Extra Place Offers: THE Each Way Betting System for Horse Racing & Golf

Extra places and how to do them

Are you looking to profit from each way bets and extra place offers?

It’s extra places that have allowed me to pull in some of my biggest and most consistent profits each month.

The reason these types of bets are so great is simple:

You’re not limited by the size of potential free bets — meaning you can win hundreds or even thousands in profit from a single race — and you can use gubbed accounts too.

Whilst things may seem confusing to pick up at first, everything becomes clear once you have placed a few bets for yourself.

Fortunately for you, I’ve made the process even easier for you right here in this guide dedicated to my number one each way betting system.

Let’s take a look:

Each Way Betting System Overview

In the video above, I talk through how extra places work and how you can make consistent profits and potentially huge results.

If videos aren’t your thing, or if you want a concise written explanation, I’ve written it up below:

A lot of people think this is specific to horse racing, but it’s not — one of the best strategies is to use this for each way bets in golf tournaments.

The basics are simple:

Let’s say a bookmaker is running a promotion whereby they’re offering an ‘extra’ each way place.

This is very common in big racing events like Cheltenham festival or the Grand National, where bookies will say ‘usually we pay four places, but today we’re paying five!’

In this scenario, finishing 5th would be known as finishing in the extra place.

Due to the way matched betting works – by backing and laying every outcome – finishing in this extra place can be very lucrative.

If your horse, or golfer, finishes in the extra place, you win both your back bet and your lay bet for a huge payout (relative to the size of your stake).

If you had £20 each-way on a horse at 20/1 (or 21.0) and 1/4 odds and it finished fifth, your profit would be £120, minus any qualifying losses.

The way this is worked out is really easy:

You take the each-way part of your stake (£20 in the example above) and then you take your odds and divide them by 4 — because in this example the bookmaker is paying 1/4 odds.

It’s much easier to divide the odds in their fractional format — 20/1 is 5/1, which becomes 6.0.

6.0 x £20 = £120.

Your profit would usually be £100 on a regular bet, but you will also win your lay stake on top, which will always be pretty close to the figure from your back stake.

Also remember that the key difference between a regular bet and a matched bet here is that if the horse didn’t finish in the extra place, you would likely only lose a couple of pounds at most, compared to your entire stake if you were gambling.

Golfers are even more exciting – although the tournaments last for four days so your money is tied up longer, the majority of the field will have odds of more than 50/1, meaning the payouts can be really significant.

How Does it Work?

If things aren’t adding up to you right now, or if they seem really complicated, that’s more than understandable.

This is one of the most complex things to get used to with matched bets, but it’s important to note:

It’s not actually complex. It’s just more complex than other types of offer.

The best tip if you’ve not done a matched bet before is to start simple (such as with our free beginner course) and work up towards these types of offer.

Our advice doesn’t just stop there, though. We’re still going to explain this to you – for those of you that already know the basics, or if you’re just curious.

The way this each way strategy is possible is because the betting exchanges that allow us to lay off bets do not offer the extra places that the bookmakers offer.

This means when you lay the ‘place’ part of the each way bet, you’re only covering the horse for four places. Your lay bet is saying ‘this horse won’t finish in the top 4’.

If it doesn’t finish in the top 4, you win your lay bet.

If it does finish in the top 4, you will win your bet at the bookmaker.

In both of these situations (top 4 or non-top-4) you will be somewhere close to breakeven on your bets because you will have won at the exchange and lost at the bookmaker, or vice versa.

However…

If the horse finishes 5th, you win your lay bet because it didn’t finish in the top 4. You also win the bookmaker bet because it finished in the extra place.

Your profits can also be boosted even further from promotions like Best Odds Guaranteed, or Rule 4s in your favour.

Real World Example

Hopefully this is starting to make some sense to you so far, even if you don’t understand the full ins-and-outs.

Let’s look at a real example in order to try to make this even more clear for you.

We’ll mix things up a bit, let’s say this is an each way bet on the golf; a £15 bet each-way on Lee Westwood at 66/1.

The bookmaker is offering two extra places – meaning they’re paying out on each way bets for the top 6 places in this tournament.

The exchange, as always, is paying out 4 places.

This means we’ll hit the jackpot if Westwood can finish 5th or 6th.

The first thing we need to do is lay off the ‘win’ part of the bet:

His win odds are 67.0 (66/1) and let’s say his odds on the exchange are 70.0 to lay. This means we use a simple lay bet calculator and input our stake – which is £15 for the win part and an additional £15 for the place part; we calculate the two separately.

Lay win part

As you can see, we will lose 93p by laying this bet off. This means, regardless of whether Westwood wins or loses, we will lose that amount.

It’s also worth noting the liability; in this example it’s very high, meaning you’ll need a large bankroll to bet like this. This is because it’s a relatively large stake and large odds too; you can start smaller with both stake and odds.

With each-way matched bets, the winning very rarely matters (unless you hit one of the aforementioned Best Odds Guaranteed, or ‘BOG’). All of the interest is in the place part – specifically the extra places.

Despite losing a very small amount on the win part, you can often find small arbs in the places.

Westwood’s place odds are 17.5. The way we calculate this is we take his odds – 67 – and then we do three simple things:

We minus 1.

We divide by the odds the bookie is paying out at (in this example it’s 1/4).

We add 1.

Easy!

Let’s say that there is a small arb available on the lay, meaning we can lay at 16.5.

This means our place lay looks like this:

Lay bet place part

This means we will win 59p regardless of whether our golfer places or not.

We take the qualifying loss from the win part (£0.93) and minus our qualifying profit from the place part (£0.59) and it means our total qualifying loss is just £0.34.

This means we are risking just 34p for the shot at a huge win.

If our golfer was to finish in 5th or 6th place, alone (not tied), our profit would be just over £260.

Based on our qualifying loss of 34p, it means we are getting effective odds of over 765/1 on hitting the extra place – a hugely +EV figure.

You might not hit the extra place as often in the golf, but the EV can be phenomenal.

If the golfer was to finish tied in one of those positions, we would still hit the extra place but our return would be lower as the winnings would be divided between however many golfers were in that finishing spot.

The benefit with horse racing extra places is that you can never have a tie for these positions, so your winnings are always the full amount (i.e. not shared). There are also less runners in each race, so you are more likely to be victorious. Your money is also tied up for significantly less time (one day maximum versus four days in the golf).

Overall, we would advise those with smaller bankrolls to stick with smaller stakes and to treat these as a really enjoyable low-risk bet. Don’t expect to win them often, especially if you’re just backing one horse or golfer, but when you do…there will be fireworks!

If This Still Seems Complicated…

That’s more than understandable.

However:

I’ve got some useful resources to make this so much easier…

Firstly, there is the Beating Betting Each Way Odds Converter.  This will help you to easily calculate your each way odds all the way up to 100/1.

The converter is well worth bookmarking for future reference as it has already saved us days of time since publishing.

Secondly, there is the Extra Place Matcher on Oddsmonkey.

The matcher will automatically find all of the horses or golfers for you to bet on, and it will display your qualifying loss or profit too — all you have to do is place the bets!

The tool is included in Oddsmonkey’s incredibly cheap membership (free trial here) and is my favourite matched betting tool without a doubt.

Covering Every Horse in a Race

Hitting the ‘Extra Place’ can be a long shot — though they’re still well worth doing even if you can only cover one horse, especially if it’s for zero qualifying loss!

If you have the favourite in a 20-horse race, you probably have around a 5-10% chance of hitting the extra place, but your payout won’t be huge in relation to your stake.

If you have the rank outsider at 150/1, you probably have a 1% chance of hitting the place or less. However, your payout in relation to your stake will be much greater.

What I like to do is to cover every single horse, and a large number of golfers in the fields (although covering all would be impossible with golf as there are so many players in each tournament!).

This means that, in horse racing, I have a 100% chance of hitting the extra place. The only thing that varies is the level of profit I make.

Sometimes my qualifying losses will be quite large but I will know that this is irrelevant as I am guaranteed profit when the race finishes.

It always hurts when you’ve spent a couple of hours covering the field and the worst possible horse finishes there for only a small amount of profit, but I’ve had it several times when you decide not to cover one horse and it of course places there. It is sickening when that happens!

Getting Started with Extra Place Offers

If you’re looking to get into extra places, my advice would be to start small and cover one or two horses in a race.

You should probably avoid the golf, because the tournaments take four days and you’re not always guaranteed an extra place finisher if a load of players tie for second, third or fourth. You should avoid tying your money up for so long when you’re a beginner or if you have a very small bankroll.

On big racing events, almost every single bookmaker around will be offering an extra place.

This means you can make use of all of your accounts — including your gubbed ones — and cover every single odds match that shows up on the Extra Place Matcher (check it out here).

For long-term profit, it is better to go with bigger stakes and better odds matches.

For reducing variance and building slow and steady profits, it’s better to cover more horses for slightly larger qualifying losses.

Remember, you will benefit from ‘shared liability’ on the exchange — only one horse can win, so you won’t need additional liability for each horse you lay to win. Only the largest liability figure will count and your other lay bets will actually increase your account balance as it reduces your total exposure.

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About the Author

This post was written by Luke Jordan. Luke founded Beating Betting at the start of 2016 and ran the site until February 2020. He is passionate about entrepreneurship, marketing and video creation.

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17 thoughts on “Extra Place Offers: THE Each Way Betting System for Horse Racing & Golf

  1. Wesley Powell says:

    I’ve done a bit of this in the past but without any help from somebody like Oddsmonkey. One thing I found difficult is having money tied up with bookies – especially if it took 3 days or so to put my winnings back in my bank. Do you recommend using Paypal or any other 3rd parties for transferring the money about?

    1. Luke says:

      Paypal and Skrill are great yeah, just always be wary if using to deposit with them that they don’t prevent you receiving additional promotions.

  2. TONY WILLIAMS says:

    Hi as a newbie can you tell me:

    a/ What time of day you place all of your bets ?
    b/ What QL would be an average (£)amount to aim for ? and if these are not possible would you leave these bets alone ? or reduce your stake to bring down the QL ?
    c/

    1. Luke says:

      a) There is no set time. This will be different for everyone, but mainly early evenings on a weekday.

      b) Instead of £ QL you should aim for percentages of maximum win with these. Again, there is no set limit but obviously the lower the better.

      c) It seems you didn’t ask anything for C :D

  3. Simon says:

    Very helpful video.

    I just have a question about backing the entire field.

    If it’s only 1 bookie paying the extra place, you would have to place ALL your back bets with that one bookie. If you want to protect your account, that’s probably not a good idea.

    Would you only back the entire field on races where multiple bookies are paying the extra place?

    Thanks.

  4. Jo says:

    Hi Luke,
    I’m a member of Oddsmonkey and I keep reading how people are scaring others off from doing EW horse race betting because their accounts are getting gubbed? What say you?

    I’ve made around £250 profit in 10 days since I signed up from a pot of around £125-£350 (I kept dipping in and out of my other account). So, in total I have a float of around £600 now. I’m too scared to try casino and bingo offers because they are not guaranteed and acca betting seems scary too when it’s not guaranteed. I’m already more than half way through my sign-up offers so I want to be moving onto the next stage where I can not worry when the offers dry up. Just wanted to ask a number of questions if you have the time?

    1) I want to keep my accounts clean and healthy too (When I deposit money for a free bet I put in a little more than needed. I place the QB for the free offer and with the remaining funds I tend to put 2 x £5 normal mug bets on at odds of around 5.0 which is roughly the same as I put on when I use a free bet and match it at the exchange. Is this okay and does it make me look like a mug punter?

    2) Is EW Horse race betting safe and the best way to make a profit consistently? I’ve almost ran out of offers and don’t get many offers in my emails. William Hill have been good though.

    3) I wish there was a stable thread on Oddsmonkey with concrete step by steps for matched betting to gear up to £750+ per month. I ask others for their routine so I can emulate it and nobody is saying anything. I feel like I should naturally know what I’m doing but I don’t. For total dummy’s like myself that need ABC steps its hugely frustrating! I want to learn it well so I can help others. Could you do a blog post on this or a video?

    Thanks for the informative site :)

    1. Luke says:

      Extra places/EW betting certainly isn’t as profitable now as it once was but it can still be very rewarding during big race meets. I would say make use of your gubbed accounts short-term and save your healthy ones for the biggest racing events.

      As for making £750+, it’s mostly just about volume. I did do a video on making a living (I think!)

  5. Tom says:

    Hi Luke,
    you mention shared liability. I haven’t come across this. Would you lay any four horses, and the liability is shared that way? Or are there particular horses you would lay to cover yourself from losses?

    1. Luke says:

      Only one horse can win, so you only have the liability of the biggest potential loss. Any additional lay actually reduces the liability by whatever your lay stake is.

      For example:

      You lay one horse for £50 at odds of 9.0. The liability on this is £400. You then lay another horse in the same race for £25 at odds of 20.0. The liability on this horse is £475.

      Benefiting from shared liability, your liability is therefore now £475 (largest figure) + £50 (lay from other horse) = £425.

      When you’re looking at the place market it’s exactly the same, but obviously 4 horses can place rather than just 1 winning. So it’s the liability of the 4 largest place lays that add up, and the rest reduce the total liability figure.

  6. Jack Salisbury says:

    Hi Luke, I’ve been doing matched betting for almost a year now and been full time for 3 months, I’m having best my best month yet, just hit £3k for August! My question is, should I continue to focus on 2up, or is learning how to cover the field going to be more profitable for me, my bankroll is roughly 5k. I’ve tried to cover the field a couple times but finding it hard to still be +EV once I get 5 or 6 horses in the other odds tend to be terrible, is this because I’ve been doing races where the meetings aren’t festivals maybe? Would love you’re advice :) Jack

    1. Luke says:

      Congrats on the success! This method is mainly best on the biggest festivals nowadays; Cheltenham, Aintree etc.

      1. Jack Salisbury says:

        Yeah thought so, thanks for the response!

  7. joseph thomas says:

    I tried a couple of these today. I was betting on horses with larger odds because the pay out is bigger. A couple of the horses i bet on had odds of 41. Whats the percentage of them finishing in the extra place at odds of 41?

    1. Luke says:

      Honestly, no idea! Their implied percentage chance of finishing 1st would be 2.5%, I guess it would be in the 4-7% range for a single extra place but I actually don’t know the answer I’m afraid. There’s usually a ‘5th place’ type market on BFEX, you could probably work out the implied chance from that.

  8. Joel says:

    Hi Luke,

    Is there a general limit to the amount of horses/golfers you can back at each bookmaker? If you were to back 3/4 horses at a bookmaker would they start restricting stakes?

    What is the upper limit to the stake a bookmaker will take for an each way bet? Provided there is enough money to lay at the exchange, this could be a good means for sustainable pocket money.

    Appreciate all your info, been very useful over the past year!

    1. Luke says:

      Golf you can get away with more due to the size of a field. Many mug punters would back 3-5 golfers in a big field event. Horses I’d stick to 2, maybe 3 at most really.

      Upper limits on stakes…depends on the health of your account and the size of the race. I had no issue in the past in getting large 3-figure each-way stakes on reasonably low-odds favourites (4.0-10.0) in large field, big festival races.

      These days you’ll struggle more just with more bookies offering 1/5 odds instead of 1/4.

  9. Ios says:

    Does it make sense to overlay the 1st place result? After all only one will win, so you earn more from the exchange with all the others

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