Horse Racing Systems – The Advantages and Disadvantage of Laying Horses!
As you are most likely aware the invention of the betting exchanges around a decade ago swept in a new era of betting, especially when it came to horse races. Betting on a race became so much easier as all you needed to do was get online and get betting. But that wasn’t the only thing the exchanges brought to the gambling world, they also brought the ability to lay or as some call it the ability to be the bookmaker.
Also for those of us currently residing in the UK it meant that we had to get our heads around decimal odds. However being able to lay horses was the real big thing to come from the exchanges. It meant that we, the betting public, could now make a decision as to whether a horse will win or not and if we did not think it would win instead of backing another horse as we would normally do we could lay it off. This was a totally radical new way of betting and one that has only gotten more and more popular since it’s invention.
The best thing people say about laying horses is that it is much easier to select a loser than it is to select a winner. That is to say if there were a 10 horse race it would be much easier for you to pick a horse that will not win the race than for you to pick a horse that will win the race. As we can see here you will undoubtedly have a much higher strike rate than ever before and you have the chance to start making the big profits like the bookmakers have been doing all along.
The drawback with laying horses to lose is that you have to put up with the liability involved if the horse does win. Take for example you lay a horse at 5.5 on the exchange to make a profit of £100 and it wins you will have to pay out £450 to the person who took you up on the bet. It is probably important to point out now is the reason why betfair is so popular is because it boasts higher odds than most traditional bookmakers.
On betfair the prices are said to be a standard 20% higher than at a traditional bookmaker. This means that you are still not in the same boat as the bookmakers as they are laying things off at considerably lower odds than you are. All of this is still not including the commission charged by betfair also!
Even after all of the disadvantages I have just mentioned I still love lay betting and I will tell you why; you do not have to do it for every race! Sure the bookmaker is compelled to offer odds for every horse on every race but you don’t have to, you can pick and choose and it is this reason and this reason alone why there is money to be made in laying horses
