Lay Betting Strategy – Betting Guide

What is a lay bet?

In traditional betting, players bet on specific outcomes occurring such as the result of a football match, a horse winning its race or who’s going to score the most goals in any given league or tournament.

Essentially, bets are being backed because players hypothesise that an outcome is going to happen or that the odds advertised are seemingly good value.

At its very heart, lay bets are the opposite of this. By laying a bet, players are stipulating that an outcome is not going to happen.

For example, player A backs a bet of football team 1 winning the game and player B lays the bet of the football team winning the game. If football team 1 wins the game, the backer wins their bet. If the game results in a draw OR football team 2 wins, then player B (the layer) wins their bet.

In lay betting, layers act as the bookmaker. By offering odds to backers, they agree to pay out backers should back bets win. This payout amount is known as liability and is calculated by multiplying the lay amount and the agreed odds.

For backers, this scenario often presents higher odds than betting with a sportsbook due to the absence of bookmakers over rounds applied to bets. However, when it comes to offering multiple bets (i.e. accumulators), the sportsbook still has a far greater choice for the punters.

Where to lay

As inferred in the previous section, it’s not usually possible to lay a bet with a bookmaker.

Instead, a betting exchange needs to be acquired.

Betting exchanges act as a mechanism to match demand between backers and layers.

Exchanges act like a stock market, where the demand for odds results in the existing prices that are being backed.

Following the stock market analogy, it’s also possible to take advantage of this movement of odds and trade sports events, just like a day trader would trade commodities or foreign exchange in a financial setting.

For a lay better, they have two choices when laying a bet:

1. Lay money off at the available price/odds

2. Offer an alternative price, hoping that the market moves in that direction, resulting in the offer being taken

Betting exchanges in the Irish market are as follows:

Betfair	Smarkets	Betdaq	Matchbook
The largest and most prominent betting exchange, with the best liquidity.   Commission ranging from 2%-8% depending on chosen rewards plan.   New registrants can benefit from a risk-free 20 EUR bet on the exchange.	Purely an exchange for betting on sports and current affairs.   New registrants can benefit from 0% commission for the first 60 days, reverting to 2% afterward.	Like Smarkets, Betdaq also has a 0% commission offer for new registrations, only theirs is for 100 days, rather than 60!   Afterwards, accounts avert to a commission fee of 2%.	Matchbook are offering 0% commission for the first 110 days on all sports, apparently the longest 0% offer of any betting exchange.   Commission is charged from 2% thereafter.

Common lay betting strategies

Weak favourites

This strategy involves laying a marginal favourite where liability is low.

The layer has two options during this approach:

1. Trade out for a profit should price drift for the marginal favourite (either pre-event or in-play)
2. Ride out all lay trades is based on a hypothesis of the odds appearing to be too low (you are in effect saying that the market has got it wrong for this approach).

 

Lay the draw

This strategy requires finding a football match that is likely to see some goals.

Some traders prefer to look for two evenly matched teams so that the liability for the draw market is low, whereas some prefer the opportunity of a strong favourite thinking that a goal will be quick to come.

To lay the draw, layers usually lay the draw market and when/if a goal is scored, trade out for a profit.

Some scores are better than others for this approach and it would be risky to undertake this approach if a team is already winning by only a goal since a goal by the opposing team would potentially kill the trade.

Scalping

Scalping involves trading out for tiny increments throughout a match and exploiting the time erosion of odds.

For example, let’s say that one team is winning 75 minutes into the game and the match appears to be flat, it might be prudent to lay the draw and trade out for a couple of increments when the ball is in the middle of the field, or a player is down injured (or ticks, as lay traders call it).

Discipline and being methodical are crucial for this strategy because one goal can completely haemorrhage your profits.

Hedging

Hedging involves laying multiple selections in the same event to spread or reduce risk.

Sometimes, laying multiple bets can present a “Dutching” opportunity where a guaranteed profit can be made by the nature of the market.

Hedging can exist in various forms and a popular strategy involves laying the field where the unpredictability of a sport like horse racing can produce wild swings in markets throughout the race.

Back to lay

Betting exchanges can present big swings in prices, especially when the market doesn’t have a lot of liquidity.

This strategy involves backing odds that appear to be too big – for example, a premier league team may be playing minnows from a lower league but then once they announce the team they might choose to omit some of their more experienced players to give young or newer players a chance to shine.

Such a scenario can cause long odds for the minnow team to come right down as the market now thinks that they have a greater chance.

Betting exchanges allow you to trade out at a profit in such an example and this is a strategy where it pays to be scouting media for rumours of what the manager is going to do!

Back to lay can also be implemented in play where the lesser team appears to be playing better than the market suggests, though this comes with increased risk compared to the above example.

Considerations for lay betting

Liability management

Liability is one of the key things that a layer needs to ensure that they can execute their trades without disruption.

This means that they need to have enough money in their account to cover their liability or even put lay bets on quickly.

Market liquidity

Without market liquidity, it’s not possible to lay a bet.

Liquidity is the amount of money in a market which matches backers with layers. This is the advantage that larger exchanges such as Betfair have over the smaller platforms.

Discipline

Lay betting strategies require a solid strategy with devout discipline.

It’s too easy in this game to chase losses or let emotions dictate lay trades. The key thing is to remain disciplined in the strategy and when the going gets tough, take a break.

Bankroll management

Losing runs are an inevitable feature in any form of betting and lay strategies are no different.

Common advice is to risk no more than 5% of your bankroll in any given trade so that you don’t run out of funds before the strategy starts producing some winning lays.