horses.
All this means is that if you take the price offered by the bookmaker at the time of your bet and the SP is bigger, you will be paid out at the bigger price. While it is not every day that drifters win, they do sometimes win, and the results can be spectacular. Basically for every whole point that the horse drifts (eg from 4 out to 5), you will get the value of your stake extra if it wins.
I advise against laying more at Betfair to try to take advantage of this for 2 reasons. Firstly at high odds laying is very expensive, and one winner with the original lay stake will pay far more than the extra couple of quid from laying a bit more on several losers. Secondly the bookmakers are very good at cutting these horses right at the last minute, and this information may not filter through until the SP is announced. I have seen plently of horses drift from say 4 to 6 a couple of minutes before the race, only to suddenly shorten again and start with SP 4.
Bookies offering “BOG” are:
Bet365 – all horse and greyhound racing, no country specified
Ladbrokes (not shops) – all UK and Irish horse races
Paddy Power – all UK and Irish horse and greyhound racing
Boylesports – all UK and Irish horse races, all BAGS and BEGS greyhounds
Stan James – mainland UK horse races
Tote (internet only) – some UK and Irish racing
VC (internet only) – all UK and Irish horse racing
William Hill (internet only) – all UK and Irish horse racing
Betfred – specific races only, check site for details
Many of these bookmakers say that they exclude some customers from this offer and that there will be an indication on the betslip if you are eligible. (NB offers can and do change – always check the bookie before assuming any offer is valid).
Real example: “I backed my horse at 1.57 and thanks to the bog offer got paid out at 2.1!”
Happy Hours
Risk category A – Arbing strategy.
Some bookies have a set time slot when they offer enhanced odds on specific selections. There are 2 varieties of this: Enhanced Price and Best Industry Price.
I have seen these offers recently at Stan James and William Hill, and Bet365 currently run one on every televised race.
It is useful to be aware of these offers, as quite often at the start of the happy hour the selection is an arb, particularly for the Best Industry Price offers. The price at Betfair then drifts or the bookies cut and the arb disappears.
Stan James is particularly good at these – their nominated horse is usually an arb, and Stan’s have been known to lengthen the price further during the Happy Hour, which is usually 11-12am on the specified day.
Pricewise
Risk category A Arbing strategy
This is not an offer, but an excellent arbing opportunity.
On a Saturday and on big race days, the Racing Post runs a column called “Pricewise”. The idea is for the writer (usually Tom Segal) to find horses in the big race(s) of the day which he thinks are good value bets. He is very successful considering the types of races and prices he is dealing with, and he has a big following. This means that by the time the bookies open their phone lines (8.30 am for most on a Saturday, other times during the week), the Pricewise selections have often shortened, sometimes considerably, at Betfair. The bookies are obliged to offer the price that they promised in the paper, even if only for a couple of minutes.
Needless to say, limits are often small at the Pricewise price, and if you try to place a bet on the phone you can find yourself in a queue for 10-15 minutes. However there can be some fantastic arbs from these.
WARNING Betting on Pricewise horses risks bookie limiting your account.
Extra Place Offers
Risk category D Each way arbing strategy
Extra place offers can be lucrative if you know what you are doing, the risk factor is all to do with the complications caused by non runners.
You should not attempt these offers unless you are very confident with arbing (since you need to arb 2 markets at the same time on Betfair) and you understand the complexities of the place market rules differences at bookies and Betfair.
The value in these offers lies in the offer of an extra place, so that if your horse finishes in that position you win your place bet at the bookie AND win the place lay at Betfair.
For more information about Each way arbing and a link to an each way spreadsheet, see this post.
Ante Post/Non Runner No Bet (NRNB)
Risk category B Arbing with potential bonus.
One of the things bookmakers do about a week before big races is change the rules of the ante-post market so that if your horse is a non runner you get back your stake. Normal ante-post bets lose if the horse does not run. As far as I am aware there is no rule 4 on non runners during this offer, but it is wise to check with the individual bookmaker before betting.
This produces an interesting scenario if you can find an arb or close odds.
If your horse runs the arb stands.
If your horse does not run the bet at the bookmaker is void and your lay wins at Betfair.
There is no point in deliberately taking a loss to gamble that the horse won’t run – most horses will. But it is a nice bonus if you can find decent odds and then the horse can’t run.
What is ante post?
The ante post racing markets are slightly more complicated than just “before the day”. There are different rules about what happens if there is a non runner.
You can bet on a horse to win a race that is some way in the future, for example I could decide in March that I thought one of the runners in the Derby (June) was a good bet at 33-1. If I took that price at a bookmaker or on Betfair and the horse did not run (which is not all that unlikely over 2 months away) then my bet would lose. In an ordinary race market non runner bets are void. Similarly if the favourite didn’t run there would be no rule 4 on the ante post market at the bookmaker and no reduction factor at Betfair, whereas on the ordinary market both would apply.
The reason why the NRNB ante post markets at bookies are interesting is that there is a rules difference which can work in your favour (refund at bookie, lay bet wins) but can’t work against you if your horse doesn’t run.
Ante post markets close at the “final declaration” stage, when the trainer has to declare that he will definitely run the horse (and will be fined if he doesn’t unless he can prove the horse was ill). This is usually 48 hours for flat races and 24 hours for jump races, although the biggest races have 48 hour declarations. Betfair list the times of the declaration stages (when they suspend the market for a while) in the rules tab on the right of the market.
Horse Racing Multiples
Care is needed for multiples on horse racing as these need to be laid off race by race on the basis of covering your stake and liability incurred by any previous winners, until either all the races are done or one of the horses loses. You need to be at the computer to lay the next horse if the current one wins. Low odds are better because the tick size (difference between each step in the odds) is smaller giving less potential for large drifts.
Howard Hutchinson has created a video explaining one method of tackling a free horse racing multiples bet. The video and explanation can be found on this page.
In 2021 TradeHost traded 7,937 Betfair UK, IE, US & AU horse racing and greyhound markets.
2022 saw TradeHost become even more profitable with 22,698 Betfair markets traded.
2023 less markets were traded – 17,459 – but a with a similar profit to 2022.
All trades and bets were streamed live on JuiceStorm TV which was was watched by 124,209 traders in 2022.
All results for the 48,094 Betfair markets traded are here and the charts are here.
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