Lay Betting Explained with a Step By Step Screenshot Guide

Yesterday was a red hot winning day for LAY Betting, so we thought, Lay betting explained with a step by step screenshot guide would be helpful for those beginning to get into betting with Betting Exchange sites like Betfair. Lay betting is fast becoming my favourite way to bet online as your odds of losing a Lay bet are drastically reduced, compared to trying to win a win bet.

Keep it simple, research the tips you’ve been given, if given multiple Lay Bet Tips, then choose just one or two that you feel the most likely to lose. Also avoid Lay Bets that have odds above 5.0 or 4/1, as it’s just not worth the risk should the horse actually win. This is exactly what we did yesterday day.

Red Hot Winning Day

Like we said, yesterday, May 18th, we were given our tips from BetFan’s All Star Tipster Services and had a red hot winning day!

The Professional Lay Service advised:

3.10 Musselburgh – “Press Release” (4th Place @ odds 3.5 or 5/2) WINNING LAY BET

3.30 Nottingham – “Straight Laced” (7th Place @ odds 8.0 or 7/1) WINNING LAY BET

Step By Step Screenshot Guide

Before getting into a step by step screenshot guide of Lay Betting, let us first explain what LAY betting means. A LAY Bet is a bet that something won’t win. If you place a Lay bet on a horse and the horse loses, that means you win! If you place a Lay bet on a Football Team and the Football team draws or loses, then you win. And obviously, if you Lay’ed on a horse (to lose) and the horse actually wins, then you lose your bet, and likewise if you Lay’ed on a Football Team (to lose) and the Football Team wins, you lost your bet.

Lay Betting can only be done through Betting Exchanges, as these offer you the facility to bet against others and essentially play the role of the bookmaker. A betting exchange site is a betting site that allows it’s customers to bet against each other, getting rid of the bookie completely, with the exchange site only taking a small percentage of each win. It’s name has apparent similarities to a stock exchange and it is often defined as “a stock exchange for bets”. Most bets are not strictly one person on one side betting against one on the other, but instead it’s many betters on one side of the bet betting against many on the others.

There are a few Betting exchanges on the market, but Betfair is by far the largest and the one that offers generally the best odds and most liquid markets. UK-based Betfair launched what it originally called “open-market betting”, in June 2000, a person to person betting system, a name which was quickly changed, by the media and the associated industry, to “betting exchange“.

So, when you place a LAY Bet, for a selection to lose, if that selection does indeed lose that race, you are taking your winnings from another Betfair Betting Exchange site customer.

As advised before, be sure to do a little homework on your Lay tip before going ahead with placing a Lay bet down. There are loads of helpful sites out there that will give you information on any particular race, I happen to find At The Races helpful in giving me what I need on a race.

To show you a step by step screenshot guide of how Lay Betting works, we decided to pick a horse race last night, and try to show the process in a live situation.

We chose the following:

18 MAY 8.00pm Punchestown – “Lucky Wish” – LAY Bet (to lose) @ listed odds of 1.69 or 5/7

This horse race had 17 initial horses racing in it, but by the time we looked at the race information, 5 horses had already dropped out, leaving 12 still running. When we compared each horse on At The Races, we discovered that there were a number of horses other than Lucky Wish that had won at the distance and course, as well as other “beaten favourites” besides “Lucky Wish”, (our pick), racing.

On Betfair, once you’ve selected the race time on the left column, we wanted to point out where you need to click to get to the actual Exchange where you place your bets. This first screenshot is an afterthought, so it’s not of last night’s race, however just notice where the exchange button (highlighted in yellow) is located and click on it.

Once you’ve got the exchange page in front of you, if it’s not ticked already, be sure to place a tick in the small box marked “Back & Lay“, (highlighted on the following screenshot), in order to show the LAY side on your page. It is located just above the first listed horse, on the upper left hand side of the exchange screen.

The default colour for the Lay side is purple, find your horse, in our case “Lucky “Wish”, and click on the purple Lay box for the selection. In the case we are showing you, the Lay odds for “Lucky Wish” was 1.69 at the time of placing the bet, but a moment later it went up to 1.7 as the screenshot shows.

Once you click on that purple Lay side box, a Current Odds Bet box will appear on the right hand sidebar window. In Backer’s Stake box put the amount you want to bet, in our case we put £29 in that box. On the right side of that little box there are two ticks, one for liability, which it defaults to showing you first. In our case, it shows to secure that £29 Lay bet, we only had to put up £20.01, our liability.

If you change that tick in the box to Payout, you will see what your full return will be, your stake of £29, plus your liability, £20.01, which equals £49.01, as shown in the pic below:

Once you’ve entered your Lay bet, in the middle window, under the horse selections, it should show exactly what your potential loss or liability is on your selection in red. On the rest of the horses you will see in green your potential winning. In our case we were able to get an odd that was very much in our favour, as we didn’t have to risk as much as the bet or stake was with the odds being under evens or 2.0. These are the kind of Lay bets that are good to look for, however, always be sure to size up the competition before Laying against any favourite in a race.

Thanks to At The Races, here is a screen shot of the 18 MAY 8.00pm Punchestown results:

Under the “My Account” button on Betfair, found in the upper left hand corner of the page, you can keep track of all of your betting history. The following final screen shot is the proof of the resulting Winning Lay Bet, which is found under “Account Statement”, the second option on the left hand side of your “My Account” page.

We had already had a brilliant day with the Winning Lay Bets of the day but this Winning Lay Bet on “Lucky Wish” was a bonus win and a nice way to end the racing day! We do hope that the Lay betting explained with a step by step screenshot guide makes the beginning stages of learning how to place a Lay Bet a bit less painful. Thankfully we had our mate around to help teach us the basics so we could get going.

We know there are other Betting Exchanges out there to use however, we like everything about Betfair and plan to always use it for our NAP, EACH WAY & LAY Betting needs. Betfair will cover your first £25 of betting just for signing up too. As soon as you’ve bet that £25, whether you’ve lost it all or won big on it, Betfair will deposit that £25 into your account and it should show in your wallet totals. Click on Betfair to sign up today or click on the Betfair banner to your right on the side bar.

For further instructions on how to place a Lay Bet, visit Betfair’s Online DEMO. Alternatively, check out our follow up article entitled What Is Lay Betting for more information on Lay Betting Explained.

Make every day a winner!

Bet Fanatic

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