Some information about lay betting on horses
Posted April 17, 2010 – 2:19 pm in: UncategorizedBookmakers have been putting laying bets on horses to lose ever since the sport of horse racing began. As a member of the public putting a wager on a horse, we are actually involved with laying horses every time we have a bet. We are simply on the other end of the wager. To back a horse, there will always be somebody who must cover the other side of the bet. Yet so many punters mistakenly think they are unfamiliar with placing lay bets on horses, so they steer away from it entirely.
Here we wont show you how to make a profit by putting lay bets on horses. It will not even explain exactly how you lay a bet on a horse to lose. My intention when writing this article is merely to show you that placing lay bets on a betting exchange isnt some kind of ‘black art’ and there is nothing ‘smoke and mirrors’ about it.
Normally the bookmaker covers the side of the lay bet. This allocation of responsibilities is something we are all used to. But let’s examine the mechanic of placing a bet:
In this example, let’s assume we are going to back a horse called General Account at a price of 3/1 and for a stake of £10
We approach a bookmaker and this is what we are offering: we are looking to wager our stake of £10 on the chance of this horse General Account winning the race. The price we are happy to accept is 3/1 If the horse loses, we will give the bookmaker our money. However, if the horse wins we shall take our wager back, and furthermore, we demand that the bookmaker gives us three times our stake money as profit.
In placing this bet, we are putting money on our opinion that this horse will win – it should be obvious, if we didn’t think it would win, we would not place the wager in the first place.
Now remember, in order for a wager to be struck, the book maker must also agree to the terms on the table. To lay the bet at the price of 3/1, the bookmaker is comfortable to risk three times our wager. To take our wager, the bookmaker is of the opinion that General Account wont win the race. If he thought the horse was going to win, he would not accept our wager, or at least he definately wouldnt wish to risk so much money, so would offer lower odds
As you can see that the difference between a punter and a bookmaker is their opinion of who will win the race – we think General Account will win, and the book maker thinks it wont, and we are BOTH prepared to put our stake on the outcome.
In effect, where a punter is betting that a horse will win, a bookmaker is simply wagering that the horse will NOT win. It is no more sophisticated than that.
Since 1999 and the introduction of betting exchanges, we all have the opportunity to play the part of bookmaker. Betting exchanges are simply a place where you can find another person who has the opposite opinion to you, and match his/her stake.
If you turn out to have had a better opinion on the horse, then you will win your bet. If your ‘opposite number’ on the betting exchange turns out to be correct, then you will lose, and you will have to pay the man/woman at the odds confirmed when the wager was placed.
At the end of the day, laying horses to lose may still not your betting temperament. But hopefully you now have the confidence to find out more. Despite what you may read, making money by laying horses is no more easy than trying to profit by backing horses. In fact there is no difference in terms of risk.
As a punter, if you are happy to wager money behind your opinion that a horse will win, there is totally no reason you shouldn’t also give yourself the opportunity to gain, if you feel a certain horse will not win a given race.
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