I,m new to betfair and I have been laying the fav in most races for $10 each race when I check my account it seems that I only got my stake bake. How do I make a profit.

im not 100% sure but i think the trick is laying those fav's that DONT win, benny old son

I'm not into Betfair yet, (still looking at it), but if you lay a horse for say $10, and it loses, the people who back it have to give you the $10. Hence you make a $10 profit. Of course if that horse wins then you have to pay them the price, eg. you lay it at $4, you have to pay them $30. (you lose $30).

Then of course should you win, Betfair take I think around 5% commission.

Paul

It's as Paul said. I'll provide an example to help illustrate...Person A wants to put $10 on Horse XYZ to win at 4.0. Person B accepts that bet. In this example Person A is "backing" and Person B is "laying" the horse. Theoretically Person B is given the $10 at this point (in reality Betfair holds the money until the end).

If the horse wins, Person B has to pay $40 to Person A. This includes the original stake so in this case the Person B has lost $30.

If the horse loses, Person B keeps the $10 stake and in this case Person A has lost his $10 stake.


So to answer your question, the key to making a profit in laying (well in any gambling really) is to find a method that has a strike-rate that performs better than the "value" of the odds at which you are betting. Take the above example (laying $10 on a 4.0 horse) - you would be risking $30 to make $10. So that equates to the same thing as backing a horse @ $1.33 for $30. If you wanted to make money from that you would need to ensure that your strike-rate was above 75% just to break even.

Hope that helps.

Nice explanations guys.

As the man said "layin ain't easy".

Laying definitely ain't easy as a matter of fact it can be positively dangerous.

I was reading the ideal price range for laying is 4.70 & less.

The game here is tip toe through the mine field in this price range.

This is where the real art in laying comes to the fore.

When making a lay bet try & make sure that it is within 10% of the win price otherwise we are taking over inflated prices which is bad, OK.

One could use a program called BetBotPro which does all this for you.
plus many other things like automatic bet placement at the prices you set.
I like it.

Cheers.

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Cheers.

Benny, I'm no xpurt either, but have you checked to see if your bets were 'matched'. Seems to me that if they weren't you won't win and you won't lose, hence money back.

Den

Lay bet $10 ON A 100/1 SHOT, it falls over , you win $10
If it gets up nto win , you lose $1000
Simple.
So ...are you feelin lucky... well are ya... punk!

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Cheers.