the only way to make money from laying horses… is to make a book 
i.e.to lay every eventuality at short enough odds to gaurentee profit.
i worked for on course bookmakers in the good old days(not for punters),when betting rings where a closed shop.you could turn up at any midweek gaff,and because there were only a limited number of bookies allowed to stand,a set of odds for any particular event would always incorperate a healthy profit margin…you could even have half the field on your side and still come out on top 
nowdays anyone with a few quid to blow can buy a pitch and set their self up…only trouble is,where you once had 15 clued up old school layers on a busy saturday evening meeting…you now have 60 have-a-go heroes who have no idea how to actually make a book…all pulling the prices just to take money
look at a set of sps for a low grade meeting and theyre betting without a margin…simple maths should tell you it aint gonna work.
i supose the point im trying to make is that betfair is even worse.instead of 60 have-a-go heroes,you now have a couple of thousand....all pushing the price out just to get involved. if a horse is a genuine 6/4 chance youll probably have to go 2/1 to lay it just because of the competition…(not good)however,if its more like a 4/5 chance,youll get filled in…then you`ve just layed a 4/5 shot at 6/4 (even worse) 
That’s how John MrCririck went broke in the game “no one is supposed to lose at”! 
Whassat they say about “Those who can do, and those who can’t become hacks, and teach”?
I’m not a lucky punter, so the only way I can make an edge myself is to get on at way over the odds, thus I won’t back anything less than 10-1 odds, (assuming I can get somewhat more than that on the tote or exchanges - never taking the board prices as is my habit!) and I won’t lay anything unless I can lay TWO horses shorter than 6-4, which is easily possible in small field big prize events. Your losses are always going to be small, and of course there’s always the real chance of neither of the front two in the betting winning it, in which case you cop the lot - the name of the game!
On Betfair, I used to lay for a PLACE rather than a win, because some of these fancied horses were not going to lose unless they didn’t stay on their feet, and if THAT’S the case, they’re not going to be finishing in the first three either right? 
There’s not enough quality racing of this calibre to make a living out of it though - If every week was like Cheltenham, we’d all be hanging up our keys and making a fortune laying favourites!
As to “Which system is best? - Laying favourites or opposing them with rags” - Check for yourself. Go through the saturday’s racing results in the sunday paper sometime, and just chalk up points for each favouite that loses (double points if it’s odds-on) and points for 10-1 (or better) shots winning (double points for 25-1 or better) Double-digit prices in large fields have the tendency to pay a lot higher odds on the tote, less so on the exchanges except for the real rank-outsiders.
I found it was consistently in favour of backing rags rather than laying favourites, so now as a hobby, I just back a handful of rags a week. Not much different from many other mug punters out there maybe, but I know my maximum loss at the outset, and winnings-wise, it’s still sky’s the limit each and every day I put something on… 
winseer yawn do it properly !!! GLOBAL YES I AM so you can see im not billy bs good thread i got going though as for agencys and driving again NO CHANCE
FOR WINSEER ITS 2012 WHILST OUT SHOPPING AND WALKING DOG AND WATCHING EASTENDERS 
MY ROBOT YES ROBOT with my own designed settings personal too my self msade me more than a 15 hour day in a smelly truck but cheers anyway lol
easy money whilst doing what i like , i never left job without years of planning !!!
The edge is too small here for someone like me, and a lot of others like me to make a go of this. I refer back to my argument about “fifty fifty” actually coming up consistently in the middle of the curve, rather than at the extremes as often as not.
If we could all just run a bot, and make a fortune then there would be no punters left to actually fill your lays at prices that maintain your edge - which would have to include a significant allowance for variance. Everyone would be trying to be a layer instead of a backer!
There’s more money to be made by exploiting the mistakes of others than one could ever get trying to be “correct” as often as possible. People back favourites when they should not. Strangely, assuming your board is showing a number of evens favourites being laid there, I don’t see many favourites in handicap races being laid, which is a lot easier to land than straight races where the favourite will ■■■■ it 9 times out of ten - the very result you don’t want!
It’s all snake oil, and just doesn’t work in today’s illiquid markets. Come back in a year and show us a picture of yourself standing next to a customised plate roller, or whatever preference you might have to denote “success”.
I can’t wish you “good luck” because the whole notion here is that “luck plays no role”!
Me, on the other hand, I’ll take all the luck I can get, as I’m clearly always in need of it when I reach yet another birthday, and still have got anywhere near the magic million mark! 
Interesting thread this but it is a little fishy if so much money can be made why isn’t everyone doing it ? What system do you use ? I have heard the all against the odds system works on small money, but your account risks getting shut down. So how is it if you keep winning your account ain’t shut down ?
Betfair won’t shut down accounts, because they charge commission on the movement of money from winner to loser on each binary outcome. They don’t pay out the winners, so they don’t give a hoot by who and how much is won - only that the losers are guaranteed to pay out. The exchange’s function is to accept bond in the form of “liability deposits” in advance to achieve this end, very similar to derivatives exchanges - such as Globex or Liffe.
Ordinary layers (high street bookmakers) on the other hand, lay a bet like Lloyds underwrite insurance. Any money paid out by them comes out of their pocket, with their “earnings” being all the money lost by backers of the wrong horse on the same event. If there are not enough losing punters therefore, the bookmaker themselves will lose money on a thinly backed event when someone lands a sizeable payout - either big stake on small odds, or enough stake on big odds. Chetenham is good for bookmakers, because there’s often heavily backed multiple fancied horses in every race, meaning whatever the outcome, there’s going to be shedloads of money on the losers, thus ensuring the bookmaker “a prize every time”, with the occasionally “skinner” thrown in where the bookmaker cops the lot such as the Nortons Coin victory in the 1990 chetenham gold cup @ 100-1 odds (most stands bookmakers had no backers to pay out at all!)
If Betfair had been around in 1990, the 1000-1 layers of Norton’s coin would have been losing their cars, houses, everything! All because “some twit” said that 100-1 shots “cannot win ever” when in fact Norton’s coin had fair form to his name, and was only a rag because he was considered an underdog at this level of racing’s finest. That’s what’s great about Cheltenham - ANY horse has the form to be a winner. Those that don’t usually end up dead, so there’s no encouragement for the real “no hopers” to actually risk life and limb on a track that rivals Aintree for casulties!
I’ve only ever had one account shut down with Corals - and that was in the spring of 2000 for landing a 25p treble at tote odds which ended up paying around 5.5 times the SP’s, which of course was compounded that way because of it being a treble. They tried to clip it to the “4 times the SP” rule, but the rules cleary stated that this applies to the SP and not the treble acclumulated odds! I had a 10-1 shot paying £18 tote, a 25-1 shot paying £44 tote, and a 40-1 shot paying £76 tote. Nearly double the SP on all 3 winners, which was well within the “4xSP” range. They did eventually pay out in full, but closed my account and changed their core rules as not to take tote bets in future in a fit of pique. (I would have left anyway if they’d just prevented the tote bets in future, so I lost no sleep over it!)
Most of the other high street layers won’t take tote acclumulators, but betfred does on internet accounts, and doesn’t show any sign of either scrapping the acceptance of such bets nor closing my account! Good old “Honest Baldy!”
Personally, I’d like to see a return of the “Win a million ITV 7” type bet actually laid by the joint efforts of the high street firms. At present, you can only get the tote version which tends to be rubbish compared to the same acclumulator at SP odds - since the “jackpot six” type races tend to be large fields and/or handicaps with fewer favorites among them as a result! You’d think after 18 years of the lottery, the horseracing layers would have got wise to the huge public interest that would be created by a “guaranteed million” prize with the added bonus of “no sharing” in the event of multiple winners of the major prize. This cannot be matched by camelot you see, as they wouldn’t know how to lay in a whorehouse, electing for the zero sum commission approach rather than actually sticking your neck out and taking a risk - the very nature of “laying” risk!
This is a very interesting thread to read.But for someone like me ( who knows very little about betting/laying horses )it’s all double Dutch. 
well its monday my betting is done 2 lays today netted me 300 beach of falsea in tramore a ADIEN OBRIEN HORSE and silken express 6/4 windsor fav bookies knew thats why they were giving 7/1 for richard hughes too ride a double. trading bot today scalped 50 quid then shut down like ive programmed it too. 3 best bets of the day 2 winners profit of 77 quid all weather system ive got 129 quid too 27 pounds outlay .my dutching system is up 110 quid for start of week usually hits 50% strike rate . like i say i have a portfolio ive built over the years and some very powerfull database software ,only prob is the downside IM DRINKING TOO MUCH
OH AND IVE TREATED MYSELF TOO SKY 3D JUST WATCHED MAN U GET DONE AWESOME 
AIM (Alternative Investment Market) is my vice - been playing Exploration Stocks for years and have made nice gains, after a steep learning curve! Not recommended for the faint hearted, but a bit of research for the ‘astute’ could yield good gains. FOGL a buy currently at under 90p,whilst they drill their 4.7 billion barrel potential ‘Loligo Prospect’; but de-risk prior to results (around late Sept). Falklands will play out eventually to be the new North Sea type oil frontier. . . . . hell, you chaps have got to run your V8 Scania’s on something 20 years down the line! DYOR and good luck!! Contrast Rockhopper (RKH) with Desire (DES) to see how this is really like putting it ‘on the horses’ in many respects… Knowing when to get in, and when to get out is key!
Ok if it’s so good tell me what the bot software is and a good guide or program to follow
Money goes to money. If you’re able to spread the risk around enough so a black swan doesn’t bust you out, then you have enough money to consider all kinds of high-return investments, including the more established “buy to let”, and “high yielding stocks” etc.
Most people chasing “get rich quick” schemes are fooling around with 5 figures rather than 6, 7, or 8 however, which is a recipie for disaster, because you’ll be brought down by the variance every time - at least with MY luck!
Eg. Lay £360 per spin to lose a tenner on a roulette wheel like a casino does.
After 1000 spins that might take place over a casino session, you’d expect to be paying out 27 times, that being the law of averages, which then nets the profit of a measly £280. One spin coming up too many over that long session wipes out the profit you see…
(1000 spins @ £10 on green zero = revenue taken of £10,000. 27 winning spins expected due to probability = total returns of £9720 (27x£10@35-1odds), leaving only £280 profit ACCORDING TO THE LAW OF AVERAGES!)
The Casino will make money out of this in the long run because variance flattens out over time. In the shorter run, you are totally at the mercy of variance (the opposite side to what punters call “luck”) which means too little layer stake means pretty much guaranteed failure, unless you are a “lucky” person who consistently beats the law of averages. And if you were THAT, you’d be a professional gambler, rather than a layer one would think! 
A winning ratio is therefore about your laying stake to bankroll ratio - you need to last long enough for the law of averages to balance out.
If your max payout is 5 figures, then I reckon you should have a bankroll of the mid 6 figures range. This applies to running a gambling establishment like an arcade, or even a second hand car dealership, electronics shop, or any other business where you have wasting stock on your shelves - a type of business of which more and more are falling into the category of in these deflationary times.
If you have 6 figures to play with, you might like to try high yielding stocks only brought in maximum £25k blocks, ideally 12 of them so you have some dividend income every month. If you have 7 figures to play with, a half a dozen buy to let properties should do you proud, and if you have 8 figures, you can enter the world of running the larger seaside-type amusement arcades, bookmakers shops, jewellers, NEW car dealerships, and just about anything else that needs a surprisingly large start-up stake doesn’t it? 
Anybody making a success of such businesses with a much lower bankroll has clearly just been “lucky so far” - Otherwise we’d all be doing it, and no one would ever go bust - right?
Bots, full time, part time, mathematical knowhow are all irrrelevent. You’re either lucky or your not on both sides of the equation here. As time progresses, more unlucky people go broke, which then thins the pot for the remaining lucky ones to scoop from. It’s never been EASIER to get involved with such businesses as it is now (because you won’t be turned away for being “underfunded”) but it’s also never been HARDER to scrape profits out of an ever-decreasing water hole.
If a firm like Betfair ever goes under, it will be because they lose all their customers (following a bad repuatation event for example) rather than someone getting a massive payout, since they are not actually the ones laying it, so couldn’t care less.
Bad reputation events might include (1) Not paying out for any reason, despite the “loser” having provided the money, (2) A money laundering scandal, (3) A huge software failure that makes customers lose confidence or even (4) the law changes making it illegal to lay events upon which you yourself can have an influence upon the outcome - including via market manipulation!