How To Make A Profit By Dutching

You may well have heard the term dutching in the context of betting on horse racing. But do you know what it means? In this article I will attempt to explain the principles of dutching a horse race. I will also introduce you to an incredible piece of software that can help you make regular profits by dutching horse races.

We are all familiar with the idea of backing a horse to win a race, in order to secure a profit. Dutching is concerned with betting on more than one horse in a single race, and with the same aim, to make a profit.

More often than not, a typical punter will single out a particular horse in a race, as his choice to win. Let’s take an example of a 10-runner race. In a Win-Only market, there are only ten possible outcomes to this event: that one from each of the 10 runners will win the race.

No matter what anyone tells you, every horse that lines up at the beginning of a race has a chance of winning. The chance may only be a fraction of one per cent, but it is still a chance and a possibility. Don’t believe that to be true? Watch the prices on Betfair for every race for a whole year, and I promise you, you will not see a horse matched at 1000-1 before the race starts. Why not? Because to get matched at 1000-1 someone must be thinking the horse doesn’t even have one chance in a thousand of winning, and is prepared to lay your bet. There is always the possibility, no matter how remote, of any horse winning, provided each horse is allowed to run a true race.

If a horse was ever matched at 1000-1 before the start, you can be sure of an investigation into possible foul-play.

Going back to our horse in the 10-runner race – let’s say he is priced the 2-1 favourite. If we back this horse, we can expect only two results for our stake: either our horse will win, and we will collect our stake and a 2-point profit, or the horse will not win, and we will lose our stake.
So, on only one occasion from 10 possible results, will we make a profit – only when our horse wins.

What if we could improve our chances of winning?

What if we bet on two horses instead of just the one? Then there would be two occasions which would see us collecting, rather than just the one. This is the principle behind dutching a horse race.

A punter can select a number of horses to back in a race, and split his stake according to the price of each horse, such that which ever of his selections wins he will make the same profit.

You will find many calculators on the market, or even for free, which will tell you how to split your stake according to the price of each of your selections. Just type dutching calculator into a Google search.

Notice I didn’t say guaranteed profit. The risk with dutching is that one of the horses you have not backed, ends up winning the race. Your stake is spread across a number of runners, but if none of these horses wins, you will lose all of your stake. If you take dutching to the extreme and back every horse in a race, in a 100% book such as you will generally find on the betting exchanges, you will end up with no profit. The returns on your winning stake will cover the amounts placed on all the other selections, but with nothing over as a profit. When betting with a bookmaker, he will construct his book such that if you bet on all the horses you will actually lose money, and he will profit. This is his business after all!

To make a profit from dutching you must back the horses you feel could possibly win, and eliminate those that in your opinion have next to no chance of winning. Hopefully you will have again spotted the risk here: that is you eliminate a horse from your equations and WHAM! It pops up and wins in spite of your strenuous calculations!

Essentially, dutching a race is similar to laying horses to lose. If you back every horse in a race bar one, you are effectively opposing that horse and laying it to lose. Backing all but two, and you are laying those two runners, and so on….

Having said earlier that if you back every horse on a betting exchange you will break even at best, this is not 100% true. The betting exchanges, by their very nature, regularly offer up the opportunity to make a profit by backing every horse in a race. The key lies in backing every horse at the right price, by taking advantage of the fluctuating markets on the exchanges.

Let’s look at a very simple example – if we could back both horses in a 2-runner race at 11/10 then no matter which horse wins, we will pick up a profit. However, the catch here is that at any given point in time, these two horses will not BOTH be on offer at 11/10

But imagine this – at 12pm Horse A is priced at 11/10 and Horse B is at 10/11 to make a balanced book. We back Horse A.

An hour later the prices have changed due to consistent betting on Horse A. In fact the prices are now reversed and Horse A is the favourite at 10/11 and Horse B has drifted out to 11/10 Not too difficult to imagine is it? In fact similar situations occur every day. We now back Horse B at 11/10 and we have backed both runners at 11/10 Guaranteed profit – Hallelujah!

I have only touched on the subject of dutching in this article, but there are regular profits to be made on the betting exchanges, but only if you have a mind like a computer and a mouse-finger quicker than Clint Eastwood’s trigger-finger! Accurate calculations, quick decisions, and split-second reflexes are all necessary for success. Fortunately there are betting ‘bots’ (specially developed software) that can make these decisions and execute them for you instantly and automatically. The best of these is undoubtedly Bet Angel

If you pay a visit to their web site you can watch their training videos and learn far more about dutching with real life examples, than I can ever put into words in this article.

Summary – Dutching a horse race concerns backing more than one horse in a race, with the aim of making an equal profit whichever of your selections should win. The skill lies in successfully discounting horses as having little chance of winning, and leaving them un-backed. Dutching the betting markets for profit is made simple with the aid of a purpose-developed software tool such as Bet Angel