A Rugby Bet With No Downside? Cash In At The Bookies!

Here's how you can help yourself to an almost 19/1 winner - for the result of just ONE rugby match.

The 2008 Guinness Premiership season has just begun, and will run until next May. All the top bookmakers price up every match as a ‘handicap,’ that is, they ask one team to give the other team a certain number of points start.

It's these handicaps which we are going to attack. You will usually see them advertised like this:

Wasps v Worcester (+10)

The handicap (+10) refers to the 'away' side, so if you wanted to back the away team here, Worcester, you would add 10 to their match score.

If Worcester’s match score, with the ten points added, were more than Wasps match score, your bet would be a winner. If you wanted to back Wasps on this handicap, you would deduct 10 from their match score.

Exactly how many points these teams give and receive depends on how the bookmaker’s odds compiler sees the game. And it’s because of differences of opinion between compilers that you can sometimes put yourself onto a 19-1 winner in a two horse race.

Let’s look at a game between the Leicester Tigers and the Leeds Tykes.

Is it better to be a tiger or a tyke?

William Hill saw the match like this, Leeds, a weaker side than Leicester, playing ‘away’, would need an eighteen-point start. The Tote reckoned that the Tykes would need even more, twenty four points start.

Now that six point difference of opinion between the bookies' handicaps is a significant amount, it's the equivalent of a Try and more, and it’s your cue to bet.

The best offer we can get for a Leicester handicap win is Hills ‘minus eighteen points’, and we take it. Let’s say we have a tenner on.

The most favourable handicap for Leeds is the Tote’s ‘plus twenty four points’, and we take that as well. We put a tenner on the Tykes with a twenty-four point start.

Now whatever happens in this game, we are guaranteed that one of our bets is going to be a winner.

Suppose that Leicester won by ten points, the bet we had with Hills, Leicester ‘minus eighteen points’ would be a loser. But the bet we had on Leeds to win ‘plus twenty four points’ would be a winner.

Look at another instance. If Leicester won by thirty points, the bet we had on them ‘minus eighteen’ would be the winner, and the bet on Leeds ‘plus twenty four’ would now be the loser. But whatever score you care to think of, even if Leeds had stunned the experts and won the match, one of our bets will ALWAYS be a winner.

If Leicester win, which I think you’ll agree is the most likely outcome, and if the margin of their victory is anywhere between the two handicaps we have taken, of minus eighteen points for Leicester, and plus twenty four for Leeds, then both of our bets will be landed.

We will win twice.

In this example Leicester won the game 42-20, so both of out bets were successful. Check it out.

Bet number one. Leicester -18 points. Leicester’s score was 42, less 18 equals 24, which is higher than Leeds’ match score of 20.

Bet number two. Leeds +24 points. Leeds’ score was 20, plus 24, equals 44, which is higher than Leicester’s match score of 42. So BOTH bets pay out.

Now bookies’ odds for backing a winner on their Rugby handicaps is either 10/11 or 5/6, and if you’ve landed them both, as in this match, you will actually be on a 19/1 winner.

How come?

First of all - if you have both bets at 10/11, and you are guaranteed that one of them will win, what is your ‘worst case scenario?’ What is the most that you can lose?

Ten quid on the winner returns you £19.08
Ten quid on the loser costs you £10.
Total stake, £20. Worst possible return £19.08
Maximum loss possible, 92 pence.

Now if you land both bets, as you have in the Leicester and Leeds game, your profit and loss calculations look like this:

Ten quid on Leeds, returns £19.08
Ten quid on Halifax, returns £19.08
Total return £38.16
Total profit £18.16
The maximum possible loss on these two bets, remember, one of them MUST win, is 92 pence.

So if the most you can lose is 92p, and your winnings when you are successful are £18.16, then you have backed a nearly 19-1 winner!