BACK AND LAY

WHAT BACK AND LAY MEAN

The role of a bookmaker is to take back bets, which means that when a customer using a betting market backs backs a result and it wins, the bookmaker has to pay the customer.

Betting exchanges like Betfair give the opportunity to their customers to back or lay. When you lay a result, it is like you are taking the role of a bookmaker, which in simple words means that your bet wins if the result of a game do not occur.

Let’s give an example to explain in details the meaning of back and lay bets.

On Betfair, back odds are displayed in blue and lay odds are pink.Let’s say that you are interested in betting on the winner of Serie A in Italy.

Let’s think that winning the tittle of Serie A juventus has back odds 2.48 and lay odds 2.52. In case you back Juventus with a 10euros stake, your return will be 24.80euros (14.80euros profit) if Juventus go on to win the title.

A lay bet is the exact opposite, so you are betting on something not to happen.

If you lay Juventus, you are betting on Juventus not to win the Serie A. If any one of the other teams wins the title, your lay bet wins.

LAY BET LIABILITY

When someone places a lay bet, must be  fully aware of the risk before placing your bet,  due to the fact that the liability can be a lot more than your bet. On the contrary, when you place a back bet you will lose only your bet amount and nothing more.

In the Serie A in Italy example, Juventus are 2.48 to back and 2.52 to lay.

If you are determined to lay Juventus for a bet of 10euros, you will win 10euros if any other team but Juventus  wins the Serie A. Just as you stand to lose your bet when backing Juventus, a lay bet is opposite so you win your stake if Juventus don't become champions.

If Juventus  become the champion team, your liability will be determined by the lay price and, again, it's the opposite of backing.

In this case, it would be (10euros x 2.52) – 10euros = 15.20euros.

Backing and laying are simply opposites:

Let’s say that you back Juventus with 10euros bet, the possibilities are 2,if Juventus win you win 14.80euros and if lose you  lose 10euros.

If you lay Juventus with a bet of 10euros, the liability is 15.20euros, then if win your bet you will win 10euros.

When placing a lay bet, your liability is always deducted from your account balance as Betfair has to count the possibily of losing your stake. This means,you can never risk losing more than the money you already have in your Betfair account.

When the winner team lifts the trophy, then the bet will be settled.

Low Risk Lay Bets

In the example that we wrote above, there was a large liability to lay Juventus, than the possible profit of backing .Although, if you mostly lay under 2.00 then you have more possibilities  to win  than you risk losing and many Betfair laying strategies have as an aim to take benefit of this. You should watch the Betfair markets and see how prices move - even without goals.

For example, at the begging of a football game, the 0-0 price will be a very high price to lay,but when time passes this price will be shorter a lot unless a goal is scored.

A good chance is to lay 0-0 in a football game with a team which has a lot of opportunities and tries to score as time passes.

Lay Betting Strategy

If you want to make money by betting back and lay, you should find the right time to back and lay on Betfair. A good example, is season 2015-2016 when Leicester City were given huge odds to bet so as to win Premier League, but Leicester City had a very good performance and as time passed the odds became very shorter.