Lay betting explained

About Lay Betting

Beginners in sports betting often ask “What does lay mean in betting?”, since they can stumble across the term, when reading about betting exchanges or matched betting. Actually, this is a rather popular method of making bets on various kinds of sports, as well as other games, including craps or baccarat. Experienced gamblers often employ it in their gambling strategies (for example, in arbitrage betting) and some of them even manage to earn a living by lay betting (or at least they say so). Anyway, the technique is sure to have some obvious benefits, and advanced gamblers should become acquainted with its ins and outs, especially if they are going to master online exchange betting. With lay betting explained, you will break new ground in gambling and find new ways to get profit from your sports betting. But first, you need to understand how this kind of bets differs from usual bets you lay through bookmaker offices.

Lay Betting Explained as Opposed to Back Betting

Let’s think about how you usually make your bets at bookies. You choose some outcome, which you believe is highly likely to happen, and then you bet on it – this means that you back the outcome up. You can back a player, a team, an event – any outcome can be backed by your bet and this is called a back bet. In this case, you stake, let’s say, $ 50 at 2.0 shot to get $ 100 if your guess is lucky enough, and to lose the initial $ 50, if it is not.

And how does lay betting work? In this case, you choose an outcome, which you think is not going to happen, and so you lay a player, team or event you place a bet on instead of backing them up. Virtually, you act as a bookmaker, when lay betting – when you place your traditional back bet, the bookie kind of places a lay bet by default, since you think that the outcome you bet on will happen and the bookie wins, if it is not. So, with this lay bet technique you replace the bookmaker, betting against other gamblers. But how is it possible to replace bookmakers? And here we come to online betting exchanges.

Lay Betting Explained – Where to Play

Today, various betting platforms are available for gamblers in addition to multiple online casinos and bookmaker websites. One of these types is online exchange, where punters can bet against each other, while offering bets within existing action lines or creating their own unique bets. Since users exchange bets with each other, they can act as traditional bookmakers, and this makes lay betting not only possible, but also very popular.

Betting exchanges provide gamblers with all tools required to place both back and lay bets. Usually, you can see two columns of figures showing odds and stakes for backing and laying available for selections on a particular market. You can choose an outcome, which you think is less likely to happen and then you can go to a betting slip, where you can set your odds and stake with the help of a built-in lay betting calculator. However, prior to setting them, you need to understand how lay bets are calculated, since the process is somewhat different from that of usual betting.

Lay Betting Explained – Calculations

We have already reminded you about how you usually calculate your possible wins and losses. Let’s find out what the difference is when it comes to laying.

For example, you are betting that Chelsea is not going to win and your shot is 2.0, while your stake is $ 50 (just like in the back betting case above). If you are right and Chelsea doesn’t win, you will get $ 50 (the amount of your stake) and this $ 50 is your net profit. But if Chelsea wins, you will suffer losses. The loss is calculated by the formula: your odds (2.0) are multiplied by the amount of your stake ($ 50) and then the amount is subtracted. Then what do we get according to our lay betting calculator?

(2.0 x $ 50) – $ 50 = $ 50

The possible loss here is called a “liability”. This is the amount you would pay to another gambler, betting against you, if the gambler wins – just like any bookmaker would do in traditional betting. So, it is not only the amount you risk losing, but also the amount you must provide for lay betting. If an amount on your betting account is less than the liability, you won’t be able to place this bet – in our case, you need $ 50 available on your account in order to come into play.

However, here you may ask “But what benefits can I get from this betting method if my potential losses and wins are the same in both cases (lay and back)?” You are perfectly right, but you should keep in mind that those examples are shown just to illustrate how the lay betting calculator works in practice. So, we have intentionally taken the figures giving the similar results, just to highlight the main difference in calculations. Meanwhile, this doesn’t mean that the figures and the results are always the same, and this leads us directly to the possible benefits of lay betting.

Lay Betting Systems – Benefits

For one thing, it is not all about the amount of wins and losses – sometimes, this is just the only way to guess correctly and to get at least some profit. There are many sport events with multiple favorites, where you have no tips on who is going to win and statistics doesn’t help and all you can do is take a chance. But in fact, you have this smart lay betting system, which allows betting on an underdog, if there is one. You can’t but agree that in many sport events we can predict rather positively who is not going to win, while having doubts about a winner. So, why take chances backing an unlikely outcome, when you have the opportunity to lay a guaranteed loser?

On the other hand, there are quite a number of lay betting systems based on calculations that allow obtaining almost 100% profits from differences between back and lay odds, as well as increasing the amount of possible wins or at least reducing the amount of possible losses. Both the above mentioned matched and arbitrage betting strategies involve lay bets in combination with traditional betting.

Also, across the Web you can find tipster services like Lay Betting Code, which are focused on delivering forecasts on various sport events, thus giving you a nice chance to better define underdogs to bet on. Many of them have both paid and free versions, so you can start using them and practicing on betting exchanges with no additional investment, except your betting deposits. Besides, you can take advantage of lay betting tips explaining how to place bets on the exchanges, if you have never used them. However, don’t be fooled by those exalted promises that “guarantee” stable profits or large wins – most of expert reviews available on the Web do not confirm that there is one and only way of placing lay bets that is free from risk.

So, what is lay betting? It is just another possibility to make your betting more exciting and profitable, while discovering a new and promising world of betting exchanges, where you can be a bookie, while staying a punter.