Stupid question...so here goes anyway....

After looking up an internet search on placing a lay bet at BF, is it right that if you laya a horse for $5 @ $3.... you lose $15 if it wins and you win $5 if it loses? Or has my brain just frozen...now go easy on me Pls :rolleyes:

...less commission of course.

You only lose $10 as the backer has to place $5 on the bet, the same as if you put $5 on a runner paying $3 you get back $15 but your profit is $10

When working out your liability use this formula
(Lay Amount X Price - Lay Amount)

Cut off at $10, the results are as follows;

Bets; 866
Wins; 179
S/Rate; 20.67%
Ave Div; $3.72
Loss; -200.12
LOT; 23.10%

From $1.00 to $3.90 shows only a loss of 0.1%.
On the limited data I have posted, laying in this price range may not be advisable.
From $4 to $10 shows a loss of 36%

I think Shaun answered it well. You have to deduct $1 from the price to know what you are giving up should the horse win (which would be a losing lay bet). In your case you would be losing $10 ($5 bet x $2 odds) but win $5 if it is a winning lay (the horse loses).

So laying $1 on a $10 horse would mean you stand to lose $9 ($10 odds-1) or win $1.

I wish I could describe it better. I hope you get the gist. You are basically winning a fiver from someone else who has bet on the horse to win. You are the bookie (less 5% of course) :).

Hi Stix,
This Laying caper feels like its doing ones nut in when one first starts looking at it, but becomes clearer after one works with it a few thousand times.

The easiest way to work with it is to use fractional odds in ones thinking.
e.g, 2/1 (3.00)
Laying $5 bet x 2/1 = $10 Liab
If Horse wins instead of loosing race for us = -$10
If Horse looses instead of winning race, we make money = +$5

The real art in Lay betting is selecting Lay horses to fall over at prices approx
3.5/1 ($4.50) & less.
Not easy.

Example No.2
Lay bet a 100/1 shot at $5 to fall over
If it falls over , you win +$5
If it wins race, you lose -$500

Betfair take the $500 out of your account when you make the Lay bet.
If successful , they place $505 into you A/C.

If one wishes to have a go at it , I feel its important to set a max price you are prepared to run with & not go over that max price.

I feel every punter should have a go at Lay betting because one really gets a true feeling of what the term value means in punting once you get used to it.

Bet .6% of Bank level stakes is a safe approach, up to Lay prices $9.80,
good for 19-28 outs depending on prices.

The best success will be had restricting volume of bets to making 2% profit a day, then STOP.
Stopping is the hard part for nearly all punters, its discipline thing.
Any more & you will find yourself giving it all back & some.

There is a book that Betfair recommends called ...
Lay Betting on Betfair for Dummies.
Well don't buy it.
Its written by a real dumb as s , with stupid anecdotes through nearly all of it, with only one page about lay betting & even that has a major error in it.

I rang Betfair about this major error & they still recommend that people buy the stupid thing.
Hello!
What does that tell you about them.

true this, although I would urge caution for those punters with a short fuse - take the frustration you feel on 'those days' when most of your bets run a nose 2nd & multiply by oh 3 or 4 to get an idea of ones likely mood when laying & 1/2 the *******'s win!

often found myself laying to any old price just to get matched & this is a very bad habit to get into, value is the key no matter which side of the market you are on

Yip, agree with both the above, trying to lay horses taught me so much about the markets, and what horses are generally value, and which are poor value. I actually abandoned laying as although I was successful, it really didnt suit my punting, hated laying horses that won, just really did my head in!

However what I learnt from it has comepletely turned my win betting around.

Spending some time laying horses was perhaps teh most valuable punting lesson I have ever had. Dont do it on paper either, put $100 into a BF account and do it for real, the difference between paper trading and real money trading on BF can be quite significant.

Thanks very much to Shaun, Bhags, The O, Stu and Thorns.

Clearly an art to capital management in this form of betting as well, so thanks for the replies.

An Awesome Laying System
 

Hi Mark,
I passed your lay system rules to a person who has a Betfair database going back 11 months and here are his comments,

There were 710 selections for 99 winners returning 530.83 The profit here is approximately 144 units.
This had no odds restriction. It was in profit 9 of 11 months tested. The months when it was down it hit long shots.
Restricting this to maximum $20 lay price reduced it to 513 selections for 97 winners and a profit of 26.

I don't see this being a system I would bet. Most of the profit comes from the longer then $20 priced horses. Based on this 1 or 2 winners in this price range could easily wipe out this profit and even make it show a loss.
Those under $20 are not up by much either. 2 winners above $10 and you have wiped out the majority of your profit.

As you can see he has proved that your lay system did perform over the 11 months testing using actual lay odds and after deducting the Betfair commission.

Hi Raldridge,

Really appreciate your investigations and efforts. Thank you. I was pretty sure that there would be some form of edge in this simple method. I am thinking of betting these to Betfair SP in order to place a limit on the prices and set and forget basis to see how it goes in real time.

From my recent experience betting to win a set amount and then stopping for the day has been one of the best pieces of advise whether win or lay betting.

Any thoughts on refining or improving this would be great.

Cheers and thanks,
Mark