Liability is an important concept to understand when it comes to laying bets. So exactly how does liability work in the world of Matched Betting?
Are you already a Betconnect Punter? If so you’ll have noticed that when you accept a Bet Request your account is debited by the amount of the liability for that bet.
If you’ve done Matched Betting before at MatchedBets.com or elsewhere, you will have come across liability as it is associated with lay bets which are commonly placed on betting exchanges. However, if you’re new to Matched Betting or Betconnect then it can seem complicated. Don’t worry though. It’s actually pretty simple once it’s been explained.
What is Liability in Matched Betting?
The easiest way to think about it is that you are acting as the bookmaker. This is essentially what you are doing when you accept a Bet Request. A Pro comes to you with a bet they would like to place and if you accept that bet and that bet wins, you pay the Pro their winnings. If their bet loses, you receive their stake.
The profit they stand to gain should their bet win is the liability. The liability is the minimum amount of funds you must have in your Betconnect account when accepting a bet request as this amount will be debited when you accept one.
How do you calculate the liability of a lay bet?
Betconnect will always show you the liability of each Bet Request you are offered. However it’s still handy to know how it’s calculated so that you can understand it more.
Calculating the liability of a bet on Betconnect is simple and you can use the formula below.
Liability = (Odds x Stake) – Stake
Example:
Let’s take an example. A Pro logs into Betconnect and requests a £35 bet on AS Roma to beat Fiorentina at odds of 21/20.
The liability of the bet (£36.75) is already displayed once a stake of £35 is entered. So how do we get this figure?
First we need to change the format of the odds from fractional to decimal. To do this, simply divide the numbers and add one. So, in this example, (21 / 20) + 1 = Decimal odds of 2.05
We then put these odds into the formula along with our £35 stake.
Liability = (2.05 x 35) – 35
Simplified = 71.75 – 35
Liability = £36.75
Want to learn more about Matched Betting?
So that pretty much sums up all you need to know about liability when it comes to Matched Betting and laying bets.
Simply put, the liability is the amount that you stand to lose should you match a bet request and the Pros bet wins.
If you’d like to learn more about this and general Matched Betting principles, you can join MatchedBets.com for 14 days for just £1. MatchedBets is a matched betting service which provides members with hundreds of profitable betting offers, step-by-step guides on how to profit from each one and a range of user-friendly yet powerful matched betting tools.
What’s great about matched betting and MatchedBets.com is that you can use it in conjunction with BetConnect to increase your profits even further!