How To Calculate Your Liability On Betfair
Calculating your Liability on Betfair at first may look and sound a little complex but it is something that you will have to learn to do.
Unless stated otherwise herein, bets on all Irish greyhound races and UK bets which are not covered by a 'full service' are subject to a maximum payout of £10,000. Betfair only accepts bets in respect of greyhound meetings which are displayed on its websites. There may be a problem with your connection, please reload the page. 11.1 'Bet Back' tool is a feature that allows you to receive a return of your bet stake in Bonus Cash if your selected runner comes second or third, subject to these Terms. 11.2 The maximum refund provided with the Bet Back tool is: (a) $25 for Bet Back on greyhound races (b) $25 for Bet Back on. You need to calculate liability on Betfair so that you can set yourself some limits. For example, if you didn't want to lose any more that £50 on one bet with £10 stakes, you would be able to work out that the highest your odds can be is 6.
The majority of people can work out their profit from a back bet, in fact, a lot of people can work it out in their head as the calculation is very simple. However, people do not realise that the ‘formula' to calculate liability on Betfair when laying a bet is just as simple to work out.
So How Do We Calculate The Liability When Laying On Betfair
The basic formula can represented like the following:
Stake Amount x (Lay Odds – 1) = Liability
It really is that simple to calculate your liability. If you are still a little confused about how to calculate your liability, then perhaps these example will help.
Example #1:
You are going to lay a horse at odds of 3.4 with a £10 stake, so how do you calculate your liability?
£10 x (3.4 – 1) = Liability
Your liability would therefore be: £24
Example #2:
You want to calculate your liability for a £12.50 lay bet on a particular Grey Hound at odds of 6.5.
£12.50 x (6.5 – 1) = Liability
Your liability would therefore be: £68.75
Easy isn't it. Calculating your liability really is not that difficult. It is something that people seem to not like to do but if you know how, then it is worth it.
But why is calculating liability on Betfair important ?
Actually, there are a number of reasons as to why it is extremely important that you know exactly how to calculate your liability on Betfair.
1. Unlike, a back bet it is harder to know how much you will lose if you do end up losing. If you were to back a horse for £10 and the horse lost, then you would know that the maximum you would lose on this bet is £10. However, with a lay bet, it is not that simple. You cannot simple place a lay bet for £10 and know you will only lose £10. How much you lose depends solely on the odds: If the odds are high, you will lose a lot. If they are low, you will lose less.
2. You need to calculate liability on Betfair so that you can set yourself some limits. For example, if you didn't want to lose any more that £50 on one bet with £10 stakes, you would be able to work out that the highest your odds can be is 6. You could therefore minimise your losses by saying to yourself that you will not lay anything with odds greater than 6.
3. If you are trading on betfair, calculating your liability can be vital as you will need to know whether or not trading out or greening up would be worth it at the current odds. For example, if you had backed at horse at 5 for £10 and then the lay odds dropped to 4.5 you could green up. But you would work out your liability so you could work out your overall total potential profit.
See, there are so many reasons for why you may need to calculate your liability. That is only three reasons, but there aremany more.
At some stage, after extensive paper exercises and calculations everyone will reach the phase where testing a system or strategy with real money is necessary.
However watertight the system seems on paper, if it includes laying at high odds, the risk of depleting the betting bank quickly is also high if complying with Betfair's minimum stake of 2 € / £2 on all bets.
However, there is a way to bypass the minimum ensuring you can play with stakes as small as you wish.
This is not a technical error or a ‘cheat' as the trick has existed since the beginning of Betfair.
So, how does it work?
Back Bets
Step 1:
Select the desired bet and ask for odds that will not immediately get matched (in this example, unrealistic odds of 500). Stake the minimum amount of 2 units – of course, the bet will not be matched:
What Is The Maximum Payout On Betfair
First step
Betfair Maximum Stake Limit Income
Step 2:
After the bet is not matched, go to 'My Bets' and change the stake to whatever amount you want to have plus 2 (the minimum stake). In the example below, we want to bet with 0.10, hence the stake of 2.10:
Step 3:
Betfair will accept this new stake but also not match it and both stakes will remain technically separated: One bet for the original 2 € / £2 stake and another for the additional 0.10 € / £0.10:
Cancel (delete) the first bet of 2 € / £2 and change the odds for the other bet with the smaller stake
Now, cancel the original bet of 2 € / £2 (simply click the red cross on the left) and change the odds for the remaining stake of 0.10 € / £0.10 to the market odds (in our example, 6). Submit this bet.
Here's a screenshot with the confirmation:
You want to calculate your liability for a £12.50 lay bet on a particular Grey Hound at odds of 6.5.
£12.50 x (6.5 – 1) = Liability
Your liability would therefore be: £68.75
Easy isn't it. Calculating your liability really is not that difficult. It is something that people seem to not like to do but if you know how, then it is worth it.
But why is calculating liability on Betfair important ?
Actually, there are a number of reasons as to why it is extremely important that you know exactly how to calculate your liability on Betfair.
1. Unlike, a back bet it is harder to know how much you will lose if you do end up losing. If you were to back a horse for £10 and the horse lost, then you would know that the maximum you would lose on this bet is £10. However, with a lay bet, it is not that simple. You cannot simple place a lay bet for £10 and know you will only lose £10. How much you lose depends solely on the odds: If the odds are high, you will lose a lot. If they are low, you will lose less.
2. You need to calculate liability on Betfair so that you can set yourself some limits. For example, if you didn't want to lose any more that £50 on one bet with £10 stakes, you would be able to work out that the highest your odds can be is 6. You could therefore minimise your losses by saying to yourself that you will not lay anything with odds greater than 6.
3. If you are trading on betfair, calculating your liability can be vital as you will need to know whether or not trading out or greening up would be worth it at the current odds. For example, if you had backed at horse at 5 for £10 and then the lay odds dropped to 4.5 you could green up. But you would work out your liability so you could work out your overall total potential profit.
See, there are so many reasons for why you may need to calculate your liability. That is only three reasons, but there aremany more.
At some stage, after extensive paper exercises and calculations everyone will reach the phase where testing a system or strategy with real money is necessary.
However watertight the system seems on paper, if it includes laying at high odds, the risk of depleting the betting bank quickly is also high if complying with Betfair's minimum stake of 2 € / £2 on all bets.
However, there is a way to bypass the minimum ensuring you can play with stakes as small as you wish.
This is not a technical error or a ‘cheat' as the trick has existed since the beginning of Betfair.
So, how does it work?
Back Bets
Step 1:
Select the desired bet and ask for odds that will not immediately get matched (in this example, unrealistic odds of 500). Stake the minimum amount of 2 units – of course, the bet will not be matched:
What Is The Maximum Payout On Betfair
First step
Betfair Maximum Stake Limit Income
Step 2:
After the bet is not matched, go to 'My Bets' and change the stake to whatever amount you want to have plus 2 (the minimum stake). In the example below, we want to bet with 0.10, hence the stake of 2.10:
Step 3:
Betfair will accept this new stake but also not match it and both stakes will remain technically separated: One bet for the original 2 € / £2 stake and another for the additional 0.10 € / £0.10:
Cancel (delete) the first bet of 2 € / £2 and change the odds for the other bet with the smaller stake
Now, cancel the original bet of 2 € / £2 (simply click the red cross on the left) and change the odds for the remaining stake of 0.10 € / £0.10 to the market odds (in our example, 6). Submit this bet.
Here's a screenshot with the confirmation:
As you can see, the 2 € / £2 bet was cancelled and the 0.10 € / £0.10 bet placed at the new (market) odds with the following result:
Finished!
Instead of the minimum amount of 2 € / £2 there is now just 0.10 € / £0.10 placed on over 2.5 goals:
For lay bets the procedure is exactly the same but instead of choosing ridiculously high odds to start off with, set the lay price to 1.01 to ensure no immediate match. After the minimum amount of 2 € / £2 for this bet has been processed the stake needs to be changed to the desired amount (risk), and the original 2 € / £2 needs to be cancelled so that only the smaller amount with the desired odds remains.
Betting below Betfair's minimum stake is exploited particularly by ‘bots', which can perform the mechanics of the process at the touch of a button rather than manually following each of the steps described above. If you're not into bots then the manual method sounds more complicated than it is but we assure you it's fairly straight forward once you get the hang of it. It certainly helps to test systems with real money, but reduced risk.
As we update this article in June 2012, rumours are beginning to circulate that Betfair is closing the accounts of customers who regularly flout their minimum stake requirements. Whether this is true or not remains unconfirmed.
Lastly, another of Betfair's features we find very handy for testing purposes is the opportunity to register several accounts under different user names but retaining your usual address and real identity. This opens the door to testing different ideas in different accounts to keep everything neat and simple…
