The “Double Or Nothing” In-Play Racing Strategy

Horse Racing In-play is a market on Betfair that has seen many lose their shirts on and the fast moving nature of it makes it a hard market to master. Therefore, strategies are quite thin on the ground.

However,  popular Betfair racing strategy used by many down the years is the “Double Or Nothing” strategy and one that is often called “DOBing” on the forums. This is quite a viable strategy to trade in-play racing with and there are plenty who use it to this very day as part of their trading portfolio.

The Strategy

Perhaps one of the reasons this strategy is so popular is it because it is so simple to execute. The main idea being that you will back a horse that you fancy to run well at the start of the race. Then put in an order to lay it at precisely HALF the odds you backed it at and for double the amount you backed it at.

Then if this is matched in-play you will have a green book equal to the amount of the stake you initially went in with and you will have doubled your money.

If not then you get nothing, hence the name of the strategy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above you can see a horse race and we have backed a horse called Murray Mount @ 7 as we expect this horse to run pretty well and give the favourites a run for their money.

 

 

 

 

Now before the race we put in an order to lay that same horse at half of the odds we backed it at and for double the stake. So we lay it @ 3.5 with £20. Do not forget to press “KEEP IN-PLAY”!

At this point you just wait for the race to go in-play and hope for the best to occur!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If all goes well you will see a screen like the above happen once your horse gets matched at the price you wanted. In this case Murray Mount ran pretty well and actually won this race. But it did not matter if he did or didn’t as we were set to profit either way by the half-way mark.

As you can see there is a profit of £9.51 on each horse rather than £10 as this is the profit after Betfair take their 5% commission. This is important to consider as it is not actually a double or nothing as the strategy states but it is close enough!

Pros and Cons

There is lots to be said about this strategy especially since it seems so easy but is not so easy to profit from in the long term. Some of the good points about the strategy is how simple it is to execute, the fact it can be automated if you wish and do not have to actively “trade” it. Also, a 100% return is a good risk-reward ratio.

The cons of this strategy would be that lots of research is often required and as you increase the stakes you might find it harder to get matched in-play. A 4 figure lay would definitely have a hard time being taken on a rainy Monday afternoon’s racing!