Best Back To Lay Strategies For Beginners | Betfair Trading

There are so many ways to trade on Betfair. If you’re a beginner, it’s easy to get your head scrambled with all the different ideas…

Backing to lay has always been a very popular horse racing trading strategy, and for good reason.

If you’re new to trading, it’s worth spending some time on back-to-lays.

In this article, we’re going to give you a few places to start…

What Is A Back-To-Lay?

A back-to-lay strategy is basically backing high odds and laying low odds. It’s as simple as that!

Most people run into trouble looking for consistent market movements. In a nutshell, the idea is you back a selection at 10.0 and when it trades 7.0 or lower, you lay the selection to go all green.

Backing-to-lay has always been one of the most popular strategies on Betfair and I can’t see that changing in the future. It’s a strategy that is best suited to exchanges, although you could manually do the figures yourself with a bookmaker and exchange. That wouldn’t be recommended though, as it’s far easier to complete the process on an exchange.

Remember; when you’re looking for a back-to-lay, you’re not looking for a winner. You’re only looking for a selection to trade shorter than it’s current odds at the time of backing it. A lot of people look beyond that point, essentially we are only looking for market movement in our favour.

There are a couple of places to look for back-to-lays when the situation will work in your favour:

How to Find Front Runners in Horse Racing:

This is a really good place to start. Because there’s so much racing on these days, you can put this strategy into practice a number of times per day. Small profits every time can quickly add up.

There are a number of resources out there like ProForm Race Analysis and the likes. However, you will have to pay for most of the really good sites. I actually have a free daily shortlist for Front Runners which you can find here. I spent a lot of time including the key factors to find these Front Runners.

Remember: you need a plan. Horse Racing markets move quickly in-play and you have to have a set plan. Have an entry and exit points lined up, and a back-up ‘get out’ strategy in place too. Not every trade is going to go your way, you need to exit if the market goes against you and not blow all your profits on one unlucky event.

Back-To-Lay On Events Before The Off

There’s a couple of things that can happen in a sport that you can back-to-lay to your advantage on Betfair.

• An injury in football. Injury news is a big market mover and if you’re first to the news, you can place a handsome trade on Betfair. You can use this strategy in-play too but it’s going to be less effective given everyone is watching the game.
• Team news. This will always be a big market mover. Rugby, cricket, football and NFL are all popular sports that can move huge amounts on team news. Many people will travel to the grounds just to see who’s warming up so they can be first into the market.
• Golfer Form. Have you noticed the in-form players are always towards the head of the market on the PGA Tour? That is of course after the likes of Rory McIlory in the betting. Golfers will have good and bad runs of form and this affects their price massively each week. Keeping an eye on the tournament market for next week is always a good thing to go while they are playing well in this week’s tournament!
• An injury in tennis. This actually has more impact than an injury of a high profile footballer because tennis is just one-on-one. Finding out news is harder than in football given the situation, but it’s always something to look for.

Make If ‘What If’ Action Plan:

You need a checklist of likely scenarios before you open a trade. Let’s take one of my Front Runners from my daily shortlist for example.

A likely shortlist would be:

• Exit point if the trade goes well
• Exit point if horse misses break and doesn’t get to front-run
• Back-up plan if the market doesn’t move on the horse while he’s got to the front
• Correct stakes ready to go
• Always have the amounts you’re happy to risk before the off (Don’t change just because of circumstances)

As you can see, it’s a lot more than just backing a front runner and hoping for the best. As the saying goes, you get back what you put in. Do the research properly and it will pay off. Likewise, always be on the lookout for events that will move markets in other sports. There’s a lot of back-to-lay opportunites out there. It’s one of the best Betfair Trading strategies for a reason….

Related topic: 5 Matched Betting Tips to Win Regularly.