Outplayed’s Extra Place Catcher is an advanced Matched Betting tool that helps members maximise profits from horse racing extra place offers.
The Extra Place Catcher helps users quickly find low-cost matches for extra place each way bets, and calculates the stakes required for each stage of the backing and laying process.
We would use this tool in situations where a bookmaker offers an extra place in comparison to what the exchange is offering in a horse race.
So, for example, in a race where a bookmaker would normally pay out on 4 places - on extra place races they would pay out on 5.
We can take advantage of this because the exchange will not change its own place terms to match a bookies, the place market on the exchange will still be related to positions 1-4. This means if, in this particular example, our horse finishes 5th we win both our place back bet and our place lay bet - which has the potential to produce very large profits.
For further information on each way bets please see this guide.
What Is A Good Extra Place Match?
When placing Each Way bets to take advantage of extra places it can be difficult to know what qualifying losses are acceptable and what sort of value we're getting from the bet.
This part of the guide aims to explore the logic behind what is a good and profitable (long term value) extra place qualifying bet.
IMPLIED ODDS
The most important number we're going to be using is known as the implied odds. This number is effectively the odds we are getting for our extra place bet based on the qualifying loss and the potential profit if your horse finishes in an extra place. The higher the implied odds, the better value we're getting.
You can see the implied odds on the Extra Place Catcher under the Imp Odds column:
The formula to work this out manually is as follows:
Implied Odds = - ( Extra Place Profit / Qualifying Loss ) + 1
Where the extra place profit is your potential profit should your horse finish in an extra place. This can be seen on the Extra Place Catcher here:
and if you'd like to work it out manually it can be done as follows:
Extra Place Profit = (Place Back Odds x Back Stake) + Qualifying Loss
Note that both of the above formulae are assuming your qualifying loss is written as a minus number when it's a loss, and a positive number if you have an arb for profit (Eg. if you're losing £2 from your qualifying loss, input -2 for the qualifying loss above).
Example
For this example we are betting on Flosboy Sam with the following:
Each Way Stake - £10
Win Back Odds - 11.0
Place Back Odds - 3.5
Place Terms - 1/5
Win Lay Odds - 13.5
Place Lay Odds - 3.65
Qualifying Loss - -£2.62
Extra Place Profit - £32.38
Implied Odds - 13.38
As you can see, the Extra Place Catcher works out our implied odds for us so it's nice and easy. But if you wanted to calculate it yourself you would do
Implied Odds = - ( Extra Place Profit / Qualifying Loss ) + 1 = - (£32.38 / -£2.62) + 1 = 13.36
Note that due to some rounding the figure may differ slightly to what the Extra Place Catcher says.
What Do The Implied Odds Mean and How Can We Gauge Value From It?
We want to be betting on something with a high implied odds. High implied odds means a high reward based on the qualifying loss. Either that's because the qualifying loss is low, the potential profit is high, or maybe a combination of both. It's this combined effect of a relatively low qualifying loss for the potential profit that holds the key to value.
Now the question is - what counts as high implied odds?
A good way to think about our implied odds is as a measure of how many times do we need our horse to finish in the extra place to break even? There's a nice easy way to work this out - simply do 1 divided by your implied odds.
For example the implied odds we worked out above were 13.36. This means that we need our horse to come in the extra place 1 in 13.36 times (7.49%) to break even. If we think our horse will finish in the extra place more often than this then we're on to a profitable bet!
How do we know how often our horse will finish in the extra place?
This is down to a little bit of maths and a little bit of guesswork. Here is a rough way to get a guideline but there are other factors which make it not exact.
Chance of Horse Finishing In Extra Place ≈ Number of Extra Places / Number of Runners
For example if the bookmaker is offering 4 places and the exchange 3 places, there is 1 extra place in this race (4th place means we make a nice profit). Let's say there are 12 horses running in this race. We can guess that roughly the chance of our horse finishing in exactly 4th place is:
Chance of Horse Finishing In Extra Place ≈ 1 / 12
So 1 in 12 times which is 8.33%.
If your horse is a low odds favourite then it might be more likely to finish 1st or 2nd for instance instead of in this 4th place we want. On the flip side if your selection is very high odds then it might be more likely to finish towards last place in the race. From this we can see that we can get better than the 1 in 12 chance if we choose a selection somewhere in the middle in terms of odds (one we think is more likely to get 4th place).
To summarise our example, we have a selection we think will get us the extra place around 1 in 12 times. Our implied odds told us we need to get 1 in 13.36 or better to be profitable. This shows that we have a bet that will give us long term value.
If for example, the bookmaker was offering 2 extra places (paying for 4th or 5th place), then this is twice as good! You have double the chance to hit your extra place.
SUMMARY
- Work out your implied odds either by taking it from the Extra Place Catcher or working it out with this formula:
Implied Odds = - ( Extra Place Profit / Qualifying Loss ) + 1 - Work out the estimated chance of your selection finishing in an extra place using this formula:
Chance of Horse Finishing In Extra Place ≈ Number of Extra Places / Number of Runners (but can be better if you think your horse is more likely to finish specifically in an extra place) - If your selection finishes in the extra place more often than the implied odds suggest then you have a profitable bet which has good long term value.
If you wish to discuss this section further/have any questions then please do so at the forum here.