A brief explanation of Lay bets

I’ve suddenly thought that I’m making the assumption that everyone who visits this blog knows what I’m talking about.  So I’m going to start posting details of what exactly I’m doing and what’s involved.

So first up what is lay betting?

Well quite simply put a lay bet is a bet on something that won’t happen or you’re selecting the loser.

Sounds easy right…let’s not get carried away for starters only betting exchanges will accept these types of bet.

What’s a betting exchange?

Some of you out there may have noticed these betting exchanges that have started to pop up. Well what these allow you to do is bet against any old tom, dick and harry.

Because you can bet against someone you can effectively be a bookmaker so you can accept someone else’s bet.

Here’s an example

Let’s say Jeff fancy’s backing Arsenal to beat Chelsea at odds of evens for £10. I on the other hand think Arsenal won’t win and the game will be a draw or Chelsea will win.

So Jeff places his £10 bet on Arsenal as I want to lay Arsenal I accept this bet but I also have to accept the liability that goes with it. As the odds are even the liability is quite low. To calculate the liability you turn the odds to decimal so evens is 2 you then subtract 1 which leaves you with 1. You then times that by the stake you want to lay so in this instance 10. So the equation is 2-1=1 1*10=10
£10 is our liability

So if Arsenal win Jeff gets his stake returned plus £10 and we lose that £10 if the game finishes a draw or a Chelsea win we get £10 and Jeff loses £10

Let’s do another quick example

This time we want to lay a horse priced at 5/1 and Jeff wants to back it at these odds.

Jeff stakes £5 on the horse to win and I decide to lay that horse to lose. Therefore on this occasion our liability will be 5/1 = 5 in decimal, 5-1=4, 4*5=20
So this time round we could lose £20 because we are offering higher odds to Jeff and he could gain that £20.

So we are effectively risking £20 for a £5 gain and Jeff is risking £5 for a £20 gain.

As you can see that the higher the odds the more likely you are to get winning bets with laying but obviously there is a higher risk to it as well.

Well I think thats about it I’ll try and follow-up on explaining betting exchanges and may do a video showing a lay bet being placed.

Cheers