In article one, I introduced you to the joker8899z Exchange concept and 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. Place markets are as the name suggests, markets which allow you to 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 is that these place markets are completely different to the well known 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 it to 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 in a place, you collect your winnings and smile. 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.
2) Place an EW bet on it. E.g. £10 EW at 4/1 (5.0). Total stakes £20. The bookies will pay you 1/5 odds on the place element of this E/W bet based on their standard EW rules. On our horse which is available to back at 5.0 this equates to 1.8 Now, the only time the above race will be profitable for you is if the horse actually wins. In both cases you would make a very nice profit if it did. For option 1 you would win £40 profit and for option 2, £48 profit.
BUT, if as you suspected the horse only finishes placed in 2nd or 3rd, you actually lose money in both cases. With option 1 you obviously lose all your stake money so are down £10. With option 2, you win £8 on the Place side of the EW bet but still lose £2 overall as the win part of the bet was a losing one.
Using the above example and depending upon the prices of the other horses in the race, you would probably see the Betting Exchanges offering odds of around 1.60 – 2.00 (evens) on this horse being placed. You can therefore put your £10 PLACE bet on at say 1.8 and collect £8 profit (minus commission) as long as the horse finishes 1st, 2nd or 3rd. Only if the horse finishes outside of the top 3 do you lose your £10 stake.
When combined with a good staking plan and a sensible selection process, it can be common to have very long winning streaks when backing horses to be placed on the betting exchanges. These longer winning streaks more than make up for the relatively short prices that are offered on selections to be placed.
