Every Saturday there are a number of horse races shown on ITV.
These races typically have a lot of free bet opportunities associated with them.
They take place every Saturday, but they do sometimes take place on other days of the week too, especially during major events like Cheltenham festival.
Here's an example of an offer: William Hill offer a refund as cash if your horse finishes second, up to £10. In order for us to take advantage of this, we simply back and lay any horse in the race and hope it comes second. We won't hit a refund in every single race, but we're pursuing value in the long term so we'll be making money over time.
The difficult part is finding good matches to place our bets on. For a £10 refund, we can accept a qualifying loss of around £0.70 on our initial bet. If the horse was at quite low odds and there weren't many runners in the race I might accept a loss up to £1 since the chance of a refund is higher.
With some searching, it's very possible to find matches that make no loss at all or even make a small profit. There are a number of tools you can use to do this which we'll go over at the end.
Once you've found a suitable horse in the race, you simply put it into the calculator as a normal bet, and then back and lay it as normal.
If it comes second, you get a £10 cash, if it doesn't, you make a small loss (or no loss, depending on the match you found).
You repeat this on one horse for every race that the offer applies to. You don't have to do every race.
Sometimes the odds are too far apart to get a good match, so you may want to skip that race. Typically though you can find a good match if you check the race about 15 minutes before it starts.
The odds can move very quickly here making it possible to get very good matches as long as you're quick.
This is just one style of offer. Horse refunds come in many different styles and may require different strategies (as explained in more detail below).
FINDING MATCHES
You can find matches using the Oddsmatching software or the Match Catcher.
Match Catcher is designed to update odds lightning fast and to specifically only show selections for offer races.
REGULAR OFFERS
Below is a list of some common horse racing refund offers.
- Free Bet/Risk-Free Bet If Your Horse Wins - See this page for further information on this type of offer and in particular Bet365's version.
- Refund If Your Horse Finishes Second (Or sometimes Second/Third or Second/Third/Fourth) - You can back and lay your bet as 'normal' with the standard calculator and hope that your horse finishes second. Alternatively you can attempt to lock in a profit using the calculator and guide here.
- Refund If Your Horse Finishes Second To The SP Favourite - These offers require smaller qualifying losses than 'Refund If Second' due to your horse having to specifically finish second behind the starting price favourite horse. You cannot lock in a profit with this style of offer - it is a case of backing and laying as 'normal' with the standard calculator.
- Refund If Your Horse Is Beaten By A Length - You will receive a refund if your horse is a length or less behind the winning horse.
- Refund If Your Horse Is Beaten By A Neck - You will receive a refund if your horse is a neck or less behind the winning horse.
- Refund If Your Horse Is Beaten By A Head - You will receive a refund if your horse is a head or less behind the winning horse.
- Refund If Your Horse Fails To Finish - You will receive a refund if your horse doesn't finish the race. This could be because the horse pulls up, falls, or the rider is unseated.