Laying the Field

As promised in my first post, here is my take on Laying the Field and making a profit.  This is a lot easier than you may have perceived but when I say it is easy to do, it does not mean easy money as there is some skill involved.  Any profit/loss can be managed and that is the beauty of Betfair.  Here are the 6 easy steps to Laying the Field :-

1) Choose the race you want to Lay the Field.

This is probably the bit that requires the most skill and what works for me may not work for you as it depends on the odds selected. (see step 2). 
For starters I would recommend 5/6f sprints with lots of runners, the more the better and preferably a Handicap as this should theoretically give more horses an evens chance of winning the race (in an 11 runner H'cap where each horse has the same chance of winning the odds should be 10/1 the field.) It follows if you have an 11 runner H'cap where the odds on the Jolly is 7/4 and the next horse in the betting is 6/1, I would not Lay the Field in this race as the Jolly is the most likely winner and should win with a length or two to spare.  Not good for our purposes.

2) Choose a price, I like between 1.5 (1/2) - 1.6 (3/5), you should get a couple matched @ those prices if it is a fairly tight finish.  Take 1.6 better chance of getting 2 matched bets, the max you can loose is 0.6 x backer's stake.  As you dictate the backers stake, you can therefore gauge your max liability on the race.  In this case 60% of say a stake of £10.00 would result in a max loss of £6.00 if you only get the winner matched.

3) On Betfair, in the Place Bets Tab, click on LAY ALL.   This will bring the field up. Then it is just a case of entering your lay odds (1.6) and the backers stake you want to take, say £10.00, repeat the same process for every horse in the field.

4) Click the place bets button at the bottom of the page. Click confirm.

5) Most importantly, click the KEEP button, which will change your bet from cancel @ start to keep to be matched during the race.

6) Sit back, enjoy the race and hope for a photo finish or a horse or to to come out the pack and pip what looks like the winner on the post.

Worse case scenario, a horse romps home with 5 lengths to spare you will have laid the winner and lost your 0.6 of the stake i.e. £6.00.

Best case scenario 2 matched 40% profit on backers stake i.e £4.00, 3 matched 140% profit on backers stake i.e. £14.00

This % might not sound to good but it is greater compared to your liability of £6.00 but easier to explain in relation to backers stake.

It is actually 2 matched 66.67% profit, 3 matched 233% profit.

Hope that makes sense, any questions, leave a comment & I will try to resolve any issues.

Happy Punting
HMFC1965

p.s. Big field H'caps over 5/6f are good but by no means the be all end all of laying the field. Neil Munro is the King, I learned myself just by listening to him on betfair radio.
Laying the field is very much a trial & error process but it can work in any race and is also quite profitable in NH races especially Chases where a lot can happen in a race and prices come down much quicker and further out from the finish. Horses can trade odds on with half the race still to be run, which can only be an advantage when laying horses.