Can We Make Money Laying Horses?
Time for me to bite the bullet and answer all those demands for a laying system for a change and as I am still (like many of you at a guess) recovering from overdoing thigs over Christmas, common sense suggests we go for something simple for starters, horse we can all spot in a matter of seconds without overworking the little grey cells.
Personally, I am fairly convinced we can make money laying the bigger priced horses but all we need is one of those once in a lifetime 300/1 shots to win and our bank is wiped out in a matter of seconds, so we need to focus our attentions nearer to the head of the market to reduce potential losses when the inevitable result goes against us. With favourites winning a high percentage of races overall I am going to look at something even simpler as we all clear our post Festivity heads – winners last time out.
The theory – hands up who doesn’t at least look twice at any horse in any race who won last time out – not me, that’s for sure. We know we are talking about a horse in form, and one who has the will needed to get to the front and see off their rivals – but I am quietly confident (as always, I write this part before investigating further), that they are often if not always massively over bet. Many punters (not the likes of us thankfully) will back them willy nilly without bothering to look any deeper at the form so in theory (I do love to exaggerate), there are those who would happily back a five furlong maiden seller winner in the Group One Epsom Derby – those are the bets we are looking to catch.
The method – we will as is oft the case start with the overall breakdown of laying every single horse that won on its previous start then dig deeper – splitting by code (Flat, All-Weather, Chases, Hurdles, and Bumpers), then we can cherry pick the more profitable angles and see where that takes us – best of luck to us all.
Data is from 1st January 2015 to 2nd January 2026 inclusive, all races UK and Ireland. Data listed is laying them to a fictitious £1 stake at Betfair Starting Price (BSP) and the figures quoted are after the standard 2% Betfair commission throughout this article.
All horses who won on their previous outing.
| Runners | Winners | Strike Rate | Profit/Loss to Betfair SP (Laying) | Longest Winning Run (LWR) | Longest Losing Run (LLR) |
| 135232 | 25789 | 19.07% | +£1267.40 | 6 | 56 |
Comment: Who would have guessed there were so many winners is my first thought, but we do have a good starting point! That said, the profit is only about 1% (which is no great surprise) so we need to dig deeper to fine tune for some real money worth having!
By race code:
Flat Turf.
| Runners | Winners | Strike Rate | Profit/Loss to Betfair SP (Laying) | Longest Winning Run (LWR) | Longest Losing Run (LLR) |
| 53584 | 8978 | 16.76% | +£1219.87 | 6 | 54 |
Comment: Getting better. A Return on investment of 2.3% isn’t brilliant, but it is a small step forward.
Flat All-Weather.
| Runners | Winners | Strike Rate | Profit/Loss to Betfair SP (Laying) | Longest Winning Run (LWR) | Longest Losing Run (LLR) |
| 26482 | 5397 | 20.38% | -£350.93 | 6 | 35 |
Comment:
That surprised me – you can make a small profit of £20.38 by backing last time out winners on the all-weather but laying them looks a no so we move on….
Chases.
| Runners | Winners | Strike Rate | Profit/Loss to Betfair SP (Laying) | Longest Winning Run (LWR) | Longest Losing Run (LLR) |
| 20401 | 4213 | 20.65% | +£141.63 | 6 | 29 |
Comment: A return on investment of 0.7% suggests we look elsewhere for the most profitable option.
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