How To Use The Betting Exchange Place Markets To Your Advantage
Introduction
In article one, I introduced you to the Betting Exchange conceptand explained the basics of LAY Betting (Lay to Lose). Now in this article, I’m going to introduce you to another unique and powerful feature of the betting exchanges, the Place Markets.
What Are Betting Exchange Place Markets?
Place markets are as the name suggests, markets which allow youto bet on a selection to be ‘placed’. Eg. a horse to finish 1st,2nd or 3rd in a 8 runner or larger field.
Now, the first and most important thing to highlight here isthat these place markets are completely different to the wellknown Each Way (EW) betting markets offered by traditional bookmakers. The Each Way bet is in fact 2 bets of equal stakes.The 1st stake is on the selection to win and the 2nd is on itto be placed. So a ?10 EW bet will cost you ?20 in total.
A ?10 place bet on a Betting Exchange is a single bet and therefore will only cost you ?10. If your selection finishes ina place, you collect your winnings and smile.
Think about it for a minute. How many times have you beencertain that a horse will be placed, but you have not been confident that it will win…
Traditional Each Way Betting
Take the following example. A horse named ‘Im gonna be placed’that is available to back with traditional bookmakers at 4/1(5.0). Your very confident that it will finish in the top 3 in a 10 runner field.
With a traditional bookmaker, your options are:
1) Take a chance on it winning and place a win single on it.E.g. ?10 at 4/1
2) Place an EW bet on it. E.g. ?10 EW at 4/1 (5.0). Totalstakes ?20. The bookies will pay you 1/5 odds on the placeelement of this E/W bet based on their standard EW rules.On our horse which is available to back at 5.0 this equatesto 1.8
Now, the only time the above race will be profitable for you isif the horse actually wins. In both cases you would make a verynice profit if it did. For option 1 you would win ?40 profitand for option 2, ?48 profit.
BUT, if as you suspected the horse only finishes placed in 2ndor 3rd, you actually lose money in both cases. With option 1you obviously lose all your stake money so are down ?10. Withoption 2, you win ?8 on the Place side of the EW bet but stilllose ?2 overall as the win part of the bet was a losing one.
Enter The Betting Exchange Place Markets
Using the above example and depending upon the prices of theother horses in the race, you would probably see the BettingExchanges offering odds of around 1.60 - 2.00 (evens) on thishorse being placed. You can therefore put your ?10 PLACE beton at say 1.8 and collect ?8 profit (minus commission) as longas the horse finishes 1st, 2nd or 3rd. Only if the horsefinishes outside of the top 3 do you lose your ?10 stake.
I’m sure this has got you thinking and you can probably see thepower in this straight away!
When combined with a good staking plan and a sensible selectionprocess, it can be common to have very long winning streaks whenbacking horses to be placed on the betting exchanges. Theselonger winning streaks more than make up for the relativelyshort prices that are offered on selections to be placed.
Place Market Important Notes
A few important things to note about place markets:
1) Unlike the betting exchange win markets, Place markets DO NOTgo “In-Running” when the race starts but this is true of thetraditional E/W bets offered by bookies as well.
2) If a race is planned as a 8 runner or more event but a numberof horses become non-runners leaving less than 8 runners, thebetting exchanges still offer odds on 3 places. This isdifferent to bookmakers who in such cases adjust their odds onthe place payment from 1/5 to 1/4 of the win odds BUT they onlypay out on 2 places. If a 5,6 or 7 runner field is shortened toless than 5 runners, the betting exchanges will still offerplace markets and payout if the horse finishes 1st or 2nd.
3) You can make up the equivalent of an E/W bet on the bettingexchanges by placing a bet on the win market and a separate beton the place market. Depending upon the type of race and theform of the market, you will often find that this offers morevalue in terms of odds than an E/W bet with a bookmaker.
Backing Or Laying On The Place Markets
As explained in article 1, the ability to Lay a selection isperhaps the most important feature of the betting exchanges.You now have the ability to Lay selections to be placed. In other words, if you have a valid reason to believe that aselection will not even finish in a place, Lay it to Lose on abetting exchange. The real beauty of laying on the placemarkets, is that the odds are always much lower than theoutright win odds so your lay liabilities are much lower.
Trading On The Place Markets
As the place market prices are much lower than the outright winmarket prices, they also offer a great place to learn the skillof TRADING without much risk to your balance! Betting Exchangetrading is simply the process of betting on price movements forguaranteed profits. E.g. Back a horse at 4.0 and then Lay itlater at 3.0 for a no risk bet or guaranteed profit regardlessof the outcome!
Betting exchange trading will be covered in detail in a futurebetting article.
Summary
Place markets should be used as part of your betting armory.They offer you the chance to make money frequently with longwinning streaks being very common. This helps to build yourconfidence as well as your betting bank!
Bookie Each Way bets are not always poor bets but in the vastmajority of races, the odds are stacked firmly in the favour ofthe bookmakers. They simply love punters taking EW bets on theseraces as they know its their bread and butter. A smallproportion of races where the market is formed in a certain waydo offer the punter very good E/W value but that’s for adifferent day…
Well that’s it for part 2 of my betting exchange articles.In part 3, I will be explaining the Betting Exchange In-Runningmarkets.
Author: Martin Bailey
Visit my Horse Racing site now for more free bettingand gambling related information by Martin Bailey.
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