For a number of years now Bet365 has offered up to £125 cashback on each-way bets on the Grand National. It’s one of the best matched betting offers out there and if you utilise the offer correctly you can add hundreds of pounds to your betting balance every year.
This post is simply to document and share my own approach as although its a fairly straightforward offer – there’s always a debate about how best to approach it in matched betting circles.
My followers should be aware by now that I favour advantage play over guaranteed profits so it will be of no surprise that I use an approach that doesn’t give absolutely guaranteed profits yet it is zero risk, requires less exchange funds to cover liabilities and is fairly easy to action – so long as you track and record everything you do.
Steps:
- Fund Accounts. You’ll need £150 in your Bet365 account and around £400 in your Smarkets/Betfair account to cover the lay liabilities. (I prefer Smarkets as you can get 0% commission through ProfitAccumulator membership). It’s worth having a backup option ready as Smarkets has been known to go down at the worst possible times.
- Place each-way bets with Bet365 laying off the win part only, using a calculator to work out your lay stakes: https://www.profitaccumulator.co.uk/calculator/. Either £25 each way, to cover 5 runners (higher risk), or £12.50 each way to cover 10 (lower risk). Your total stakes will be £250 and you will get £125 back. As they usually credit the cashback instantly, you will only need £150. (You will be left with £25 after you do the last £25 each way and receive the cashback)
I will only look to cover the shortest-priced runners here as those are most likely to place, will be closer matches on the exchange, and will require less funds to cover liabilities. - Write down all your Each Way bets along with your qualifying losses.
Each £25 win lay will result in a loss of around £5 or £6.
Take a look at this typical example:
You can see that the liability is £355.32 for this one runner.
Note that your liability in this market will not increase with you lay more runners unless they are much higher odds, as only one horse can win the race.
After you have laid off each win part of your each way bets you will have qualifying losses amounting to around £25-30 but you’ll have 5 x £25 place bets with Bet365 – this is where the potential profit is made.
4. At this point you can either accept a small risk of losing money if none of your bets place, or you can lay off the qualifying losses in the place market so your position is risk-free. This is what I did this year.
Note: If you cover 5 runners in this 40 runner race paying 5 places – you may or may not land one more in the places, chances are sometimes you will not get any in the top five. However, if you were to cover the top 10 in the betting, it is very unlikely that at least one of these runners will not find its way into the places.
Examples:
£25 e/w Minella Times @ 10/1, 4 places, 1/5th odds.
Layed £20.19 @ 13.0, losses on win part was therefore -£4.81.
Layed £4.81 in the TOP4 market @ 5.5.
Minella Times didn’t get round so:
Bet365 -£50 from each-way bet. +£25 cashback.
+£20.19 win lay, +£4.81 place lay.
Total £0 – Break Even
Results:
All my non placed runners were break-even as above, but I landed TWO placed runners:
£25 e/w Any Second Now @ 14/1, 4 places, 1/5th odds. (Placed 2nd)
Bet365 -£50 stakes, +£25 cash back, +£95 returns from winning place part = £70
Smarkets +23.44 Win lay, – £12.51 losing place lay
Total £80.93 Profit
£25 Fiddlerontheroof @ 18/1, 5 places, 1/5th odds. (Placed 5th)
Bet365 -£50 stakes, +£25 cashback, +£115 returns from winning place part = £90
Smarkets +£19.66 win lay, -£19.72 losing place lay
Total £89.94 Profit
I had an anomaly where I made £0.93 profit on another runner so my overall profit from the offer was £171.80
Notes:
You can manually add back and lay odds to the calculator to work out your lay stakes. I accidentally left it in “advanced mode” which meant I inadvertently layed slightly too much which was a headache to correct, so double-check everything.
Bet365 a “partner-friendly” meaning you could potentially cover 10 runners to £25 e/w between the two of you.
In each of the last 5 runnings of the Grand National, at least 4 of the top 6 were 25/1 or shorter.
If you spot anything unclear in the above do let me know and likewise, let me know how you did with this offer in the comments below.
