Hi all, can anyone explain this for me?

I placed a lay bet (BF) $5 with odds of 4.98 avg and matched.

The selection failed to place so I won my bet, yet the profit was only $5.
If the selection had won the race I would be out of pocket by $20. Is that right?
I thought with odds of 4.98 I'd have $20 profit.

Cheers,
Mike

Mike367 your like the bookmaker giving odds in your case 4.98 odds to your $5. your risk is $20 to win $5. Just like a bookie gives odds so do you on betfair. That why it is not that easy to win laying.

Yep it is correct.

You've got to think of laying like backing VERY short priced horses to win. In this case you were risking $20 to make $5. That's the same as backing a horse @ 1.25!

Or perhaps an easier way to think of it is like this...if you had a 10 horse race where every horse was the same chance of winning then by backing a single horse you would have 10% chance of winning and a 90% chance of losing (9 other horses could beat it). If you lay a single horse, then you have a 90% chance of winning and 10% chance of losing. So you are essentially backing the 9 other horses in the race.

Hence why the return is low. But if you can find a high strike rate (in relation to the odds you lay at) then there is money to be made!

Thanks guys, thats what I thought after thinking about it for awhile.

If I were to lay a field, with 12 runners for 1 unit, I would get a return of 11 units.
Now, as long as the winner has odds of 11 or less, I would profit, yes?

If the winner has odds of 11 I would have to pay out 10 units, leaving 1 unit profit, right?

As the fav wins about 33%, laying the fav gives us a 67% S/R, so now to work out the odds needed.

Cheers
Mike.

Don't get burned.

You will get badly burned if you just lay any horse under the strike rate to price as you work it out.

You could be laying $1.20 chances @ 2/1!!!

Lay well below bookies Top Fluctuation and you're in the green.
Lay at Top Fluctuation and you're in the red. (due to commission)
Lay above Top Fluctuation and you'll do your bank very quickly.

The above comments relate to those at the top end of the market.

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Like anything you shouldn't just be making selections based on price. If you said "I'm going back all horses priced @ $3-5" you'd make a loss too.

You need to figure out a method/system NOT based on price that you use to pick the horses you will lay. Run that in "test mode" for a while to get some stats, and when you'v got enough data you can make decisions about imposing odds limits.

But I stress just picking horses based on prices wont work in the long run!