How to Lay a Horse Shorter by Putting Up a Back Bet

Recorded August 2025 for The Grind Ep3: Mastering Betfair SP, Lays & Market Angles – A Professional Approach. Any figures mentioned are from that time.

When I am laying a horse for bigger money, I want the price as short as I can get it. One of the things I do is put up a back offer above where the horse is trading, sit it there for a bit, and let it do some work on the market. It can hold the price in or drag it in a touch. Then I pull the offer and take the lay at the shorter quote. It sounds small. Over the course of a grind it is not small at all.

How the technique works

Say I have rated a horse and the lay looks good. I go to the exchange and see where it is actually trading. If the price is drifting and I want it in, I put up a back for a decent amount at a price above the market. Not one I want matched. The point is to sit there and give the market something to look at, so the price holds or comes in.

You have to watch it. Often someone will come underneath you and you do not want to get hit, so you kick your offer out a bit. Then when the price comes in, you can bring your offer down and try to pull it further. You are nudging, not hammering. When you are happy, you take the lay at the shorter price and cancel what you had up.

The example at Rosehill

I had Just In Time at $7.50 as the official lay. The exchange had it at $6.60 to $6.80. So I put up a back for eight hundred at $7.20 to see if it would bring the horse in. At first it did not do much. Then it started to come down and I brought my offer to $7, still not wanting to get matched, so I kicked it back out to $7.20 when it looked like someone wanted the $6.80.

It settled around that $6.60 to $6.80 mark. I laid a couple of hundred at $6.60 and put it in the system. Once I cancelled the eight hundred, it went back out to $6.80 and $7.

If I had not had that offer up, and I had just wanted to get a thousand out of the horse, I would have pushed the price out myself. Probably to $7.20 or $7.40. So the difference is laying at $6.60 instead of somewhere around $7.20 for decent money. Twenty cents here or there does not sound like much. On volume it matters.

What to watch out for

The cancel is the part people get wrong. When you pull your offer, the price can kick straight back out, especially on low volume markets. That race had over a hundred and thirty one thousand matched, so there was a bit more depth to absorb it. On a thin market you can move the price yourself and then watch it snap back the moment you are gone.

The other thing is timing. You are doing this in the last minute or two before the jump, so you need to be at the screen, watching the price and watching to see if they are about to jump. And if I were laying to lose a lot more, five or six thousand, I would keep feeding that offer in rather than doing it once.

If you are laying for real money, have a look at what you are giving away by pushing the price out yourself. Try holding a back offer above the market next time and see what it does to the quote before you take your lay.

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More from Kingsley

• "Why Do You Still Lose Taking Top Price on Every Horse?"
• "Can You Find Value in Following Jockeys?"
• "Is Strike Rate or Return on Turnover More Important?"

From the full video: The Grind Ep3: Mastering Betfair SP, Lays & Market Angles – A Professional Approach

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