Spread Betting

[Ben_Bernanke]

Apologies if this has already been discussed, but I really don’t understand this.

Signed up to SpreadEX for the free bet offers and one of the free bets I received was a £1 free bet on a horse spread. I put it on some sketchy Korean race on a horse that was 13/8, it won and I assumed I’d get around £2.50 back – assuming the spread was similar to the exchange. However the bet returned £25, so I’d assume whatever bet I’d placed was actually 24/1 seeing as it was only a £1 free bet and I “bought” the horse rather than “sold” it – at least that’s what it said when I placed the bet. The horse did win by a country mile so I’m not sure if for whatever reason the winning distance ended up being calculated in the bet? Why on earth did I get 24/1 about a 13/8 shot? How does this work??

I’ve also got some football over/under free bets, I’ve put them on

£10 free spread bet BUY Man City v Leeds 3.35 – 3.55
£5 free spread bet BUY Villa v Liverpool 2.95 – 3.15
£5 free spread bet BUY Man U v Forrest 2.95 – 3.15

I honestly have no ides what I’ve put these free bets on, I guess I’m just hoping there’s lots of goals in these games, picked those ones in particular because they seemed like, on paper, the three that are most likely to have a decent number of goals this weekend. I’ve tried reading the spreadex’s website description of what spread betting is but it didn’t really make any sense to me. Have any of you folks got experience with this type of betting?

[Ben_Bernanke]

Ok so my £5 free spread bet on Villa v Liverpool returned £4 – I’m assuming this doesn’t contain the stake.
The £5 free spread bet on United v Forrest returned nothing.

I still have absolutely no idea how this works, all I know is I want goals in the City game tomorrow lol

[Nathan Hughes]

I’ve read a explanation and still have no idea about it

Charles Darwin to conquer the World

[Richard88]

I think you won loads more because the horse hosed up. My understanding is that if you’d ‘sold’ it or it got stuffed you’d have done your brains (with real cash).

Basically the more your bet wins or loses by, the more you win or lose. So say you bet a tenner, you could lose multiples of that if your bet does badly i.e. £30 if the goal line was 3 and it was 0-0. But once there’s 3 goals you’re laughing all the way to the bank every time there’s another.

I know very little though so don’t for God’s sake take my word for it if you put your own money in.

I personally wouldn’t touch it until I had a very good handle on how it all works.

[Ben_Bernanke]

“I’ve read a explanation and still have no idea about it”

LOL Nathan I watched a load of videos and none of them made any sense, seems like a sketchy way to bet and one that I won’t be doing in future, almost like playing options with leverage on the stock market.

Richard I agree completely, haven’t touched it since having those free bets, it really does seem like you can lose a lot of money very easily if the result doesn’t go your way, not sure if you’d need to have more than your stake amount sat in your account when placing a bet incase it loses, or if you just owe the company money if the bet loses but either way it seems like a real degenerate way of gambling, 18 year old Ben would have been loving it!!!

[Richard88]

Haha I think we all largely get more risk averse with age, I certainly do.

Sounds like a real rollercoaster way of betting. Think you can punt things like total goal minutes. Imagine a 0-0 then suddenly two late goals. In the World Cup, Wales v Iran was 0-0 after 7 minutes of stoppage time and ended 2-0! You’ve gone from losing dozens of times your stake to absolutely rolling in it. Or of course the other way round if you went low.

No idea how the funds work. You’d think you’d have to have the maximum loss available in your funds or how would they chase you for the money? Surely you could just walk off and never use them again if you lost big otherwise.

[Ben_Bernanke]

Yeah it’s a good point, you’re probably right – though if you bet on under 0.5 goals you could technically have infinate losses if there were a crazy number of goals in the game so not sure how they’d know exactly how much money you’d need in your account to cover those potential losses?

I remember a few years ago listening to American comedian Artie Lange talk about lightning betting (he was a true gambler), in which he’d do a ‘lightning’ bet on NBA points totals and once his over total had come in he would win more and more money for every point scored, it seems like this is the same kind of bet.

Found the clip!

[Richard88]

Yeah, no way I’d have the nuts for that. Bloody exciting if you hit the points total say early in the 4th quarter mind. But equally if you were short in the last couple of minutes and it’s a blowout then neither team is that bothered about scoring and will wind the clock down.

That’s true about unlimited losses. If you bet under then the loss is theoretically unlimited if over comes in.

I can see it being a bit of fun on football as betting over a goal line of 3 means you can only lose three times stake on a 0-0. But equally you’re never going to win big either. Basketball or cricket for example you could hit dozens over the total, even hundreds in cricket but the potential for losses is catastrophic. Classic risk and reward.

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