With less than a week until Royal Ascot gets underway, attention is now completely focused on one of the highlights of the flat racing season. The Epsom meeting, including the Oaks and Derby races, attracted plenty of media interest at the start of June but there’s nothing quite like Royal Ascot – it truly is the pinnacle of summer entertainment. With eight Group One races across five extraordinary days of action, the Royal Ascot meeting is always remembered as one of the great spectacles of the campaign. We took a look at five of the biggest races at the event and give our thoughts on who might come out on top…

Tuesday: Queen Anne Stakes

Without a doubt, the Queen Anne Stakes is the standout race on the opening day, and it may prove prudent to look no further than Ribchester, the current ante-post market leader. The BBC stated just how sublime he was when winning the Lockinge Stakes under an excellent ride from William Buick last month and he will take some stopping. However, Lightning Spear, second to Richard Fahey’s mount at Newbury, may come close. Some fabulous horses have won this race over the years and we could see a Frankel-like performance from Ribchester if Buick gets a clean trip around.

Wednesday: Prince of Wales Stakes

With a prize fund of £750,000 up for grabs, this is one of the more lucrative races at the meeting. Highland Reel, a convincing winner of the Oaks at Epsom, could run in this race and he will be there or thereabouts if he does. Plenty of tipsters, including some of those on this list, will be backing the O’Brien-trained star once again but if truth be told, this is a pretty open affair. So Mi Dar should be prominent but siding with Sir Michael Stoute’s Ulysses may be a wise decision. He has finished inside the top two in each of his last three runs in Group One races and he may just be the one to beat come June 21st.

 

Thursday: Ascot Gold Cup

On Thursday, the Ascot Gold Cup dominates talk in the betting ring and some of the world’s fastest, staying flat horses on the planet will compete in this titanic battle. The well-fancied Order of St George, a solid winner of this race last year in the opinion of The Irish Times, leads the ante-post market but will he manage to eclipse the record-breaking time of Sadeem from 1988? On that day, the winner completed the course in an astonishing 4 minutes and 15 seconds according to the below infographic from sports betting company Betway, and plenty of punters will fancy the Aidan O’Brien-trained thoroughbred to go close, especially if the ground is good. With Ryan Moore, arguably the best flat racing jockey in the business, onboard, this is definitely Order of St George’s race to lose…

Friday: Commonwealth Cup

This could be the race of this year’s Royal Ascot meeting. There are plenty of quality horses with leading claims in this race but three stand out from the crowd. As mentioned in The Sun, Caravaggio is the most talented horse in the race and must be respected in the betting market prior to the meeting. Last year, he romped home to win the Coventry Stakes but he is better than a Group Two event. With Ryan Moore on board, he will be the one to beat. However, both Blue Point and Harry Angel have potential and this isn’t a foregone conclusion by any means. You do not want to miss this one.

 

Saturday: The Diamond Jubilee Stakes

As of June 6th, Limato is at the head of the betting and rightly so. The Henry Candy-trained five-year-old is up there with the best sprinters in the business and plenty of punters will be expecting big things ahead of what could be a memorable summer for connections. Ascot is first up on the list but with a number of Group One races to come elsewhere, this meeting may not be top on the priority list and it may be worth looking elsewhere in the market. The Tin Man may challenge for favouritism come race day and Tom Queally, formerly jockey of the legendary Frankel, will be preparing himself for this opportunity to regain his place in the winner’s enclosure at the end of the week.

 

 

 

 

 

Matchbook is a betting exchange where you bet against other punters rather than a bookie.

It operates in a similar way to Betfair and Betdaq, in that you can both back and lay bets on a variety of markets.

However, the way its commission is structured is a little different to those two exchanges and a little bit more complicated as well!

Below we take a look at how commission works at Matchbook.

 

Commission Summary

With a bookmaker, they offer you slightly worse odds than they should, so that they can make a profit. This is called their “overround.” 

What it means is that on a coin toss for example, they would offer you 10/11 or 5/6 on both outcomes rather than the true odds of even money.

With a betting exchange such as Matchbook however, you generally get better odds than you do with the bookies. 

On the above example of a coin toss, you could expect the odds on either outcome to be 2.0 or very close to it.

However, you have to pay commission – that is how the exchanges make their money.

With Betfair, it is very simple – you just pay commission on your winnings, whether you back or lay. 

With Matchbook though you pay commission on both and winning and losing bets (although at a much lower rate than Betfair) and differing amounts depending on whether you have accepted a bet or requested one.

We go through this in more detail below.

 

Commission for Offering Bets and Accepting them

At Matchbook, the commission you pay varies depending on whether you put in an offer in a market for someone else to potentially match, or whether you accept odds that are already there.

If you accept odds that are already there, then you would pay 1.5% commission.

If the bet wins, you would pay 1.5% commission on your profit and if it loses, you pay 1.5% commission on whatever is lower of your stake or potential profit/liability.  

You can get £50 cash back for opening a new account with Matchbook here. 

 

Let’s look at an example:

It is a tennis match in the French Open between Ostapenko and Wozniacki. 

As you can see from the odds, it is a close match and should be an interesting contest at Rolland Garros.

Now let’s say you back Wozniacki at 1.787 for £20. 

If the bet wins, you would pay £0.24 in commission – i.e. 1.5% of your profit of £15.75. 

If the bet loses, you would also pay £0.24 in commission – i.e. 1.5% of the lower of your potential profit of £15.75 and your stake of £20.

 

Backing Example – Requesting Odds

Now let’s say you wanted to back Wozniacki, but instead of taking odds that are already posted of 1.787, you request slightly higher odds of 1.8.

Presuming the bet is matched, you would be looking at the following commission rates:

You would pay 0.75% commission if the bet wins. 

So that would be £0.12 commission – i.e. 0.75% of your winnings of £16.

If the bet loses, you would pay £0.12 in commission – i.e. 0.75% of the lower of your potential profit of £16 and your stake of £20.

 

So as you can see in this example, it is better to request a bet than accept it in terms of the commission you will pay.

Obviously you have to weigh this against the chance of not being matched, but in most instances where this is good liquidity, you have a fair chance of being matched if you request odds just one tick above the current price.

 

Commission on Lay Bets

It works in the same way for lay bets. Let’s have a look at an example:

In this example, we are looking at the tennis match between Kevin Anderson and Marin Cilic.

 

This is a match where the market is expecting Cilic to win and has him as strong favourite. 

Let’s say you agree with the consensus opinion and choose to lay Anderson at 4.55 for a liability of £71 and a potential profit of £20 if he loses the match.

 

If Cilic wins the match, you will win your bet and pay £0.30 in commission. That is 1.5% of your profit of £20.

If Anderson wins , the commission you will pay is £0.30. 

That is 1.5% of your potential winnings of £20 – i.e. it is the lower of your potential profit of £20 and layer’s liability of £71.

 

Example Two – Request Odds

In this example, we will look at a lay bet where you are requesting odds rather than accepting them.

Let’s take the same tennis match from the French Open, Anderson v Cilic. 

You want to lay Anderson for the match, but instead of accepting the odds of 4.55, you offer odds of 4.5 to lay £20 for a liability of £70.

If the bet gets matched, you are looking at the following rates of commission:

If Cilic wins and your bet wins, you will pay £0.15 in commission – i.e. 0.75% on your profit of £20.

If Anderson wins and your bet loses, you will also pay £0.15 in commission – i.e. 0.75% on the lower of your potential profit of £20 and layer’s liability of £70. 

 

Summary

Matchbook commission is quite complicated and does take some explaining. 

However, here is a neat little summary of the key elements to it:

• You pay a commission of 1.5% on your winnings if you accept odds that are already posted.
• If you request odds and your bet is matched, you will only pay 0.75% commission on your profit if your bet wins.
• If you place a lay bet at odds that are already there and your bet loses, you will pay 1.5% commission on the lower of your potential profit and liability.
• If you request a lay bet by setting the odds yourself and your bet loses, you will pay 0.75% commission on the lower of your potential profit and liability.

So there you have it, basically you are paying between 0.75% and 1.5% commission depending on what happens.

You can see that there is an advantage to requesting a bet at slightly better odds than are currently available, as not only can you win more but the commission rate is lower.

So long as you give yourself enough time for the bet to be matched and make sure to amend it if isn’t matched as the start of the event approaches, then this appears to be a worthwhile step to take.

The other point to mention is that if most of your bets are winners (and by extension if you are backing largely at odds-on) then Matchbook may be preferable to Betfair in terms of the commission you pay, which could be as low as 0.75%.

However, if lots of your bets are losing, then you are paying commission (albeit small) on your losing bet as well as having lost money.

Overall though it is a good commission structure in our opinion and is well worth comparing to what you may be paying elsewhere. 

You can get £50 cash back for opening a new account with Matchbook here. 

 

 

 

 

You may have lost most of your bookie accounts and be wondering whether you can still make money through matched betting without free bets and if it is worth signing up to a service like Profit Maximiser.

Well, the good news is that you can and still make quite a bit of money. Below we look at exactly how.

 

Gubbed and Annoyed – But Don’t Give Up Hope

If you are reading this article, the likelihood is that a number of your bookie accounts have been closed or limited, or the bookies have withdrawn their free bet offers from you. In other words you have been “gubbed.”

The initial feeling is disappointment and that there are no options for you to do matched betting and make some low-risk profits. But actually there are still ways to do this.

There are various methods to make low-risk profits and many people make hundreds of pounds per month doing them, even though they have been “gubbed.”

 

Option One – Bookies you have Probably Never Heard Of

So yes, you may have lost your accounts with the big high street names like Ladbrokes, William Hill and Paddy Power and not have access to their ongoing reload offers.

But did you know there are load of other bookies with excellent offers?

On Profit Maximiser for instance, there are 29 new account offers with bookies you may never heard of, for example:

• Bet Bright – £50 Free Bet
• Dafabet – £30 Free Bet
• Marathon Bet – £20 Free Bet

And Profit Accumulator currently has 55 new account offers, so there may well be quite a few on there you haven’t done yet, potentially adding up to hundreds of pounds.

Once you have opened accounts with these new bookies, it is important to do your best to keep your bookie accounts open for as long as possible, to take advantage of their reload offers. 

 

Option Two – Casino Offers

One of the best options if you are not able to access the free bet offers on sports is to look at the casino offers.

Often you find that even if you no longer have access to free sports bets with a bookmaker, that same bookie’s casino site will still allow you to use the casino offers. This is because their margin is much bigger on casino than sports, so the bookies are generally happy for you to use their casinos.

Casino offers are generally split into two categories: no deposit offers and sign-up offers.

 

• No Deposit Offers – these are more closely aligned to matched bets because they are risk free. Generally the amount of the bonus is lower (£10), but some can be higher.
• Sign-up Offers – these are offers where you need to make a deposit first, but the amount of the bonus can be substantial, up to hundreds of pounds in some cases.

For both kinds of offer, there are generally wagering requirements which means that you need to bet the amount of your deposit and bonus a number of times, thus increasing the chance that you will lose it.

However, there are excellent tools out there that work out for you exactly how good the offers are and what kind of value they entail.

For example, EV Maximiser has a tool included in it that enables you to work out what the “estimated value” – or “EV” of a casino offer is.

Some of the casino offers are much better than others and knowing what is a good value offer and what isn’t can save you a lot of time and hundreds of pounds in the long run.

The estimated value will give you a figure for how much you could expect to make on average if you played a certain casino offer say a thousand times. Obviously this is not how much you will actually make as it depends on how well you happen to do, but it gives you a very useful sense of how good each offer is.

Using tools such as this, it is possible to make a good income from the casino offers even if you no longer have access to the free sports bets.

 

Option Three – Bingo Offers

Another option if you no longer have access to free bets is to use the bingo offers. 

Many of the bingo offers actually represent excellent value and can be turned into a good few hundred pounds profit.

At the time of writing, there are over 30 bingo offers on Profit Maximiser, with the average offer ranging from £10 to £40.

They are often quite quick to do and once you have got the hang of it, they are pretty straightforward to execute.

 

Option Four – Each-Way Betting

One way to achieve some low-risk profits is to use a product like Each-Way Sniper.

This is great because it doesn’t rely on any kind of free bets or bonuses at all, so can be used by people outside of the UK and Ireland and those who have been gubbed of all offers.

Basically what Each Way Sniper does is to use certain each-way bets where the place part of the bet offers excellent value with the bookies.

So what you can do is set up the bet in a certain way to lay off your liability with the exchanges so that you make a profit whatever happens, whether the horse wins or loses.

Each time you do this you can make £5 – £10, depending on what kind of stake you are using. And with multiple opportunities per day normally, the profits can really add up.

Obviously you have to be a little bit careful not to overdo it or the bookies may end up limiting you, but with a degree of restraint this is a good alternative to matched betting.

You can read our full review of Each Way Sniper here, but suffice to say it is highly recommended. 

 

Option Five – Horse Racing Offers

Next on our list is the option of using extra place offers on horse racing.

These are offers where you are not using free bets, but rather instances where the bookies are offering an extra place on certain – usually high profile – horse races. 

Much like with Each Way Sniper, you can manipulate these offers to secure a low-risk profit if done right. There are full instructions of how to do this as part of Profit Maximiser.

 

Conclusion

Losing access to the bookies’ free bets can at first glance seem like a fatal blow to your hopes of matched betting.

However, there are actually a number of other avenues to exploit and you should by no means see it as the end of the story. 

With so many new bookies entering the market all the time, there is the opportunity to capitalise on their free bet offers even if you have lost your accounts with all the mainstream bookies.

Plus if you are careful and place a good number of mug bets, you may well be able to keep those accounts open for a long period of time.

In addition, there are all the casino and bingo offers as well which can add up to many hundreds of pounds.

Then there is the possibility of using Each Way Sniper and extra place offers in horse racing to make low-risk profits.

So all in all you should not give up on matched betting without free bets, there is still hope to make a good amount of money! 

 

 

 

 

Scottish born Jim Hay and his wife Fitri are perhaps some of the most well-known faces in the world of house racing today. Their long love affair with the sport has seen them associated with numerous high profile horses and trainers over the last couple of decades.

Buying shares in Cape Blanco and Fame and Glory, who won the 2011 Ascot Gold Cup, the couple have, to date, invested millions in the industry. Success has enabled them to expand their breeding operation over the years. From his early years in Glasgow and his later career at BP, Jim Fitri has always maintained a close connection to the world of horse racing and betting.

Early Days

Jim Hay was born in Scotland in 1950. Brought up in Glasgow, there was no serious link to horse racing in his formative years as he grew up in a strictly Presbyterian family that frowned heavily on anything to do with gambling. At high school, however, he started to become more and more interested in betting because of the maths behind it and began to find ways to get involved in horse racing, most noticeably watching it on television with his grandmother.

 

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As a young man, he attended Strathclyde University where he studied applied chemistry. This led him after graduation into working for petroleum giants BP, where he successfully stayed for the next 27 years, working his way up to senior executive level.

In 2002, Hay started his entrepreneurial career when he created the JMH Group which developed two distinct divisions, the first dealing with construction, the second lifestyle and fashion. He also acquired construction solutions firm Fosroc. All the while, however, his continuing attraction to all things horseracing remained and it wasn’t long before his Fitri began to play her part in the industry as well.

Horse Racing and the Hays

Anyone who believed that Jim and Fitri Hay were simply rich and successful people dabbling in the world of horse racing purely as a hobby were simply wrong. Their love of all things equine belied the fact that they have made some major investments in horseflesh over the years. They take their involvement in the industry as a serious business and understand the high risk, high rewards that can be achieved from investing in the right livestock.

His past business dealings with BP and work in JMH Group have held him in good stead when it comes to navigating the world of high quality breeds. As Jim Hays told the Guardian recently:

“Everything we do will have a 15-year strategy, and we run our racing the same way. We will have a long-term strategy, and a five-year business plan to back it up. We have board meetings at which we discuss everything.”

Success and diversification with the JMH Group created a turnover of $600 million and in 2011, the couple found themselves in Scotland’s top 100 richest people list. Now based in Dubai, the couple decided to forge a path in the world of horse racing at the turn of the millennium, all with the same energy and whole heartedness that they had applied to their other business interests. They were aware that the returns from investing in horse racing could be huge but it was also something they both enjoy immensely.

Fitri – From Racing Widow to Racing Enthusiast 

Horses weren’t an initial first love for Fitri, however, who became something of a racing widow in the late 90s because of Jim’s involvement in the sport. He was spending the weekends looking out for race courses to visit, all of which left Fitri the option of staying at home or joining in. It led them to buy their first horses, both of which according to Jim were ‘next to useless’. But that didn’t stop further investment over the next few years as they began to learn more about what they were doing. Fitri now owns several horses and is one of the most well-known faces in the industry. 

First Winner Finally Landed

The Hays had to wait for a long while before their first winner came along. That didn’t happen until 2004 when Barathea Dream, trained by Stan Moore, passed the finishing post in first place. Two years later, Hay was buying Fred Winter’s Uplands, setting up with Moore as the trainer. The aim of Uplands was to create winners, pure and simple, attracting other investors who were willing to buy shares in some impeccably bred horses.

Their most successful year came in 2010 when they managed 27 winners that brought in a healthy £375,000 in prize money and allowed both to join in the Queen’s procession at Ascot. The Hays purchased shares in Cape Blanco out of the Ballydoyle stable which won in three American Grade 1 races in 2011 as well as Flame and Glory which achieved ultimate success at the Ascot Gold Cup.

The couple flew in from the Dubai home to take part in the celebrations when Fame and Glory won and it remains their most significant achievement in their racing careers. Key to their success has been building relationships with many of the world’s top trainers, including Ballydoyle, David Simcock, Andrew Balding and Roger Varian.

Here Comes When – One of the Best

Probably one of their most successful horses in recent years has been Here Comes When which is trained by Andrew Balding. The horse has had 25 runs on the flats with 7 first spots and earnings of over £275,000. Another is Argocat, trained by Nicky Henderson, which has had 4 wins on chases, including earnings of over a hundred thousand. The horses are owned by Fitri and the couple are still looking to expand their breeding operation over the next few years.

In 2011, Jim and Fitri Hays purchased Birch Grove, the former mansion of Prime Minister Harold MacMillan, a location that includes its own private golf course and has entertained guests such as John F Kennedy in the past. The couple continue to invest in their horses and are still hoping for the next Ascot or Cheltenham winner with as much excitement as in the early days.

Check out our guide to the Best Horse Racing Tipsters here